Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mara
“Sometimes I wonder if I should prepare snacks for these late nights,” I say, sipping my tea and trying not to look like a woman hanging on by three frayed nerves and a hope.
Alec is opening the next box with absurd gentleness—as if it contains a newborn, not vinyl. He uses the tips of his fingers, careful not to scratch the sleeves, his focus narrowing in like it’s sacred work. I swear he’d be less cautious with an actual baby.
Not that I should be imagining him with a baby.
And yet—I do.
That strong frame—all shoulders and quiet intensity—cradling something impossibly small in those broad hands.
A baby tucked against his chest, one of those soft blankets draped over his arm, his voice low as he murmurs nonsense just to keep the quiet.
A laugh—rare, unguarded—slipping from his mouth as he rocks a tiny newborn without even realizing he’s doing it.
It hits me low. Too low.
Because it’s not just sweet.
It’s sexy. Ovary-exploding, ruin-me-with-your-dad-energy sexy.
Put that baby in me now. Seriously. Right now.
The contrast gets to me—the raw masculinity in his frame paired with the unexpected tenderness in the way he handles anything delicate. It makes me press my thighs together, just a little, just enough to ground the thought before it spins out into places I shouldn’t go.
But a baby—and making it—would involve his hands on my hips, his mouth on mine, slow kisses that turn heated and messy, breath tangled between us.
It would be his body moving over mine, inside mine, his voice low and wrecked in my ear as he tells me to take it.
To open for him. To let him fill me up deep, so deep and hard.
Stop, I order myself before I start growling with need.
But where did that come from?
Oh, I know exactly where.
From Mila—my darling, brilliant, unfiltered child—who earlier announced that her new friend Tonya has a baby sister and she would like one too.
She said it so casually, like she was requesting a snack. A very loud snack. One that cries at ungodly hours and ruins your boobs and your sleep and your spine. And then—because fate clearly has a twisted sense of humor—she added:
“Maybe you should talk to Alec about it. I think he’d be a great father.”
For a second, I genuinely considered saying, What the actual fuck, Mila?
But then my parenting reflex kicked in—some long-buried rule from a dusty manual about not swearing at your child, even when they casually hand you a mental breakdown before breakfast.
So I smiled.
Smiled like she hadn’t just lobbed a nuclear-level fantasy straight into my brain and strutted off with a juice box like it was nothing.
And now that thought is stuck. Wedged deep and stubborn. Lodged somewhere between curiosity and a deep, aching want that makes it hard to stay still.
Because the thing is . . . I do think he’d be a good father.
I think he’s the man who doesn’t say much but always shows up, quietly dependable in a way that sneaks up on you. He knows how to hold still when everything else falls apart, like he’s been through worse and learned how to stay steady. His touch would speak louder than any promise.
And then—because my brain truly is my worst enemy—it drags me straight into the fantasy I’ve been trying to ignore.
Alec kissing me, hard and hungry, like he needs it.
Like I’m the only thing that could possibly quiet whatever’s burning in him.
He’s naked—all muscle and heat—pressing me into the mattress with his cock thick and hard, sliding into me in deep, slow thrusts that have nothing to do with patience and everything to do with ownership.
The stretch. The ache. The heat that builds between us until I’m unraveling under him.
I know he’d take his time. Learn every sound I make. Every shift in breath. Every desperate whisper of more. All out of reverence. Like my pussy was a secret only he was meant to discover.
“Are you okay?” Alec asks, glancing over with that quiet, grounding presence he has when he’s paying more attention than I realize.
I’m not.
I’m absolutely not.
My thoughts are naked, flushed, and tangled in bedsheets with his name written all over them.
Heat climbs up my neck like it has something to prove, and I force a smile that feels tight around the edges. My pulse is in the wrong place—low, throbbing, far too aware of how long it’s been since someone’s touched me like they meant it.
Since someone looked at me like Alec does when he thinks I’m not watching.
Since I remembered what it’s like to want.
My body hasn’t forgotten. It’s just been patient.
Too patient.
It was one of the things Sam and I fought about when he left that day.
He was always busy. Always exhausted. Always somewhere else mentally.
And when I suggested—just once, in frustration—that maybe he was getting it somewhere else .
. . he grabbed his keys, said he “needed air,” and never came back.
Never.
I swallow the memory down before it swallows me.
“You know what we need?” Alec asks, yanking me out of my spiral.
My first thought—completely involuntary—is a condom.
But I say, “Popcorn?” because this is who I am now: a mother, a woman with a barely functioning filter, and a full-time resident of What-the-Hell-Is-Wrong-With-Me Avenue. “But it has to be with plenty of popcorn and melted chocolate.”
He scoffs. “You sound like your child during our time in the video store. She wasn’t happy that I make popcorn on the stove.”
“She thinks microwave popcorn is the pinnacle of modern innovation,” I say. “She’d never had it before until last Monday. It was a spiritual experience.”
“Not the point,” he mutters, clearly insulted. Technology seems to offend him personally. “I was going to say music.”
“Music is good,” I agree quickly, grateful for the shift. Grateful to not be talking about snacks. Or sex. Or how close I am to crawling into his lap like a woman unhinged.
He pulls out a cassette from the inside pocket of his jacket like he’s smuggling state secrets.
My eyebrows rise. “Do you . . . collect those?”
Alec shrugs in that casual, grump-with-a-heart way he always does—like he’s unaware it makes my stomach do a small, embarrassing flip. “I enjoy making them.”
He disappears inside, and for a second, I have to force myself not to stare at his back. Or his ass. Or imagine what it would be like if he came back out here and pressed me into the wall and—
Nope. Nope. No. That’s not who I am.
(But also, God, that man has forearms that could ruin lives.)
When he hits play, “The Sound of Silence” drifts through the speakers. And somehow it feels like the whole night shifts with it. Less noise, more meaning. More him.
And I’m in trouble.
So much fucking trouble.
“Wow,” I say. “Hello darkness?”
He arches a brow. “It’s my autumn, obviously.”
“Oh, look at him joking,” I tease, nodding toward the stereo because the mood is veering into quiet and broody, and I’m already holding on by a thread. “Why that song?”
He studies the sleeve of the tape for a moment, thumb brushing the edge like the answer might be hiding there. “It was in one of her albums—your aunt’s. We found it, I think, a couple of nights ago.”
He exhales, doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “There’s a sadness in it that doesn’t pull you under. It just . . . stays. It keeps you company. Gives you room to feel everything without having to fix any of it.”
His voice drops—not low, but thoughtful, careful in a way that hits harder than volume ever could. “Some songs don’t erase grief. They make room for it—long enough for your mind to settle, long enough to take one more step.”
The words make my stomach tighten, and I hate the sting pressing behind my eyes.
He lifts his gaze. “Some songs don’t fix grief. They just hold space for you while you figure out how to keep going.”
The truth of it slips into me before I can guard against it. I blink, once, twice, trying to pretend my vision isn’t blurring.
“That’s—” I pause, unsure what to do with the emotion caught in my throat—“I really don’t know how to handle loss.” And the second I say it, I wish I hadn’t.
What am I doing?
Who volunteers emotional confession number forty-seven on a random night?
I clamp my mouth shut, immediately regretting every life choice that’s led to this moment. Maybe I need a vow of silence. Maybe Mila can help me make a chart. Days Without Oversharing: zero.
“Not grieving can become a problem,” Alec says, in the exact tone my mother used when warning me that chewing gum at bedtime would make my intestines stick together.
I raise an eyebrow. “Do you always lead with doom?”
He smirks faintly. “It was a suggestion.”
“Mmm, sounded like a diagnosis.”
He shrugs again, unbothered. “Suppressed grief finds its own way out. Usually sideways. That can’t be great for you . . . or your kid.”
“Okay, Ari 2.0,” I mutter, sipping my tea even though it’s gone lukewarm. “Do you rehearse your emotionally invasive material ahead of time, or does it just come to you in the moment?”
“I improvise,” he says dryly. “It’s a gift.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, I’ll take it under advisement.”
“I’m not telling you what to do,” he adds, rubbing the back of his neck again in that now-familiar way that makes my pulse skip. “It just came out. Been thinking a lot about losing your aunt lately.”
The shift in him is subtle but unmistakable—his tone is stripped of humor, the words carrying something quieter, heavier, like a door creaking open to a room he doesn’t show often.
“Dealing with her loss?” I ask, setting my cup down and—before I know it—leaning closer. “Were you two close?”
“Not really. But she mattered. To everyone here.” His voice goes quiet again. “And her loss . . . it made me look at my own. I avoid people. A lot. It took me years to—”
He stops. Mid-thought.
The air shifts—the way it always does when someone backs away from a truth they weren’t ready to give.
“Why did you stop?” I ask softly.
He shakes his head. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear all that.”
“It matters to you.” Before I can overthink it, I reach out and let my fingers brush against his—barely there, a soft graze, but it’s enough.
The contact zings through me like a live wire. He doesn’t move away. His hand stays right there, warm and grounded against mine, like letting himself feel.
“I care,” I say, quieter now. “Of course I do.”
Something shifts in his expression. It’s brief. As if a thought he didn’t mean to show slips through before he can catch it.
“Who did you lose?” I ask gently. “Your parents?”
“I never knew my parents,” he says, no edge in his voice—just fact. “I bounced between foster homes. People came and went. Some tried. Some didn’t. Some left emotional and physical marks I still can’t scrub out.”
My breath catches, but he keeps going.
“All those articles about my anger? They never tell you why. They paint it like a personality trait. Like I just woke up pissed off.” He laughs once—sharp, humorless. “Grief doesn’t always look like crying in the dark. Sometimes it makes you someone no one wants to understand.”
My chest aches, and before I can stop it, the words fall out. “Alec . . .”
He looks at me, dead-on. “Don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird.”
“You’re absolutely making it weird.”
“It’s just . . .” I trail off, eyes still on him. “That’s not what I expected you to say. Now I want to hug you.”
“I don’t need hugs.”
“Obviously, you do. But I get it—you’re allergic to emotions. Maybe talk to your therapist about that.”
“That’s intrusive,” he says, lips twitching.
“You told me to grieve. We’re way past subtle.”
He shrugs. “Suppressing things isn’t good for you. And I figured . . . it’s probably not good for your kid either.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’ve officially entered the Ari-zone. Which is terrifying because if two people say the same thing, I might have to start believing it.”
He smirks, satisfied. I hate that it’s attractive. Everything about him in this light is attractive—his honesty, his restraint, his inability to sugarcoat anything.
I clear my throat, reaching for safety in the form of sarcasm. “So. What else does that tape have in its vault of emotionally loaded bangers you think I’ve been avoiding?”
Because if we keep going down this emotional rabbit hole, I might actually open every journal and letter in this house and drown in whatever Lina hid.
“Music,” he replies. A beat. “For the things you won’t say out loud.”
“Me?” I glare at him.
“Not specifically you,” he says, running a thumb along the spines of vinyls stacked beside him. “But people who refuse to grieve. I know what that looks like when it walks in the door. I know what it sounds like when it can’t find a place to land.”
I look down at the tape in my hand, the lettering uneven and a little smudged.
“And what genre of emotional excavation am I supposed to expect?” I ask, because my voice can’t seem to form anything more vulnerable.
“Stuff I needed once,” he answers quietly. “Stuff I survived with. Maybe it’ll help you too.”
He slides a folded paper toward me—a handwritten list, creased and worn like he rewrote it a dozen times before deciding it was good enough.
The track list and open it carefully.
The Sound of Silence — Simon & Garfunkel
Wish You Were Here — Pink Floyd
Landslide — Fleetwood Mac
The River — Bruce Springsteen
Love Will Tear Us Apart — Joy Division
Pictures of You — The Cure
Black — Pearl Jam
Tears in Heaven — Eric Clapton
Hurt — Nine Inch Nails
Lightning Crashes — Live
Clearly, this is grief, longing. This is healing through a door you—more like me—didn’t want to open.
This is everything I spent years sweeping into corners and labeling later.
I trace the edge of the paper with my fingertip, trying to steady my breathing. “Wow.”
“That bad?” he asks.
“No,” I say, quieter now. “It’s just . . . this feels personal.”
His jaw tenses, just for a second, like the word touches a nerve he didn’t expect. “It’s a playlist, not a marriage proposal.”
“But you picked them for me.”
He doesn’t deny it.
Instead, he leans back, folding his arms in that faux-relaxed posture he uses when he wants to look unaffected—but absolutely isn’t. His jaw tightens. A muscle in his cheek jumps. His body betrays him.
“I thought you’d like them,” he mutters.
His voice is rougher now, laced with meaning he’s not willing to unpack. A thread pulled too tight, vibrating with everything he won’t let himself say.
And I’m suddenly terrified that I know exactly what it means and how I wish he could kiss and make my head stop, but .
. . a soft scrape of metal on metal breaks the spell between us—the unmistakable slide of the glass balcony door—and just like that, whatever lived in the air between Alec and me dissolves into distance.
This is something I can manage without falling apart.