She rolled her eyes, but her cheeks went pink, exactly like I wanted.
I caught her hand and laced our fingers together on the seat between us. She let me, smirking down at our hands before looking back out the window. She looked so damn at ease. Like she was back, exactly where she belonged. And I’d have done anything to keep her looking that way.
When we got there, Chris was already perched in shady corner of the patio. Little Archie, their son, sat on his lap, eating a cookie bigger than his head and looking rightly smug about it.
Maggie stood as we approached with a warm smile, sunglasses pushed on top of her head, and the kind of calm you only get after raising a kid and wrangling a tennis coach for fifteen years. Honestly, half the time I relied on her quiet wisdom as much as I relied on Chris yelling at me from the baseline.
“Kate, I’m so glad I finally get to sit down and meet you properly,” she said with a grin, pulling her into a hug. “Though I already feel like I know you; he doesn’t stop talking about you.”
Kate blushed, then laughed sweetly. “That explains the weird looks from strangers then.”
I rested my hand on the small of her back and leaned in. “No chance, all good things.”
We all sat down. Archie shyly showed Kate his cookie. She told him it looked delicious, and asked if he was sharing. He offered her a crumb and she pretended to be grateful, like it was the best thing she’d tasted all week. I couldn’t stop watching her with him. She was fascinating. The way she bent to his level without making it obvious. Theway her eyes lit up like he was the most important person at the table. I could see exactly why she was so good at her job. She was patient, kind and a complete natural. She didn’t just listen, she made people feel heard. Even a five-year-old with chocolate all over his face.
And fuck me, I caught myself picturing what it would be like if we had our own one day. Her with our kid on her lap, smiling at me over their head. That kind of picture didn’t scare me anymore. It felt like something I’d been waiting for without even realising it.
She just seemed to fit into every corner of my world so effortlessly. And I wanted to keep her there, all for myself.
“So whatdoyou do, Kate?” Maggie asked after we ordered. “I don’t actually know anything about your job, and Jordan is terrible at explaining.”
“I bet he is.” She laughed. “I’m an educational psychologist,” she said, twirling her straw in her iced tea. “Well, I’m taking a bit of a break at the moment.”
“That sounds tough,” Maggie said. “Rewarding, but intense.”
Kate nodded. “It can be. I work mostly with kids who have learning difficulties. Trauma is my focus area, sometimes court cases. It’s a lot of paperwork, a lot of politics. But sometimes you get to actually do something that matters.”
Chris raised an eyebrow. “You must see some tough stuff?”
She hesitated for a second, then said, “Yeah, I do sometimes. It’s part of the job,” she continued. “Unfortunately, I’ve had to step into some pretty brutal situations. Sometimes you have to be the one to raise the alarm. Actually, I just recently got a kid out of a bad home. I had to write the report that triggered the investigation.” The table went quiet for a moment.
Kate cleared her throat. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bring the mood down.”
“That’s heavy, but…respect. Not everyone’s cut out for that,” Chris said reassuringly.
Kate smiled, a little sheepishly. “It’s not always like that. Some days it’s just trying to convince a twelve-year-old that reading isn’t punishment.”
Everyone chuckled. But I didn’t, I was too busy still watching her.
That and thinking about all the women I’d been with before her. The models. The influencers. The ones who knew how to play the part.
The ones who knew exactly how to smile for the cameras. Make sure the hashtag was right. The ones who knew how to say the right things in interviews, then spent the whole night scrolling through their own grid.
The last one I was with? God.
Some PR company had set it up, said it wouldelevate my profile. She was easy on the eyes, sure, but after two dinners and a quick fuck, I realised she was boring as hell and spent the entire time talking about herself and her outfits.
She never asked questions. Never noticed when I went quiet. Didn’t know a thing about tennis, not that I cared, but she didn’t care to ask about anything that mattered to me, either.
I think I’d known then, even before Kate, that I didn’t want this lifestyle to be all I had.
And now?
Now I was sitting across from a woman who could make a five-year-old laugh and casually drop a line about getting a kid out of an abusive home without flinching. A woman who saw the worst of the world, and still showed up for people every day. A woman who mademefeel seen and more like myself than I had in years.
She didn’t care about cameras or clout. She asked real questions. Saw past the noise. She made the rest of my life look like the warmup act.
She’d seen real life. She’d waded knee-deep into some of the darkest corners of it, and walked out. A little hardened, maybe. But it made her…better. Realer.
