Chapter 12 Martin
MARTIN
I stare at the computer screen before me, doing my best to keep my focus. I know I shouldn’t be letting my mind wander when I’m at work, but honestly, it’s been hard to keep her out of my head these last few days.
It’s Wednesday, nearly half a week since we saw each other at the restaurant, and it feels like my brain has been stuffed full of nothing but Lila, Lila, Lila ever since.
The way she looked at me when she told me that she had thought this was something more, the moan she let out as she came around my fingers, the feel of her mouth on mine all over again, it was just…
it has branded itself into my brain and that, unfortunately for everyone I work with, hasn’t left much room for anything else.
She hasn’t been in touch since she took off and left me standing in that alleyway—at least, not in any meaningful way. I texted her to ask if she got home okay, and she responded with a one-word yes and left it at that.
Which doesn’t exactly help me clear my head on all of this. Not that I think it should be her duty to make things clearer for my sake. But fuck, after nearly a year, the chemistry between us is just as searing as it was that first night, and I don’t know what I can do to shut it out of my mind.
In fact, if anything, it was even more intense this weekend—because now, she’s the mother of my children.
A bond that ties us deeper than almost anything else in the world.
And it hasn’t exactly helped to keep things formal between us.
Now, we’re connected in some impossibly important way, and I can’t think of anything but the way I want to be a part of her life. Part of our children’s lives.
I haven’t seen the twins, Ross and Mathilda, since they came in for their appointment the other week, and I find my mind drifting to them all the time—how they’re doing, if they’re well, what developmental milestones they might be hitting by now.
They’re just over two months old, and I know they’ll be starting to really connect with the world around them, understanding themselves as entities distinct from their mother and excited to figure out just how they fit into the world.
I haven’t done the baby thing since Thomas was a child, and I thought I never would again.
Shit, maybe I’m romanticizing it in my head.
Those late nights, early mornings, brutal long hauls—they’re not what I’m craving right now.
But the thought of being there to hold them when they wake up for a night feed, walking them around the house until they fall back asleep, it’s something I can’t seem to shake.
The little, intimate moments as they learn their place in the world, and assuring them that I’ll be there for them, no matter what.
I’m sure Lila would call me if there was anything she needed, but right now, it’s not about need; it’s about want.
I want to be there for them and for her.
I feel guilty even turning up for my shifts right now, knowing that she’s likely having to handle so much on her own, probably feeling like she has no business reaching out to me after the way things ended the other night.
And I’m partly to blame for that too. I’m the one, after all, who tried to keep things strictly professional and focused on the practical support of the twins.
Not like I brought up the possibility of shared custody, or even weekend visits—I talked like they were a business asset and I needed to figure out how to manage them.
Not exactly the words of a doting, devoted father.
Because I never thought I would have a chance to do that again.
No, more than that—I never thought I would want to do that again.
Watching Thomas turn into the man he is has been a wrench worse than anything else I’ve been through, even my divorce, and it’s not even close.
If I involve myself in the lives of the twins, then I might have to go through all of that again.
I might have to watch myself make a mess of things twice in a row, and if things turn out as badly as they did with him…
I don’t know if I would ever be able to forgive myself. But at the same time, I don’t know if I would be able to forgive myself if all I ever did for those two was sign a check and hope for the best.
It’s not in my nature. Not how I was raised. My mother’s voice rings in my ears. Family is the most important thing in the world, Martin, she would always tell me. You can make bonds in a lot of ways, but bonds by blood can never be broken.
I don’t know if I believe her, at least to the same extent I did back then.
But I can feel this tug deep within me, this insistence that I find a way to be close to my twins.
Fatherly instinct? Something like it. Either way, I know I can’t force myself into their lives.
I lost that chance when I walked out of the hospital room on the day they were born.
Lila is right to have her doubts and keep her distance, even if things seem more complicated than that.
I check the clock—another couple of hours till I can head back to my apartment.
Mercifully, I don’t have any more appointments today.
I’m sure that whatever patients I might have had would have clocked how distracted I was at once.
I have a few forms to file away, a few patient profiles to go over, and then I’m done.
Back to that empty apartment.
Before the twins were born, that place felt like a sanctuary, a break from the rush of the rest of this city life.
But now, all I can think of is how much I wish the quiet were filled by something, anything.
I want to hear children’s laughter echoing through the living room, the splash of water in the bath as they get used to their nighttime routine, the burbling of a young child just learning how to put their feelings into something close to words.
But I have none of it. Nothing. I don’t even have a lot of friends I can call on—most of them I met through Martha and, no matter how amicable the divorce was, they keep in touch with her over me.
I don’t blame them. I would do the same.
But sometimes, the gap between my home country and this place I’ve come to call home seems to stretch out for an eternity.
All at once, my phone buzzes against my hip.
My heart sinks at first, wondering if this is another call from Martha, telling me what our son has been getting up to.
I know there isn’t anyone else she can talk to about this, but that doesn’t mean I want to be the one on the other end of the line every time.
But when I lift it from my pocket, I see Lila’s name staring back at me. It takes an instant to clock that it is really her calling—she’s usually texted when she has reached out to me, if I’ve heard from her at all. Is this urgent, all of a sudden? I answer at once, not wanting to keep her waiting.
“Lila?”
“Hey, Martin,” she greets me, and I can already tell from the tone of her voice that she’s distracted. “Sorry to call you up like this out of nowhere, I hope I’m not interrupting anything—”
“You’re good,” I reply, turning away from my desk and rising to my feet. “What’s going on? Everything alright with the twins?”
“Uh, more or less,” she replies. I can hear their cooing just behind her, and I can’t help but smile, hearing them like that.
“More or less?”
“There’s something I need to take care of,” she explains hurriedly. “And Sofia was going to keep an eye on the twins for me, but she got called away at the last second—shit, Martin, I’m really sorry to have to do this, but do you think you could look after them tonight?”
“Look after them?”
I guess the surprise must be obvious in my voice, because she trips over herself to explain.
“I know how it sounds,” she replies. “And I know—I know you have a life of your own, and it’s not fair to expect you to drop everything to come play babysitter for me, but I—”
“Lila, I’m their father,” I remind her. “It’s not babysitting. It’s just parenting.”
She pauses for a moment, seemingly taken aback by my sureness.
“So…so you’ll do it?”
“Of course I will,” I assure her, as I double-check my schedule for the rest of the day to make sure I’m in the clear. “I need to finish up work, but I should be done by six. If you text me the address, I’ll come straight down when I’m done.”
A moment of silence fills the line—for a second, I think she must not have heard me. But when she speaks again, her voice is laced with such deep gratitude that it almost makes me sad to think of how many people must have let her down for this to mean so much to her.
“Thank you, Martin,” she murmurs. “I—I promise I’ll be more organized next time.”
“Not a problem,” I reply. “You need me to pick anything up on the way down there?”
“No, I think we’re all good…”
“I’ll be over in a couple of hours,” I promise her. “See you soon, Lila.”
“See you soon.”
And with that, she hangs up the phone. As I sit back in my seat, I realize that I’m grinning.
A chance to see the twins again. A chance to see Lila again.
I know this might not be what I had expected to do this evening, but as long as it keeps me out of the grip of that cavernously empty apartment for a night—hell, I’ll take it.