Chapter 16 Serena
The ancient school bus groaned as it navigated another hairpin turn, and I gripped the cracked vinyl seat, trying not to slide into Brad's massive frame for the dozenth time.
His thigh pressed against mine—solid, warm, impossible to ignore in the cramped space designed for children half his size.
Finn bounced between us, his excitement vibrating through his small body like electricity.
"Miss Serena!" He smashed his face against the window until his nose went pig-flat. "Did you know pine beetles are basically tree vampires? They suck them dry from the inside and leave whole forests looking like skeleton graveyards. Mr. Robert showed us pictures—it was disgusting."
"Bloodthirsty bugs. Delightful." Brad's hand hovered near Finn's inhaler pocket, a reflexive check I'd witnessed countless times. The gesture made my chest tight with affection I had no right to feel.
Two rows up, Mrs. Henderson's stage whisper could've been heard in the next county. "Two weeks living together and now a field trip? Mark my words, Gloria—wedding by spring."
Mrs. Gomez swiveled like a periscope, her eyes bright with small-town hunger. We were performing our fake relationship for an audience of PTA vultures, and they were eating it up with a spoon.
"Dad, your elbow is crushing my lunch." Finn squirmed, then locked eyes with me. "Miss Serena, will you help with my nature journal? Dad draws trees like they're having seizures."
"Seizures?" Brad's outrage was theatrical. "My trees have personality."
"Yeah, personality disorders."
I snorted, couldn't help it, and Brad's answering nudge sent electricity straight down my spine. His cologne, something cedar and dangerous, mixed with the bus's eau de overripe banana and made my head swim.
"Traitors, both of you," he muttered, but his thigh pressed harder against mine, and I wondered if everyone could hear my heart trying to escape through my ribs.
The Wrightwood Environmental Center appeared through the trees like something from a fairy tale—log buildings nestled among towering pines, their bark rough and ancient.
The air hit us as we disembarked, crisp and sharp with the scent of earth and growing things.
Brad's hand found the small of my back, guiding me down the bus steps.
The touch was meant for show, for the watching parents, but it lingered a beat too long to be purely performance.
Children erupted from the buses in barely controlled chaos.
I shifted into teacher mode automatically, counting heads and checking buddy pairs while Brad unloaded our gear.
His movements were efficient despite favoring his injured knee—something he thought he hid well, but I'd learned to read the subtle shifts in his weight, the careful way he planted his feet.
"Alright, families!" The camp director's voice boomed across the courtyard. "Let's gather for orientation!"
We formed a large circle in the welcome hall, its vaulted ceiling supported by massive log beams. Finn positioned himself between us, his small hand slipping into mine with trusting ease that made my heart stutter. When our turn for introductions arrived, Brad cleared his throat.
"I'm Brad Wilder, this is my—" He paused, and I saw the moment of panic in his eyes. "My partner, Serena, and our son Finn."
My partner. Our son.
The words hung there, radioactive.
Mrs. Gomez made a sound like a stepped-on cat. Mrs. Henderson's hand flew to her pearls. The entire circle held its breath while my heart tried to climb out through my throat.
Finn, blissfully unaware he'd just been claimed, grinned like Christmas morning.
"We met during the storm," I added quickly, my voice steadier than my racing heart. "Sometimes the best things come from unexpected circumstances."
Brad's ears went nuclear red. But his hand found mine—deliberate, decisive—his hockey calluses rough as tree bark against my palm. He squeezed once, an apology or a promise or maybe both.
The circle moved on, but the words kept echoing: Our son. Our son. Our son.
Like a spell that couldn't be taken back.
The family scavenger hunt paired us with the Hendersons.
Their twins, Aiden and Ava, immediately attached themselves to Finn, the three of them racing ahead to find the first clue.
Mrs. Henderson fell into step beside me, her nurse's eyes cataloging everything: Finn's breathing pattern, the inhaler bulge in Brad's pocket, the way Brad tracked his son like a sniper tracks a target.
"He has severe asthma," she stated rather than asked. "You know that can be extremely dangerous in outdoor settings like this?"
The words stung, implying I was some naive girlfriend playing at motherhood without understanding the stakes. Before I could respond, Brad's arm came around my shoulders, pulling me against his side.
"Serena's handled Finn's worst episodes better than I have," he said, his voice carrying that quiet authority that made opposing players think twice before challenging him on the ice.
"She's memorized his triggers, completed EMT training on her own time, catches warning signs I'm too thick to notice.
I'd trust her with his life before I'd trust myself. "
Then he kissed my temple—casual, possessive, devastating. "Right, sweetheart?"
The endearment rolled off his tongue like honey, and Mrs. Henderson's expression softened immediately. "Oh, I didn't mean to imply—I'm just protective of all the children. It's wonderful Finn has both of you looking out for him."
She scurried after the twin terrors, abandoning us to our charade. Except Brad's arm stayed locked around me, his thumb drawing lazy circles on my hip that felt anything but fake.
"Selling it?" he murmured, his breath disturbing my hair, but his grip suggested he was selling something to himself.
"DAD! MISS SERENA!" Finn's shriek saved me from spontaneous combustion. "PILEATED WOODPECKER! THE PTERODACTYL KIND!"
Brad lifted him easily, despite his knee, holding him steady while Finn pointed out the bird's distinctive red crest. I guided their observation, turning it into an impromptu lesson about adaptations and ecosystems. Other families paused to listen, children gathering around us as I explained how woodpeckers' tongues wrap around their skulls for protection.
"Your girlfriend's amazing," Mr. Henderson told Brad. "The way she engages the kids—Finn's lucky to have her."
I felt Brad's gaze on me, heavy with something I couldn't interpret. "Yeah," he said softly. "We both are."
The three-legged race should have been a disaster. Brad's six-foot-three frame towered over my five-foot-five, our strides completely mismatched. But his competitive nature emerged as he studied the other pairs, calculating angles and timing like he was planning a power play.
"Trust me," he said, and before I could respond, he'd essentially scooped me against his side, my feet barely touching the ground as he powered forward. I shrieked with laughter, Finn jumping and cheering as we crossed the finish line in first place.
"THAT'S MY DAD! THAT'S MY MISS SERENA!"
"Subtle," Maria drawled from her lawn chair throne, sunglasses not quite hiding her knowing smirk. She'd "volunteered" to chaperone with all the subtlety of a detective on a stakeout. "Very believable fake couple behavior, you two."
But I couldn't focus on Maria's matchmaking agenda because Emma, a second-grader with anxiety, had gone rigid by the pond, that telltale tremor in her hands I'd learned to recognize. I slipped away from Brad, crouching beside her.
"Five things you see," I whispered, just for her. "Start with the dragonfly."
"Dragonfly," she breathed. "Cattails. Your bracelet. The... the turtle on that rock."
We worked through the senses while I kept us moving with the group, my hand steady on her shoulder.
Jason bounced past—I'd sent him on his third "critical supply mission" of the day, burning off his ADHD energy without making it obvious.
He'd figured out my game weeks ago but played along, grateful for the excuse to move.
"She okay?" Brad materialized beside us, voice low enough that Emma wouldn't feel spotlighted.
Emma nodded, breathing steady now, and ran ahead to join her friends. I watched her go, the familiar satisfaction of a crisis quietly averted warming my chest.
"You didn't even hesitate." Brad's voice had gone strange, almost reverent. "You just... knew. With her, with Jason bouncing off the walls, with every kid here."
"It's just teaching—"
"Stop." He caught my elbow, and suddenly we were too close, his eyes doing that dangerous thing where they went all intense and searching. "You reshape the world around these kids without them even knowing you're doing it. That's not just teaching. That's—"
He cut himself off, jaw working like he was fighting words that wanted to escape.
Around us, children shrieked over pond creatures and parents pretended not to stare, but all I could focus on was the way his thumb had started tracing absent circles on my arm, like he'd forgotten this was supposed to be pretend.
The evening campfire cast dancing shadows as we roasted marshmallows.
Brad sat on a log with Finn on his lap, and without thinking, I settled beside them.
Brad's arm came around me, pulling me close enough that Finn could lean against us both.
The position should have felt awkward—we were performing intimacy we hadn't earned. Instead, it felt like coming home.
"Who wants to share a family talent?" the counselor asked, and Finn's hand shot up before Brad or I could stop him.
"We do the Inhaler Hero song!"
"The what now?" Brad's chest rumbled against my shoulder, amusement barely contained.
"Miss Serena made it up so I don't forget my breathing steps." Finn scrambled to his feet, dragging me up with him. "And Dad can do his stick thing!"
And somehow— somehow —I was standing in firelight teaching thirty sugar-crashed children to rap about bronchodilators while Brad performed what could generously be called "juggling" with marshmallow sticks.
He dropped them on purpose, letting Finn dive in for dramatic saves, and the whole ridiculous performance had parents actually filming us on their phones.
We were a circus act. We were ridiculous. We were perfect .
Several mothers dabbed their eyes. We'd become the family everyone wanted to believe in, and the performance felt so real I forgot we were lying.
That night, after tucking exhausted children into sleeping bags, the adults gathered around dying embers with cups of coffee and wine.
I sat between Brad's knees on the ground, his chest solid behind me—a position that started as necessity due to limited seating but became something else as his arms settled around me.
"How long have you two been together?" Mrs. Patel asked, her tone suggesting she'd been dying to know all day.
"Feels like forever," Brad said, and the raw honesty in his voice made me shiver. His arms tightened fractionally. "Sometimes you meet someone and everything just... clicks."
"That's beautiful," Mrs. Gomez sighed. "You can see how much you love each other. And Finn absolutely adores you, Serena."
I should have corrected her, should have maintained some boundary between fake and real. Instead, I leaned back into Brad's warmth and let myself pretend, just for tonight, that this was our truth.
The next morning on the bus ride home, Finn had transformed into a sixty-pound octopus sprawled across our laps, completely knocked out from adventure.
One hand was fisted in my shirt, his feet somehow wedged into Brad's armpits.
Other parents smiled at us knowingly, making comments about our "beautiful family" that should have felt false but didn't.
"Thank you," Brad said quietly, his voice rough. "For this. For him. For..." He gestured vaguely at the space between us, unable to name what was growing there.
I understood. We were crossing into dangerous territory, where pretend became practice for something neither of us was ready to admit we wanted.
But with Finn's warm weight across our laps and Brad's fingers brushing mine on the seat between us, I couldn't bring myself to care about the danger anymore.