Chapter 3 #2
I changed into an old t-shirt, my mind too tired to properly spiral into anxiety. The image of him, head bent over the guitar in that pool of lamplight, played on a loop behind my eyelids.
He wasn’t keeping score.
The thought was a lifeline.
Just be here.
I crawled into the lower bunk, the sheets cool and unfamiliar. Exhaustion, deep and bone-heavy, washed over me immediately, muting the stress, the strangeness, the sheer newness of everything.
I was married.
To a male who gave without reservation, and who would keep us safe.
The last coherent thought I had was a snippet of that wandering melody, a quiet comfort in the dark. Then I was gone, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep as if someone had finally switched off the world.
That weekend was less awkward than you might have thought, considering my freak-out, and I gave all credit to Jocelyn.
I’m not sure where she’d disappeared to during the wedding—although I did notice her blush whenever Brakkor’s name came up, and I promised myself I’d ask about that just as soon as I got over my own drama—but that weekend she showed up to help us settle in.
Korrad and Jay took all of us on a tour of the island, and it was easier with her there…like I could pretend we were just all friends visiting together and not my new husband trying to make me comfortable in my new home.
Saturday night I made pizza for dinner, and seeing Jay’s eyes light up at my homemade crust made me smile. Milo came into the kitchen, pulling Korrad by the hand. “Come on, Mr. Korrad! You gotta try my mom’s pizza, it’s the best!”
To hide my embarrassment, I scolded, “Have to, Milo, not gotta.”
Korrad was grinning when he met my eyes, and I had the thought he was laughing at my peculiarities. Still, seeing him helping himself to his eighth slice of pizza—thank goodness I’d remembered to take into account orcish metabolism when I made a double batch of dough!—made me feel warm all over.
He’d said we weren’t keeping score, but…I still needed to feel like I was contributing.
Which is why I sat down Monday evening and made a shopping list, and when he came home, went over it with him. Honestly, he looked a little shocked.
“Kesha, you don’t have to do all this. I know you have your own work—”
“I thought maybe we could split cooking responsibilities?”
His slow grin made me feel warm inside.
That weekend bled into the next, and the next, and suddenly, weeks had evaporated in a haze of unpacking, grocery lists, and the familiar, frantic rhythm of my freelance work.
Korrad, being the scary-observant, mind-bogglingly thoughtful male he was, noticed my habit of migrating around the house with my laptop, searching for a quiet spot that wasn’t our bedroom (where a ten-year-old might be napping or loudly explaining Minecraft mechanics to his new brother).
One Tuesday, I came home from a grocery run to find the music room… altered.
He’d pushed the drum kit and a keyboard into a more compact formation, and in the newly freed corner by the window—with its killer view of the oak tree and the distant cliffs—sat a desk.
It wasn’t new; it was solid oak, scarred and beautiful, with a green leather inlay on the top and drawers that slid out with a satisfying, heavy thunk.
“Second Time’s A Charm is the thrift store downtown,” he’d said, hovering in the doorway while I ran my fingers over the wood grain. “Thought you might like a proper place to work. Unless you prefer the nomadic lifestyle.”
“I prefer not having pizza sauce on my editorial notes,” I’d replied, my throat suspiciously tight. “This is…” I swallowed. Everything I’d ever dreamed of. “A proper desk.”
“For a proper editor.”
It was the gentleness in his tone which drew my attention, and his smile was soft.
So was mine, and I felt my cheeks heating. “Thank you, Korrad. It’s…perfect.”
Yet another point in the Korrad ledger I wasn’t supposed to be keeping.
So that became my command center. I’d sit there, glaring at manuscripts where characters’ eyes kept changing colors or the family dog disappeared by chapter three, or I’d migrate to the beaten-up armchair, laptop on my thighs, so I could watch the boys through the window.
And oh, the boys.
If I’d been worried about Milo adjusting, I shouldn’t have bothered.
He took to life on Eastshore like a duck to… well, water. An island was apt, I guess. He was thriving. It was almost unnerving.
The meltdowns I’d braced for, the rigidity, the anxiety in new situations… it all just… didn’t happen. He was, for the first time in his life, consistently on his best behavior. It was like he’d decided this was a playdate at the coolest friend’s house ever, and he couldn’t screw it up.
I kept waiting for him to finally realize this wasn’t temporary, and that he was allowed to feel his Big Feelings, but I was grateful for the reprieve.
He and Jay were a unit. Milo’s computer was now permanently stationed in Jay’s room, and the sound of their combined laughter and strategic yelling—”Shoot that creeper before he explodes!”—was the soundtrack of hot summer afternoons.
But they also spent hours outside during the cool mornings, disappearing into the woods behind the house, heading towards the cliffs carrying tools and boards like small, determined architects.
They’d come back dusty, with leaves in their hair, talking in hushed, excited tones about “staircases” and “the procurement of reclaimed lumber.”
“What are you building out there?” I’d ask, wiping dirt from Milo’s cheek.
“A fort,” they’d say in unison, then share a look that clearly meant She doesn’t need the details.
“A secret fort,” Jay would usually add, with a grin that was all Korrad.
The biggest surprise, though, was Korrad and Milo. I’d nearly had a coronary when Korrad casually asked my son if he wanted to try the drums. Visions of cacophonous, ear-splitting banging flashed before my eyes—followed by visions of my patient new husband developing a permanent eye twitch.
But Korrad was… unflappable.
He showed Milo how to hold the sticks, demonstrated a simple rock beat, and then just… let him try. When the first attempt sounded like a bag of cats falling down a metal staircase, Korrad just nodded. “Close. Watch my feet.”
He was preternaturally calm, his instructions clear and patient, exactly the kind of parenting Milo needed. Exactly the kind of parenting I kept failing at.
Within a few days, Milo could reliably keep a four-four beat. Within a week, even I could recognize his improvement. The fact that the drum kit had some fancy mute pads—a gift from the gods, or more likely, a considerate orc—meant the rest of us could still hear ourselves think.
Who would have thought that my kid had musical ability? Not me—and that was another point for Korrad.
Watching them, my big, gentle husband and my focused, earnest son, heads bent together over the snare drum, did something funny to my insides. It felt suspiciously like hope, but stickier.
Yearning?
This male was everything I could have dreamed of when I was planning my wedding with my Barbie dolls…big, handsome enough to make my toes curl, sexy in his running shorts or his mud-splattered jeans from the construction sites, and unbelievably kind.
Was it any wonder I was falling for him, slowly but surely? Watching him with my son, watching him laugh when I corrected Jay’s grammar and the kid pushed back? Of course my heart was getting involved…
And whenever I thought the word “love” in conjunction with my husband, I immediately felt guilty about it. Because Sharra had loved him first—she’d been the one chosen by whatever cosmic force decided these things, and had died as his Mate. He still loved her.
And he didn’t want anything from me. In fact, he kept telling me that he wasn’t keeping score. He liked my cooking and thanked me for driving Jay to his hockey team wrap-up party on the mainland, but I knew without asking that it wasn’t enough.
Korrad had spent the last two months thinking of this marriage as just a convenient arrangement, and I’d look at him caring for my son and melt a little in desperation. I wanted more—no, I wanted to give him more.
But the best I could hope for was to make his life a little easier, since that’s all he wanted from me.
Luckily, it wasn’t too difficult.
I fell back into my easy routine of edits for five-ish hours a day, then doing household tasks or ferrying the boys to wherever they needed. To my surprise, Jay and I had found some unexpected connections, the first of which was hockey.
It was my one holdover from a life before Texas, before single motherhood, when I’d played on the frozen ponds of Massachusetts. Now, I got my fix through the Orc Hockey League highlight reels Jay found online.
“You like this?” he’d asked one afternoon, peering over my shoulder at my laptop screen where a 300-pound orc defenseman was legally murdering a forward against the boards.
“Buddy, I breathe this,” I’d said. “The speed, the strategy, the sheer, beautiful violence of it all.”
He’d looked at me with newfound respect. “It was big back home, but no one here on Eastshore gets it.”
I smiled. “I get it. Want to scrimmage sometime? I’ll find a pair of rollerblades.”
His eyes had lit up, and I felt something in my chest loosen.
So, twice in those first few weeks, I loaded the boys into the car and drove to the mainland to the big, impersonal—but cheap—grocery store, and then to the rink where Jay had played during the season.
The first time, Jay glided onto the ice like he was born to it, all effortless power. Milo, however, clung to the wall with the desperation of a dude who’d just realized the floor was made of physics.
“Come on, T’mak,” Jay said, skating backwards in front of him. “It’s easy. Just push.”
“The only thing I’m pushing is my luck,” Milo grumbled, but he let go of the wall.