4. Sophie
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Sophie
I don’t sleep.
Every time I shut my eyes, I see Caleb’s hand rising. I hear his voice - you’re nothing, Sophie, you’ve always been nothing. I feel his grip on my arm, bruising and possessive, like I’m property he’s reclaiming rather than a person he once loved.
Did he ever love me? Or was I just another thing he wanted to own?
Anna cries for most of the night. She’s not used to this place, these sounds, this strange crib that Alexa dug out of storage from when her niece visited last year. I hold her and rock her and sing to her until my voice gives out, and still she cries, reaching for something I can’t give her.
By morning, I’m a zombie. Hollow-eyed and heavy-limbed and running on nothing but caffeine and maternal instinct.
“You look like hell,” Alexa says when I shuffle into the kitchen.
“Thanks.” I pour myself another cup of coffee. “Really feeling the support.”
“I support you by being honest.” She’s already dressed for work, makeup perfect, not a hair out of place. I hate her a little bit. “I have to go in for a few hours, but I’ll be back by lunch. Will you be okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Will you, though? Because I can call in sick. I’ll say I have diarrhea. Nobody asks follow-up questions about diarrhea.”
“I’ll be fine,” I repeat, and this time I try to mean it. “Go to work. Anna and I will… figure out our lives.”
Alexa hesitates, clearly unconvinced, but eventually she grabs her purse and heads for the door. “Call me if you need anything. I mean it, Soph. Anything.”
“I will.”
Then she’s gone, and it’s just me and Anna and the wreckage of my marriage.
I spend the morning trying to make a list. Things I need to do. Get a lawyer. Find a job. Figure out custody arrangements. Stop crying every time I look at my phone and see no messages from my husband, who should be begging for my forgiveness but instead is probably already back in Andrea’s bed.
Anna won’t stop fussing. I’ve changed her, fed her, burped her, sung to her, bounced her, walked her around the apartment in endless loops. Nothing works. She just keeps making this sad, hiccupping cry that breaks my heart into smaller and smaller pieces.
“I know, baby,” I murmur, holding her against my shoulder. “I know you’re confused. I’m confused too.”
She wails louder.
A knock on the door makes me jump so hard that Anna startles and screams. My heart hammers against my ribs as I approach, memories of last night flooding back. Caleb’s fury. His raised hand. The bruise on my arm that’s turned a sickening purple overnight.
I peer through the peephole.
It’s not Caleb.
It’s the stranger. The downstairs neighbor. The man who stopped my husband from hitting me.
He’s holding two bags - one that looks like groceries, one that looks like baby supplies - and his expression is somewhere between annoyed and concerned, like he can’t decide which emotion to commit to.
I open the door a crack. “Hi.”
“You look like shit.”
I blink at him. “Wow. Everyone’s really going for honesty today.”
His jaw tightens, and I realize he didn’t mean to say that. “I didn’t think you’d have the mental capacity to go shopping today. You might run out of supplies.”
It takes me a moment to process what he’s saying. I look at the bags, then at him, then at the bags again. “You… brought me groceries?”
“And formula. And diapers.” He shoves the bags toward me, and I have to scramble to catch them. “The organic kind. I don’t know if you’re one of those organic-only parents, but it seemed safer.”
“I…” I don’t know what to say. This man - this complete stranger - went shopping for me and my baby. While I was up all night crying, while I was drowning in fear and exhaustion, he was thinking about whether I had enough diapers. “Thank you. You really didn’t have to.”
“I know.”
Anna lets out another wail, and his eyes flick to her. Something shifts in his expression. Something that almost looks like recognition, though I don’t know what he could be recognizing.
“She won’t stop crying,” I hear myself say, and God, I sound pathetic. “All night. All morning. I’ve tried everything.”
“Babies do that.”
“Helpful.”
His mouth twitches. It’s not quite a smile, but it’s close. “Let me see her.”
“What?”
“The baby.” He gestures impatiently. “Let me hold her.”
I should say no. I should close the door and thank him for the groceries and deal with my screaming daughter on my own. I don’t know this man. I don’t know anything about him except that he lives downstairs and apparently has very strong opinions about organic baby formula.
But I’m exhausted. And desperate. And something about the way he’s looking at Anna - patient, steady, completely unrattled by her screaming - makes me think maybe he knows what he’s doing.
I hand her over.
The moment she’s in his arms, she stops crying.
I drop my coffee cup.
It shatters against the floor, liquid splashing everywhere, and I’m standing there with my mouth open like an idiot while this stranger holds my daughter like it’s the most natural thing in the world and she’s just…
quiet. Content. Making soft cooing sounds like she wasn’t just screaming bloody murder for the last fourteen hours.
“What the hell,” I breathe.
He looks up at me, and there’s something in his eyes. Surprise, maybe. Or satisfaction. “She was just tired.”
“She’s been tired all night. She wouldn’t sleep.”
“Maybe she didn’t like her crib.”
“Or maybe you’re some kind of baby whisperer.”
That almost-smile again. “Maybe.”
Alexa’s going to lose her mind when she hears about this.
I crouch down to clean up the broken cup, wincing as my arm protests. The bruise has stiffened overnight, and every movement sends a pulse of pain through my shoulder.
“Leave it.”
I look up. He’s watching me with those dark, sharp eyes, and I feel suddenly, intensely aware of how I must look. No makeup. Ratty T-shirt. Hair that hasn’t seen a brush in two days. The bruise on my arm, visible where my sleeve has ridden up.
His gaze lingers on the bruise. His jaw tightens.
“I’ll clean it up,” I say, reaching for the broken pieces.
“You’ll cut yourself.” He shifts Anna to one arm - she doesn’t protest, just snuggles against his chest like she belongs there - and uses the other to gesture at the mess. “Get a broom.”
“Are you always this bossy?”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
We stare at each other for a moment, and something strange passes between us. Not hostility, exactly. More like… recognition. Like two people who understand what it means to push through pain rather than admit weakness.
I get the broom.
By the time I’ve cleaned up the mess, he’s somehow made himself comfortable on Alexa’s couch, Anna still nestled against his chest. She looks so small against him. So peaceful. Her little fist is wrapped around his finger, and she’s making soft, sleepy sounds.
“She’s never done that with anyone else,” I say, sinking onto the opposite end of the couch. “Even with me, sometimes she fights it. But with you…”
“Maybe I’m just boring enough to put her to sleep.”
“I doubt that.”
The words slip out before I can stop them, and heat floods my cheeks. What am I doing? Flirting? My marriage just ended. I punched the other woman less than twenty-four hours ago. This is not the time to be noticing how good this man looks holding my daughter.
And he does look good. Annoyingly good. The way his arms flex as he adjusts Anna’s position. The concentration on his face as he watches her drift off. The gentleness that seems so at odds with his sharp edges and gruff demeanor.
Stop, I tell myself firmly. Just stop.
“I should make you coffee,” I say, standing abruptly. “As a thank you. For the groceries. And for last night.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.” I walk to the kitchen, grateful for the distance. “But you saved me from getting hit by my husband, and then you brought me organic diapers, so the least I can do is caffeinate you.”
I hear him move behind me, the soft sound of him settling Anna more comfortably. “He’s done this before?”
I fumble the coffee filter. “What?”
“The husband. Has he hit you before?”
“No.” The word comes out too fast, too defensive. I force myself to slow down, to be honest. “No. Last night was the first time he ever… but I’ve seen him angry before. I just didn’t realize…”
I trail off. Didn’t realize what? That the man I married was capable of violence? That the charm was a mask? That I’d been living with a monster and calling it love?
“He’s my ex-husband,” I say quietly. “Or he will be, as soon as I can find a lawyer.”
“Good.”
I look back at him. He’s watching me with that intense gaze, and I feel it everywhere - on my skin, in my chest, at the base of my spine. It’s unsettling. It’s also something else. Something I don’t want to name.
“Coffee’s almost ready,” I say, turning back to the machine. “How do you take it?”
“Black.”
“Of course you do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” I pull two mugs from the cabinet, pour the coffee, bring his over. Our fingers brush when he takes it, and I feel the contact like a spark, there and gone before I can process it. “You just seem like a black coffee kind of guy.”
“And what kind of guy is that?”
“The kind who thinks sugar is a sign of weakness.”
That almost-smile is back. It transforms his face, softens the sharp edges, makes him look almost approachable. “Sugar is fine. I just don’t need it.”
“Spoken like a true coffee purist.”
We sit in silence for a moment, drinking our respective coffees, Anna sleeping peacefully between us. It should be awkward. It’s not. There’s something comfortable about this stranger’s presence, something that makes my constant anxiety settle into something almost like calm.
“I don’t even know your name,” I realize aloud.
“Dominic.” He doesn’t offer a last name, and I don’t ask. “Dominic Rath.”
“Sophie Brennan.” I pause. “Or maybe just Sophie, soon. I’m not sure if I want to keep his name.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“Oh?” I raise an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”
“Because it belongs to him.” Dominic’s eyes meet mine, and there’s something burning there, something I can’t read. “And you don’t.”
My breath catches.
We stare at each other, the moment stretching taut as a wire, and I’m suddenly very aware of how close we are. How warm his presence is. How my heart has started beating faster, and not from fear this time.
Anna makes a soft sound, and the spell breaks.
Dominic looks away first, shifting the baby in his arms, and I take a shaky sip of my coffee and try to remember how to think.
“I should go,” he says, starting to hand Anna back. “I’ve got things to do.”
“Wait.” The word escapes before I can stop it. He pauses, eyebrows raised. “I just… thank you. For last night. For this morning. For not being weird about a stranger crying on you.”
“You didn’t cry on me.”
“Almost.” I take Anna, careful not to wake her. Our hands brush again, and this time I know I don’t imagine the way his breath hitches. “I appreciate it. More than I can say.”
He stands, and I stand too, and we’re close. Too close. I can smell him - cedar and something warm, something that makes me want to lean in and inhale deeper.
I don’t. I’m not that far gone.
But it’s close.
“If you need anything,” he says, and his voice has gone rough again. “I’m downstairs. Apartment 4B.”
“I’ll remember.”
He nods once, sharp, and heads for the door. I watch him go, watching the way he moves - controlled, purposeful, like every step is calculated.
“Dominic?”
He stops, hand on the doorknob.
“Thank you,” I say again, and I put everything into the words. Every ounce of gratitude, every shred of relief, every complicated emotion I can’t name. “Really.”
He looks back at me, and for one heart-stopping moment, his expression softens. It’s barely there - a flicker, a glimpse of something vulnerable beneath all those walls - but it makes my chest ache.
“You’re welcome, Sophie.”
Then he’s gone.
I stand there holding my sleeping daughter, staring at the closed door, trying to convince myself that the flutter in my stomach is just exhaustion.
It doesn’t work.
When Alexa gets home an hour later, I tell her everything. The groceries. The baby whispering. The almost-smile and the black coffee and the way he looked at me like I was something worth looking at.
She grins like a cat that’s found the cream. “So… the hot neighbor, huh?”
“Shut up.”
“The hot, mysterious, grocery-buying, baby-calming neighbor who appeared like a dark knight to save you from your evil husband.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It sounds exactly like that.” She plops down beside me and steals my coffee. “Sophie, you’re allowed to be attracted to someone. Your marriage is over.”
“My marriage ended yesterday.”
“And?”
“And I’m not ready to think about anyone else. I need to focus on Anna. On getting a job. On not falling apart every time I think about the last three years of my life.”
Alexa sighs, but she doesn’t push. “Fine. But I’m just saying - if the universe is going to drop a tall, dark, handsome savior in your path, maybe don’t ignore it entirely.”
“I’m not ignoring anything.” I take my coffee back. “I’m being rational.”
“Boring. You’re being boring.”
“Responsible.”
“Same thing.”
I throw a pillow at her, and she dodges it, laughing, and for a moment everything feels almost normal. Almost okay.
But that night, when I’m lying in the dark with Anna finally sleeping beside me, I find my thoughts drifting to apartment 4B. To dark eyes and strong hands and a voice like gravel.
Dominic, I think, and the name feels like a secret on my tongue.
I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything.
I almost believe it.