Chapter 5
Chapter five
Amber
That tiny voice slices straight through whatever spell Nick and I were under.
My whole body jerks back, breath catching, heart hammering in my throat. Nick’s eyes fly open at the same moment mine do, both of us startled and frozen like we were caught doing something forbidden.
“Mommy?”
I scramble to my feet, every mom-instinct flaring at once. “Braxton?” I call out, already moving toward the hallway.
He’s standing in his doorway, too far back to see Nick. His soft curls are mashed to the side of his head, and he rubs his eyes with his fist. He’s wearing his dinosaur pajamas, the ones with the too-small cuffs because I haven’t had the heart to pack them away yet.
“Hey, baby,” I murmur, dropping to my knees in front of him. “What’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream?”
He latches onto me immediately, arms thrown around my neck like a little koala. His cheek presses to mine, warm and damp.
“Nightmare,” he sniffles.
My chest squeezes. I hold him tighter, tucking his hair away from his forehead. “I’m right here. You’re safe. Mommy’s got you.”
He nods against me, small and sleepy. His breathing evens a little.
“You want some water?” I whisper.
He shakes his head.
“You want me to tuck you back in?”
A tiny nod this time.
I stand, lifting him easily onto my hip. He nestles in, face pressed to my shoulder, his hand curled in the collar of my sweater, something he’s done since he was old enough to grab.
“I’m right here,” I keep whispering as I walk over to his bed. “You’re okay. I’ve got you, sweetheart.”
I smooth a hand down his back, slow and steady until his body softens, the last traces of fear melting out of him.
When I tuck him back into bed, he reaches for me again, whispering, “Stay?”
I lean down, kissing his forehead. “Just for a minute.”
I lie next to him, rubbing gentle circles between his shoulder blades, humming softly until his breath evens fully, his body relaxing into sleep. Only then do I slip out, carefully pulling the door almost, but not all the way, closed.
Nick’s still in the living room, bent over the bike. He looks up when I come in, wrench in hand, expression focused. “Almost done,” he says. “This is the last screw.”
My heart drops straight into my stomach.
I paste a smile on my face that feels like it’s made of cardboard. “That’s great,” I manage, bright and brittle.
It’s not great. It’s awful. A finished bike means there’s no more excuses. No reason for him to be kneeling on my rug, tools scattered, Christmas lights reflecting in his eyes. No more reason for him to be in this house, in this night, in this little fragile pause where I forgot I was alone.
When the bike is done, he gets to leave.
I don’t want Nick to leave.
I glance back down the hallway. Braxton’s door is a thin dark line in the wall, cracked the way he likes it. Almost closed, but not all the way. It hits me how much that feels like everything in my life right now. Never fully shut, never fully open, just stuck in the in-between.
When I look back, Nick’s standing. The wrench is back in the toolbox, his hands empty. He’s rubbing his palms together like he doesn’t know what to do with them. His gaze flicks toward the front door and away.
My chest squeezes.
Of course. I know exactly what that is. I’ve seen that look before, the subtle shift, the tiny step back, the way men suddenly remember they have somewhere else to be.
The idea of me as a mom was tolerable. Maybe even hot in some role-play fantasy kind of way. Soft kid, tough mama, whatever. But Braxton waking up? The tiny voice in the dark? The reality of bedtime and nightmares and sticky hands?
That’s different.
That’s real.
I come with complications. With a four-year-old’s schedules and needs. With custody calendars and school forms and sandwiches with the crust cut off. I am not just a woman. I am a package deal, and my baggage is heavy.
What man wants that?
What man wants to know he’ll always be competing for my attention, that I have priorities that outrank him, that he will never, ever be the center of my universe because someone else already is?
Tonight was…nice. Warm. Stupidly magical in a way I should’ve known better than to trust. An interlude. A glitch in the normal programming of my life.
He’ll go home to his quiet house, and I’ll turn off the tree, load the dishwasher, and crawl into my bed alone, just like I have for the past ten months. Just like I probably will until Braxton turns eighteen and doesn’t need me anymore and, by then, who will?
The thought is so bleak it feels almost funny. Almost.
“Well.” I stare down at my bare feet on the rug so he won’t see how I’m falling apart on the inside.
“I really appreciate you coming over and helping out.” My voice sounds wrong in my ears, much too cheerful, too practiced.
The voice I use with patients when I’m exhausted and with teachers when I’m ashamed.
“Don’t worry about that last bolt. I’ll figure it out. ”
“Oh.” His voice dips, uncertain. When I glance up, his brow is furrowed, his mouth pulled into a frown like he’s confused. “Are you sure? I don’t mind tracking it down—”
“It’s fine,” I cut in, because I can’t stand the kindness in his tone. It hurts more than indifference. “Really. I can do it on my own.”
I always do.
He hesitates, then nods once. “Sure. That’s…fine.”
It only takes a minute for him to finish packing his tools. Metal clinks softly; the box snaps shut. I stand there the whole time, hands hanging uselessly at my sides, eyes burning. Every sound that passes is a countdown. Each piece he tucks away is one less reason for him to stay.
Nick walks back over and stops in front of me. Close, but not touching.
“Amber…” he starts.
I wait. I should look at him, give him a chance to say whatever polite good-bye he’s reaching for, but I can’t. I can feel the words coming, the gentle letdown, the careful distance. I’ve heard so many variations of good-bye these last months that my mind is already predicting the words in my head.
Don’t bother, I think, swallowing hard. I’m used to people leaving.
Out loud, I say nothing.
Instead, I turn toward the door. My fingers fumble with the lock and then it’s open, and the December air slides in around us, cold and sharp, making me shiver.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, and my own voice startles me. It’s flat, wooden. No warmth. No hint that an hour ago I was laughing with him, crying into his shirt, almost kissing him on my living-room floor.
I don’t look at his face. I can’t. If he’s relieved, it’ll break me. If he looks hurt, it’ll break me worse.
I step aside, one hand braced on the door, holding it open for him the way you would for any neighbor. Just me, being a good little hostess, ushering him back out into the night.
Nick
I stand before her, uncertain. Torn between what I want to do and what I should do. She’s holding the door open, a clear sign she wants me gone. I get it. She doesn’t have time for me. I was just a nice one-night diversion, a guy with the right-sized tool, no pun intended this time.
I should go, leave her to her peace. God knows she has enough on her plate—her son, her home, her heart stitched together with quiet, stubborn strength. She doesn’t need a strange man lingering in her living room at two in the morning. She doesn’t need me complicating anything.
But that’s not what I want.
Because when Braxton woke up, when I heard that small, scared voice call Mommy from the dark, I didn’t think, Oh, right, she’s a mom.
I thought, My God, she’s incredible. I overheard her speak to him and saw how kind and patient she was with her little boy.
It made something break open in my chest. A million feelings poured out for her.
Admiration for being such a good mom. Yearning to share a life like that, full of children, a home, a future where no one leaves, even when things get hard.
Now she’s holding the door open, waiting for me to go.
But every part of me wants to stay.
I want to tell her she has no idea what she does to me.
How I haven’t stopped thinking about the curve of her smile, the tremble of her breath, the courage it took to cry in my arms. I also haven’t stopped thinking about how she sounded when she came and how much that turned me on, even though I should never have seen it.
Shame colors that memory, but also a desperate kind of yearning.
I want this woman.
Badly.
I respect her, though. Too much to push it. She’s setting a boundary, and I need to honor that, especially since I didn’t respect her privacy earlier.
I swallow hard, forcing the lump in my throat down where she won’t see it. My voice comes out low when I try to speak, thick with everything I’m not going to admit.
“Good night, Amber.”
Then I wait, just a beat, hoping she’ll stop me.
Hoping she wants me the way I want her.
She stays silent, her eyes on the floor.
With an ache in my chest, I walk past her and say, “Good-bye.”