Chapter 15 Perry
PERRY
I almost tell him three times before breakfast.
The first time is when he says he likes his eggs scrambled soft, not dry. He’s standing at my stove like he’s always belonged there, sleeves pushed up, serious about something as simple as heat control.
“You’re very particular,” I tease, leaning against the counter with my coffee.
“Details matter.”
They do. That’s the problem. Because the detail I’m holding back is not small. It’s two boys who look a little too much like him when they squint.
“Damian—” I start.
He looks up immediately. “Yes?”
I lose my nerve. “Nothing. I was going to say you cook like a control freak.”
“That’s accurate.” He plates the eggs. Adds toast. Slides a dish toward me. The domestic ease of it nearly knocks the breath out of me.
In all my dating years, I’ve lived with two men. But I always kept an apartment of my own. Just in case. I was never invested, and I had an out anytime I needed it. In the few months that I lived with each of them, neither of them ever made me eggs.
Cameron took my plate to the kitchen after dinner once, but that was a prelude to something more. It always was with him. God forbid I ever asked him for a foot rub. The one time I did, I woke up in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform the next morning.
The other guy I lived with, Rashid, brought me a glass of water once, and I nearly passed out from the thoughtfulness of it.
Or that might have been from the dehydration.
Hard to know. We’d gone hiking, and I didn’t realize we’d be out that long, so I hadn’t bothered to bring water.
When we got home, I was so parched that I was sore all over.
He brought me water, and I pathetically swooned.
It’s one thing to have staff take care of me. I’ve had plenty of eggs made by cooks, housekeepers, and the like. Drivers who took me shopping. Pharmacists who handled my prescriptions because my boyfriend told them to. Their employers never did anything for me themselves.
One night with Damian, and he’s making me coffee and breakfast. And the breakfast is good. What the hell?
We sit at the tiny table by the window. Morning light spills across the floor. It feels absurdly normal. Like this is what we’ve always done. He reaches across the table, brushing his thumb lightly over my knuckles. It’s not sexual. It’s grounding.
And it makes the guilt twist harder.
“I liked waking up next to you,” he says.
My stomach dances, and my heart is at war with my head.
I take a long glug of my coffee. “I slept well next to you. I don’t normally…
well, I don’t know that I’ve ever invited a guy to stay over before.
It’s happened; some guys don’t know when to leave, and sometimes, I’m too tired to say something about them leaving…
but I can’t remember the last time I’ve asked for it. ”
He smiles at that, then returns to his eggs. He tells me about a rafting trip from years ago, about nearly flipping the boat because he misjudged the current. “You can’t hesitate. If you do, the river punishes you.”
I’m hesitating, and I know I’m going to get punished for it. But I can’t face it yet.
He checks his watch halfway through his third cup of coffee. “I need to go home and change,” he says reluctantly. “Work.”
Right. Hospital. Responsibility. Reality.
This is not the moment. You don’t drop a life-altering revelation on someone when they’re calculating commute time. So, I swallow it down again. “Text me later?”
“I will.”
He stands, and the air shifts immediately. He lingers by the door. That’s what undoes me. He doesn’t rush out like someone eager to get back to his life. He stands there with his hand on the doorknob like he’s trying to convince himself to use it.
“You have to go.” I get up and meet him by the door.
“I’m aware.”
I can’t help smiling at him. “You’re a doctor. People depend on you for doctoring.”
“Yes.”
“Patients.”
“I know.” He exhales slowly and leans his forehead briefly against the doorframe like it personally offended him. “If I don’t say it out loud, I might not leave, so maybe if I don’t say it at all—”
I laugh before I can stop myself. “That’s not how work works.”
“It is for me.” There’s something deeply endearing about the way he’s arguing with himself. Like he’s reminding his body that it belongs elsewhere for the next twelve hours.
He steps closer instead of farther away. His hands settle at my waist. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re considering something.”
But I am. I am considering blowing up both of our lives in this doorway.
Instead, I rise onto my toes and kiss him. His hand slides up my back, fingers threading into my hair. He makes a low sound against my mouth that sends heat straight down my spine.
I want him back in my bed. I want to forget the hospital. Jason. The world. Everything except for this.
He pulls back first. That’s how I know he’s the disciplined one. “I have to go,” he says again, quieter now.
I nod.
He takes one last long look at me, like he’s memorizing me.
Every sweet look, every touch, every kiss, the guilt grows. For a split second, I almost say it. Damian, wait.
But he’s already stepping outside, and I let him go. The door closes. The quiet afterward is violent. It’s so silent that it hurts. I stand there for a full ten seconds, staring at the empty doorway like he might walk back through it and demand a do-over.
He won’t. He has a shift. He has patients. He has a life that does not revolve around my inability to form a complete sentence when it matters.
I press my back against the door and slide down slowly until I’m sitting on the floor. I should have told him.
You had the moment. Coffee. Sunlight. Eggs. Instead, you kissed him.
I press my palms against my eyes. “Oh, shut up.” I push up and walk into the living room. The bassinets stare back at me like silent witnesses.
They’re painfully empty. I grab my phone. You can bring the boys home anytime.
Now good?
Yes, please.
Thankfully, Olivia lives five minutes away, so I don’t have to wait long. “Miss me?” Olivia asks as she steps inside.
“Terribly.”
She sets the car seats down and studies my face. “You didn’t sleep.”
“I did. Some.”
“Liar.”
I ignore that and scoop Walker up, inhaling the warm, powdery scent of him like it’s oxygen. Nicholas stirs in his seat, stretching tiny fingers in slow motion.
Olivia is persistent. “Well?”
“He left.”
“Emotionally or physically?”
“Physically.”
She gives me expectant eyes. “And?”
“I didn’t tell him.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“I was going to,” I rush. “I swear I was going to. He was right there. He was holding my waist. And I almost did it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“Why?”
Because it would have shattered the moment, and I wanted one morning that didn’t involve consequences.
“Because he had to go to work,” I say instead. “This isn’t a drop-it-on-the-way-out-the-door kind of revelation.”
She sighs softly. “Perry…you had all of last night and this morning to tell him.”
“I know. I know. I’m going to tell him. I just—I need the right moment.”
“The right moment for something like this doesn’t exist.”
I look toward the bassinets again. My boys fuss and drool and make tiny fists, and all I can see is Damian when I watch them. How much he’d love them. How much they look like him.
“I’ll make the right moment.” There’s conviction in my voice now. It surprises even me. I have no idea how to do that. But it sounded good in my head.
Olivia studies me while I settle Walker against my shoulder and prepare his bottle. “Have you considered,” she says slowly, “that this might be exactly what Damian wants?”
I frown. “Excuse me?”
“He’s middle-aged. His son turned out…complicated.”
“That’s polite.”
“Men like that sometimes want a second chance at family. Damian seems like a good guy from everything you’ve said. He might be the rare man who deserves a second chance.”
Second chance.
I glance down at Nicholas, who’s blinking awake, his eyes unfocused and enormous while I feed his brother.
“You think he’d want this? He knows all the responsibilities that come with being a parent.
He’s gone through them. It wouldn’t be like dating a guy who doesn’t know what’s involved.
If he wants a second chance at raising kids…
God, Liv, that’d be it. No more dating anyone else for either of us. No freedom. Total commitment.”
“You’re smiling when you said all of that. Are you aware?”
“Shut up.”
“I think,” Olivia says carefully, “that a man who feeds a stray dog soup might not run from a second fatherhood.”
I swallow. That image hits too hard.
Damian in this apartment. Holding one of them. Choosing to stay with us. Choosing this life. Choosing me.
That’s just…terrifying. No matter how many butterflies are dipping around my stomach, or how warm my chest feels at the thought of it. We basically just met. How could I possibly want him in my life forever?
Why doesn’t that word scare me right now? The hell is that about? It always used to. The guys before Damian and the word “forever” did not mix. But he makes forever not sound like hell.
It might even sound good.
“Or,” Olivia adds gently, “he might lose his mind, freak out, dump you, and try to run to Belize. You won’t know until you tell him.”
“Gee, thanks for that thought.” I sit on the couch, one twin in each arm now, feeling the weight of them. The absolute, irreversible weight.
She shrugs and pours herself some coffee. “Between the two of us, you’ve always been the brave one. It’s weird to see you be so cautious, Perry.”
“I have more than me to think about now, Liv.”
She nods and sits next to me. “And you’ve been doing a hell of a job, thinking about the boys. But this is for them too.”
“That’s the worst part of all of it.”
“What’s that?”
“You know my relationship with my father. My nonexistent relationship with that sperm donor, I mean.” I sigh. “But Damian’s not like my dad. He’s a good man who wishes he could have done better with his first son.”
“He told you that?”
I nod. “It’s so weird to be on this side of parenthood.
I keep thinking about my boys’ relationship with their dad, and how they don’t have one yet.
It’s okay for now, but in a few months? A few years?
They’re going to figure out they’re missing something.
They’re owed that, aren’t they? Or at least, the chance of a relationship with him? ”
She slowly nods.
“I will tell him,” I say quietly.
“When?”
“When it’s right.”
She raises a brow.
“When I’m brave enough,” I amend.
Olivia softens. “You’re already brave. You always have been. Remember?” The cheeky brat smiles at her self-referential remark.
But I don’t feel brave. I’m balancing a glass sculpture on a tightrope over gasoline while carrying a lit match.
I look at Nicholas. At Walker. At the life I built in one reckless night and carried for nine months and delivered under fluorescent lights.
I can’t keep this secret forever. I won’t. I just need the right moment.
I kiss both their foreheads. “I’m going to tell him.”
If that means I lose Damian, but my sons gain a father, then that will be worth it.