Chapter 22
SAWYER
Iwoke up before the sun.
This was not unusual. I had been waking up before the sun for a decade, trained by the military and then by habit and then by the kind of restlessness that comes from sleeping alone in a cabin that was too quiet.
But this morning was different. This morning I had a reason to be up early that had nothing to do with restlessness and everything to do with the woman sleeping in my bed with her hair fanned across my pillow and her breathing soft and steady beside me.
I got dressed in the dark. Eased out of the room without waking her. Pulled on my boots and my jacket and stepped into the cold morning air.
The florist in town opened at six. I knew this because I had never once in my life bought flowers and had needed to look it up on my phone the night before, sitting in the bathroom like a teenager hiding a secret.
The woman behind the counter looked at me like she had seen a ghost when I walked in.
Sawyer Cole. In a flower shop. At six in the morning.
“I need two bouquets,” I said.
“Two?”
“One for a six-year-old. One for her mother.”
She smiled at me the way people smile at a dog doing a trick it was not trained for.
Impressed but slightly disbelieving. She put together the bouquets while I stood there with my hands in my pockets, feeling entirely out of my element, which was a feeling I was going to need to get used to because pursuing Chloe Matthews meant doing things that made me uncomfortable, and flowers were apparently the beginning of a very long list.
Emma’s bouquet was small. Bright. Sunflowers and daisies, the kind of colors that matched her personality. Chloe’s was different. White roses and soft pink peonies, delicate and elegant, the kind of flowers that reminded me of her. Beautiful without trying. Impossible to look away from.
I drove back to the cabin with the bouquets on the passenger seat and the radio off and my heart doing that thing again that I was never going to address because addressing it would mean admitting that I was nervous, and I did not get nervous.
I had been to war. I had run a sawmill. I had taken a bullet and kept walking.
I did not get nervous about flowers and breakfast.
I got nervous about flowers and breakfast.
The cabin was still quiet when I got back.
I set the bouquets in the kitchen, out of sight, and started cooking.
Pancakes. Scrambled eggs. Bacon. Coffee for Chloe, orange juice for Emma.
I set the table the way I had seen Chloe set it, with napkins folded and utensils placed properly instead of thrown on the table the way I usually did.
I even found candles. Two of them, in a drawer I had forgotten existed, and I lit them and set them in the center of the table and stepped back and looked at the whole thing and felt ridiculous.
Then I pulled out my phone.
Music. Slow music. I did not have much on my phone that qualified as romantic.
My playlist consisted mostly of the kind of silence that comes from a man who preferred the sound of his own thoughts over anything else.
But I found something. A slow, quiet song with a guitar and a voice that was low and warm, and I set the phone on the counter and let it play.
The music filled the kitchen. Soft and warm, wrapping around the candlelight and the food and the flowers hidden behind the counter, and for one long moment I stood in the middle of my kitchen and wondered what the hell had happened to me.
A year ago I was eating cold eggs at this table in silence.
Now I was lighting candles and playing music and buying flowers at six in the morning.
Chloe Matthews happened to me. That was what.
The bedroom door opened.
Chloe came out first, holding Emma’s hand. They were both still in pajamas, Emma’s hair a wild tangle of curls and Chloe’s pulled back in a messy bun that made her look younger, softer, like the girl I had fallen for seven years ago. They stepped into the kitchen and stopped.
Chloe’s eyes moved across the table. The pancakes.
The eggs. The bacon. The candles. The folded napkins.
The music playing softly from the counter.
Her lips parted and she looked at me standing beside the table with my hands at my sides, feeling exposed in a way that had nothing to do with clothing and everything to do with the fact that I had just revealed a part of myself that I had not known existed until she came back.
“What is this?” she said.
I did not answer her. Instead, I walked to where the bouquets were hidden behind the counter and picked up the small one first. The sunflowers and daisies. I crouched down in front of Emma.
“Can we dance?” I asked.
Emma’s whole face transformed. She looked from me to the flowers to the music playing in the background and her eyes went so wide they took up half her face.
“Really, Papa?”
“Really.”
She took my hand. I stood up, and she stepped onto my feet the way kids do when they dance with their parents, her tiny boots on top of mine, her hands gripping my fingers.
I held her steady and we moved. Slow and clumsy and completely off-rhythm, swaying in the kitchen while the song played and the candles flickered, and Emma laughed the kind of laugh that sounded like everything good in the world condensed into a single sound.
I spun her. Carefully. She squealed and tipped her head back and her curls flew out around her face, and when I pulled her back she was breathless and grinning.
“Again, Papa!”
I spun her again. And again. Each time she laughed louder, each time my chest got tighter, each time the thing inside me that had been frozen for a decade thawed a little more.
When the song ended, I knelt down and handed her the bouquet.
“For you,” I said.
She took the flowers with both hands, holding them against her chest like they were made of gold. She stared at them, then at me, and then she threw her arms around my neck and squeezed so tight I could barely breathe.
“Thank you, Papa. They are the prettiest flowers in the whole world.”
“Second prettiest,” I said, and looked at Chloe.
Chloe was standing by the table with her hand over her mouth and tears in her eyes.
She was trying not to cry and failing completely, the way she always did when something caught her off guard, and the sight of her standing there in her pajamas with tears running down her face and candlelight in her hair made my chest ache in the best possible way.
I stood up. Picked up the second bouquet. The white roses and pink peonies. I walked to her and held out my hand.
She laughed. A wet, teary laugh that she pressed her free hand against her mouth to contain, and then she reached out and took my hand.
“You are sweeter than my cookies before,” she said.
“I am leveling up how you pursued me, right?”
She laughed again, louder this time, and I pulled her close and we danced.
Not the clumsy shuffle I had done with Emma.
Something slower. Her head against my chest, my arm around her waist, our feet barely moving.
The music was soft and the kitchen was warm and the candles were throwing shadows on the walls and she fit against me the way she always had, perfectly, like every angle of her body had been measured to match mine.
I could feel her heart beating against my chest. Fast. Her hand gripped my shirt at the shoulder, holding on, and I pressed my face into her hair and breathed in vanilla and warmth and the smell of home.
When the song ended, I handed her the flowers.
She took them, brought them to her face, and inhaled.
Her eyes closed. When she opened them, they were shining, and the look she gave me, the look that said she saw me, really saw me, not the grumpy exterior but the man underneath who was trying his hardest to be worthy of her, made something settle inside me that had been unsettled for a long time.
I kissed her. Soft. Slow. Tasting the salt of her tears on her lips.
“Oooh, they are kissing again,” Emma announced from the table where she had already started eating pancakes, her bouquet propped up against the orange juice like a centerpiece. “Papa, you are so lovey.”
“Eat your breakfast, Emma.”
We sat down and ate. Together. The three of us at the table with flowers and candles and music still playing softly, and it felt like the most normal thing in the world and the most extraordinary thing at the same time.
Emma ate three pancakes. She talked with her mouth full about the flowers and the dancing and how she was going to tell everyone at school that her Papa danced with her in the kitchen, and I let her talk because the sound of her voice was something I was still learning to absorb, still learning to believe was real and mine.
“Papa,” Emma said between bites of bacon. “Where is your family? Your mama and papa?”
The question was simple. Casual. Asked with the directness of a child who did not know that some questions carried weight.
“My parents live about two hours from here,” I said. “A small town called Ridgewood. My dad used to be a carpenter. My mom was a teacher.”
“Like Mama!”
“Like Mama. She taught third grade for thirty years.”
“Can we visit them? I want to meet them. Do they know about me? Do they like dinosaurs?”
I looked at Chloe. She met my eyes and I saw the question there, the uncertainty, the awareness that meeting my parents meant another step forward into something that was becoming more real by the day.
“We can visit them,” I said. “Soon.”
Emma cheered. Chloe smiled. And the warmth in the kitchen, the candles and the flowers and the music and the three of us, felt like something I wanted to protect with everything I had.
After breakfast, Emma went to her room to get Sir Chomps-a-Lot situated with the flowers because apparently the dinosaur needed to appreciate the bouquet properly. I cleared the table and started on the dishes.
Chloe was drying. She stood beside me at the sink, our elbows almost touching, and the quiet between us was comfortable in a way that silence had never been for me before.
I stepped behind her. Wrapped my arms around her waist from behind, my chest against her back, my chin resting on top of her head. She leaned into me, her hands still holding the dish towel, and the domesticity of it, standing at the sink with my arms around her, hit me harder than I expected.
“What is your plan for Emma’s school?” I asked.
She was quiet for a moment. I felt her take a breath, the rise and fall of her ribs against my forearms.
“She needs to be enrolled somewhere,” she said. “She has been out of school since we left. I have been teaching her what I can at the cabin, but she needs real classes. A real teacher. Other kids.”
“There is a school in town. Pinewood Elementary. Two miles from here.”
“I know. I looked it up last week.”
“You did?”
“I have been thinking about it. If we are staying, and I think we are staying, then she needs stability. A school. A routine. Friends.”
I tightened my arms around her. She was staying. She thought they were staying. The words settled into me like warmth spreading through cold wood.
“We can go this week,” I said. “Register her. I will come with you.”
“You want to come?”
“She is my daughter. I am coming.”
Chloe turned in my arms. Looked up at me. Her eyes were soft, and the dish towel was still in her hands, and there was a smudge of pancake batter on her cheek that she did not know about.
“You know,” she said, “for a man who hated me showing up at his sawmill, you are doing a very good job of being present.”
“I never hated you showing up.”
“You told me to leave. Multiple times.”
“I was lying. Every single time.”
She smiled. Reached up and pressed her palm against my cheek. I turned my head and kissed her palm, and the small sound she made, a soft exhale that was half surprise and half something deeper, was worth more than anything I had ever built with my hands.
“Pinewood Elementary,” she said. “This week.”
“This week.”
“Together.”
“Together.”
She kissed me. Quick and warm and tasting like maple syrup, and then she turned back to the dishes and I stayed behind her with my arms around her waist and my chin on her head, and we finished the dishes together while Emma sang to her dinosaur in the other room and the music played on.