The Ultimate Goal (The Brooklyn Bears)

Chapter 1

ONE

Makena, South Maui

Claudia

Savannah is tucked against my chest, nursing lazily.

Her small body completely relaxed and content, her fingers curled around the edge of my tank top.

Each slow pull steadies me, making my heart beat in time with hers.

Or at least that’s what it’s felt like since the very first time I held her in my arms. As if it were the first time, I was not just mimicking peace but actually living in it.

The first time, I was not working toward making a life but living my very own.

Right now, in this setting, it’s impossible not to sink deeper into that.

Dr. Lydia Harrow, my doctoral advisor, had invited us here as a graduation gift after I finished my PhD, with no family to toast me and no one waiting with balloons or cake.

“You deserve this, Claudia,” she’d said.

She and her partner, Dr. Maya Ruiz, have been here for a few days, fussing over me and Savannah, raising a glass of wine in my honor. But the rest of the week will just be me and my daughter, the sound of the Pacific, and silence that wraps around us instead of swallowing us whole.

Lydia —which she insists I call her now—leans against the counter, her glass of pinot turning slow circles between her fingers. She watches us the way she always does — quietly, curiously, like she’s reading something important.

“She’s content,” she says, her voice low and warm. “So are you.”

“I am,” I admit. “For the first time in a long time.” Ever.

Maya stands at the stove, plating food, her curls escaping the bun on top of her head. She smells like turmeric, sea air, and sunshine. “Peace looks good on you,” she says, sliding a bowl of curry onto the counter.

“Peace feels less… temporary,” I say, adjusting Savannah to my other breast. “Like if I let my guard down, it won’t disappear.”

Lydia sets her glass aside and comes closer, “You’ve spent years studying what trauma does to the brain, how it changes people. But what you don’t seem to recognize,” she says, tilting her head, “is that you’re living proof it can be rewired. You broke the cycle, Dr. Holloway.”

I cover my chest with a muslin cloth out of habit, even though I know they don’t care. “I know this. But occasionally I feel like someone waiting for the ground to shake and trying to figure out how never to let her feel even a tremble.”

Maya smiles softly. “Sometimes that shake is a reminder of just how far you’ve come.”

The words settle deep, like warmth spreading under my ribs.

Lydia gives me a rare smile, small, sincere. “You’re a good mother. You don’t have to earn that.”

I bite down on the inside of my cheek to keep from crying.

I look down at Savannah, milk-drunk and perfect, her little mouth slack against my skin, lashes fluttering, instead.

“Thank you,” I manage while keeping my emotions in check, because thank you isn’t enough, but that phrase is not nearly enough, it never will be.

Not for them and who they have become to me.

When Savannah is asleep and no longer nursing, Maya hands me a plate and holds out her hands. “Give her to me, Mommy, let me hold her while you can do it unattached.”

As soon as I do, Maya leans down, kisses Savannah’s forehead, and whispers, “La paz te encontrará dond eque te encuentre.”

Peace will find you where you let it.

I smile faintly and whisper. “Gracias.”

“De nada, carino,” she says, her smile soft and warm.

After we’ve all eaten, we head out to the patio and linger a little longer.

Savannah is sleeping in Maya’s arms, her tiny lips pursed in that perfect way babies do when they’re dreaming.

Lydia tells another story about the house — how the wind changes direction before a storm, how the sea turtles sometimes nest near the rocks — and I listen, memorizing the cadence of her voice.

When they finally turn in, I stay on the porch with Savannah, watching the moonlight shimmer across the waves.

Tomorrow they’ll fly home, and then it’ll be just me and her — no deadlines, no noise, no one expecting anything. Just us.

The ocean breathes in and out, the kind of sound that loosens your chest whether you want it to or not. Savannah stirs against me, and I hum softly, feeling the tiny weight of her hand clutching my shirt.

For the first time in years, the quiet doesn’t feel empty.

I wake to sunlight spilling through gauzy curtains and the rhythmic sound of waves brushing the shore. Lydia and Maya’s car is already gone; the note they left sits on the kitchen counter in Lydia’s crisp handwriting.

Enjoy the stillness, Claudia. You’ve built a life that deserves it.

—L. it seemed like a waste of time. And I needed that time to work for it and earn the life I have now, one with meaning.

“You were my special surprise,” I whisper to Savannah. “Now you’re my reason.”

The days here move differently.

Slower, but not idle. The sun comes in gold and leaves in fire. Savannah and I fall into our own rhythm. Morning walks barefoot along the beach, afternoon naps to the sound of the surf, evenings spent watching the light fade from blue to violet. Living art.

She’s changing every day — her eyes follow the sway of the palms now, her fingers curl around mine tighter, her sounds more deliberate. She doesn’t just exist in my arms anymore; she’s starting to be.

I still check my email every morning — out of habit, not need. There’s paperwork waiting, training modules, and insurance forms from the Houston VA. But I don’t rush to finish any of it. The old me would have. The one who measured her worth by deadlines, checklists, and validation.

Now, my measure is her heartbeat.

When the sun gets too strong, I spread a blanket on the shaded deck and let Savannah nap in the open air. Her tiny chest rises and falls in rhythm with the ocean. I sip iced coffee and write in my journal, not case notes or research, just thoughts. Feelings.

I used to think peace was a destination. Now I know it’s a choice.

Three days before we were to leave, I got a call that dared to threaten that peace, that made the ground shake. But I remembered what Maya had said, “Sometimes that shake is a reminder of just how far you’ve come.”

His demand to meet her, and there was no tremor in my voice when I said, “It wasn’t necessary.”

There was, however, one in his.

Savannah’s head is tucked against my shoulder as I shuffle down the narrow aisle, diaper bag digging into one hip, car seat clutched in my other hand, and my daughter secured.

Her hair smells faintly of baby lotion and the ocean air.

I don’t ever want to scrub the salt from her sweet little self after our time in Hawaii.

Time I still enjoyed after he threatened it.

When his name flashed across my screen froze me in place. I haven’t spoken to him since the day I told him I was pregnant, and he spat “gold digger” through the line. Since we agreed I’d tell people I’d used a donor so he could keep his clean, consequence-free life, he wasn’t even a thought.

I chose this, and I am fortunate enough to have drawn the short stick from the parent pile. The good old government had granted me the consolation prize of funding my education. And very soon, my tax dollars would contribute to helping others like me.

“I saw a picture,” he said, his voice shaking a bit, “You and Savvy in Hawaii? I’ll be in Brooklyn, playing against my old team.

You remember Brooklyn, right, Claudia?” he pauses as if I need time to comprehend what he’s saying, like I need a moment to remember that’s where she was conceived.

“I want to meet her. I’ll pay for your flight and hotel, but nothing else. Don’t expect anything else.”

Savvy…

Him calling her that made my stomach turn.

Like he had the right, like he knows her.

He hasn’t once reached out, not a single check-in, not even a damn text since that awful call.

And I didn’t want him to. I didn’t need him.

We agreed. I would raise her; she would never be his burden.

She is my blessing, and I would tell the world I chose a donor.

So why now?