Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
MAYA
Iwake with a start. No scream this time, no sweat. Just a sharp, splintering inhale. My heart still races like I’ve run ten blocks, but we’re safe.
We’re at Owen’s.
Sunlight cuts through the crack in the curtains, soft and gold. The digital clock on the nightstand says 6:43 a.m. I close my eyes again, trying to ease the tightness in my chest. Yesterday still claws at me; Jamie’s face outside the bakery. My panic. The screaming.
The way Owen ran.
The way they all ran.
Murphy and Dylan searching the alley. Ollie sprinting with Owen to get Lila.
That moment I thought Jamie might hurt her. I swallow down the fear and tell myself, again, that we are safe here. Although, I’m not sure I’ll be able to let Lila out of my sight any time soon.
Owen’s kitchen smells like coffee and cinnamon. I find him at the counter in a grey hoodie and joggers, flipping pancakes with quiet focus. Lila’s perched on a stool in her pink pyjamas, legs swinging, watching him like it’s the morning news.
“There she is,” Owen says softly, turning his head. His smile is gentle. He doesn’t ask if I slept. He doesn’t need to.
“Morning, Mummy!” Lila grins, syrup already smudged on her chin.
I kiss the top of her head and wrap my arms around myself, uncertain.
“Want tea?” Owen asks.
I nod. “God, yes.”
He pours me a mug without asking how I take it. I guess I’m predictable now. That should terrify me. Instead, it warms something low in my stomach.
I sip and watch him cook, letting the silence settle. Lila chatters about Dave the sourdough starter and whether he dreams while he’s sitting on the shelf. Owen answers like it’s the most serious philosophical debate of our time.
“Maybe he dreams about being a real loaf,” Owen says solemnly. “Like a starter’s version of becoming a butterfly.”
“Or a bagel!” Lila shouts, thrilled with herself.
I sit. I breathe. I realise; we’re still here.
And now I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to our flat.
To the life I was building for Lila and me.
I fought so hard to make a new start but now being here, in Owen’s house, watching my daughter gaze at Owen like he hung the moon and stars makes me realise I don’t have to do life alone. Not if I don’t want to.
I’m folding laundry later; mine, his, Lila’s all jumbled together in one basket.
It’s absurd how intimate this feels. More than kissing.
More than sex. Knowing which socks are his and which are Ollie’s that have somehow migrated here.
I fold his navy Raptors hoodie, the one I wore last week when I couldn’t stop shaking.
I tug it on again now, sleeves too long, hem brushing my thighs and it doesn’t feel borrowed anymore. It just feels like mine too.
The knock on the front door makes me flinch.
“Relax,” Owen says from the hallway, where he’s lacing up his trainers. “Just a delivery. I ordered groceries.”
I nod, try to keep my breathing steady. My hands are still shaking when I set down the folded towel.
He notices, like he always does. He walks over, slow and solid, and touches my wrist. Not grabbing, not pushing. Just a steady weight.
“We’re safe.”
I look up at him. His face is calm, steady. Unmoving in the way that only someone trained to take hits and keep going can be.
“I’m sorry I screamed,” I murmur.
He frowns. “Don’t be. You were scared. You had every right to be.”
“It was so loud.”
“And it worked. We came running.”
I press my lips together. His eyes stay on mine. “You didn’t just come,” I say. “You brought the whole damn team.”
His expression softens. “You’re one of us now. He doesn’t get to scare you anymore.”
I swallow. One of us.
He leans in and kisses my forehead. Just a small, careful kiss. But it cracks something open in me. Sends heat through my chest like sunlight after a storm. I close my eyes and lean into him for a beat longer than necessary.
Sophie calls around midday, just as I’m reorganising the spice rack. I’m not sure when I started nesting, but I’ve now alphabetised cumin and coriander like it’s the most urgent task on earth. Owen has three different kinds of paprika. I don’t even question it.
“Hey, you okay?” Sophie asks, voice soft but alert.
“I’m... managing.”
She’s quiet for a beat. “Murphy told me what happened. Said you screamed bloody murder.”
“Yeah.” I let out a rough sound. Not quite a laugh. “I did.”
“Good,” she says. “You did exactly what you needed to.”
I blink. “You think?”
“Hell yes. You yelled and they ran. That’s what a team’s for. That’s what family does.”
That word again. Family.
Sophie keeps going, voice sure and unwavering. “You don’t owe anyone quiet, Maya. You don’t have to shrink to keep the peace anymore.”
I sink onto the sofa, hand over my eyes. My throat tightens.
“You’ve got people now,” she says. “Not just Jacko. Me. Murph. Mia. Dylan. Ollie too, once he grows a brain.”
I snort, startled into laughter. “I’m not used to this.”
“To what?”
“To people showing up. Staying. Caring.”
“Well, buckle up,” she says. “Because you’ve got a ride-or-die girl gang now. Mia’s already planning a spa night, and I’m insisting on feeding you way too many cookies once this baby comes out.”
“I’d like that.”
“Good. Because we like you. I know it’s hard to trust that. But this, what you have with Jacko, it’s real. And it doesn’t come with strings. Just support.”
“I’m trying to believe that.”
“Try harder. You deserve it.”
After we hang up, I sit with her words like they’re a blanket I’m not sure I’m allowed to wrap around myself.
Then I wrap it anyway.
After the call, I find Lila sprawled in the reading nook Owen made from couch cushions and blankets. She’s attempting to read Room on the Broom to Dave the sourdough starter, who is tucked into a kitchen towel beside her.
“Bear says he’s fir-minty,” she whispers, very seriously. “So he can’t play right now.”
“Fermenting. Of course,” I say, biting back a smile.
I sit beside her, stroking her curls. Her body is loose, calm. No fear, no tightness in her voice. She’s safe, too.
I should feel trapped here. I don’t. I feel like I can breathe.
Later, she insists on helping Owen make banana muffins. She wears one of his oversized T-shirts tied at the waist like an apron, her curls escaping every hairband I own. She’s chaos incarnate; flour in her eyebrows, chocolate chips on the floor, batter smeared across her cheek.
Owen lets her pour the mix. Lets her choose how many chips go in each cup. Doesn’t blink when she accidentally cracks an eggshell straight into the bowl.
“Oops!” she says.
“No worries,” Owen replies, calmly fishing it out. “Eggshells add crunch.”
She giggles, and the sound breaks me a little bit. In the best way.
She calls this home now.
I think maybe I do too.
In the afternoon, Owen heads to the gym for a training session with the guys.
He kisses Lila on the top of the head and squeezes my hand before he leaves, “I’ll be two hours, max.
Call me if you need me.” I reach up on tiptoes and kiss him gently, promising I’ll let him know if I’m not okay.
I realise I don’t panic when the door shuts behind him.
I just roll up my sleeves and start baking.
I find myself in his kitchen, our kitchen, measuring out flour and sugar, hunting for vanilla in the cupboard I now instinctively reach for. I don’t even think about it. I just bake.
Lila helps, of course. She insists on cracking the eggs and somehow gets more yolk on the counter than in the bowl. I pretend to be outraged, and she cackles with glee.
“What are we making, Mummy?”
“Almond biscuits.”
“For Bear?”
“For all of us.”
She grins and starts singing something about almonds having legs. I don’t correct her. I let her stand on the stool beside me, covered in flour, safe and happy and home.
Owen gets back just as I’m sliding the tray out of the oven. His hoodie is damp at the collar, hair pushed back with sweat, and he looks at the kitchen like he’s walked into a dream.
“You baked,” he says, voice a little hoarse.
I shrug. “You have a functioning mixer. It would’ve been rude not to.”
He smiles, slow and deep, and takes a biscuit when I nod permission. He breaks it in half and gives the bigger piece to Lila, who beams up at him like he’s Santa and the Tooth Fairy rolled into one.
“Best biscuits in the world,” he declares after one bite.
“Obviously,” I say, trying to sound flippant, but my chest goes warm again.
He steps closer, brushing a crumb from my cheek with his thumb. His eyes linger on mine. “You look lighter.”
“I feel lighter.”
His gaze softens. “Good.”
And it is. It really, really is.
Later, when Lila’s in the bath and Owen’s scrolling on his phone beside me on the couch, I glance down at my hands. They’re still dusted with flour. My hair’s a mess. I’m wearing pyjama bottoms and his sweatshirt.
I don’t look like someone with a handle on anything.
But I feel grounded. Whole. Like all the parts of me, the mother, the baker, the woman who once ran from everything, have finally stopped fighting.
I lean my head on Owen’s shoulder. He doesn’t flinch. He just lifts his arm and wraps it around me.
And I let him.
Because maybe I’m done running, too.
When Lila’s finally asleep, after three books, two bathroom trips, and one demand for “the song with the big bear voice”, I find Owen in the kitchen, wiping down the counters.
I step in close. Place my hand on his chest.
“You keep showing up,” I say.
He looks down at me, cupping my face. His brows are low, his expression unreadable and full of everything.
“So do you.”
I lean up and kiss him. Slow. Certain. Not because I’m afraid, but because I’m not.
Because I want this. Him. Us.
The way he holds me like I’m not fragile, just precious.
Once we’re curled up on the couch in his hoodie, a half-eaten muffin in my lap and my feet tucked beneath his thighs, I realise something.
I’m not waiting for the next disaster. I’m not flinching at every sound.
I’m just here.
And for once, here feels like exactly where we belong.