Chapter 8 #2
I set the knife down and wipe my sweaty palms on a dish towel, taking a moment to breathe deep.
The sound of Connor giggling at something on the TV pulls me back into reality.
I peek out to check on him, and there he is, now sprawled across the couch, completely lost in a cartoon.
Thank God for cartoons. At least he’s distracted while I cook dinner.
Garlic bread is in the oven, I’ve got the water boiling for the pasta, and I’m feeling pretty damn proud of myself for managing to get the sauce simmering without burning it. The kitchen smells like garlic and tomatoes, a comforting reminder that I can cook at least one meal without catastrophe.
As I chop up some fresh basil, I hear a knock at the door.
“Connor!” I call out, knowing he’s glued to the couch. “Can you get that?”
“Sure!” His voice is bright with enthusiasm, and I can already picture him bouncing off the couch, racing to the door like it’s Christmas morning.
I slice through a handful of basil, letting the knife glide expertly before shifting my focus back to the pot.
Everything feels relatively under control until I hear Connor open the door.
“Coach Harrison!” he squeals, his voice echoing through the apartment.
“Hey, buddy!” Harrison replies, and I can hear that familiar warmth in his tone that sends a jolt straight through me.
My heart skips a beat.
I try to concentrate on finishing up dinner, slicing the rest of the basil, but knowing he’s here sends waves of nerves crashing through me. My knife slips, and suddenly I feel a sharp sting on my finger.
“Shit!” I hiss, dropping the knife as a bright bead of red swells way too fast across my finger.
Perfect.
Absolutely perfect timing, Harper.
The blood keeps coming—because of course it does—and I grab a dish towel, pressing it hard against the cut, wincing as the sting blossoms.
“Mom?” Connor calls from the front door. “You okay?”
“Fine!” I lie loudly, my voice shaking at the sight of blood. “Totally fine. Just uh…keep Coach Harrison company!”
Fantastic. Now I’m hiding in the kitchen bleeding like an amateur chef while the man who broke my heart—or the man I broke my own heart over—stands in my living room.
Before I can even take a breath, heavy footsteps rush toward me.
Harrison’s voice fills the doorway. “Harper? What’s wrong?”
I whirl around too fast, dizzy from adrenaline. He takes one look at the blood seeping through the towel and his whole expression changes, his eyes sharp, his jaw tense.
“What happened?” He crosses the kitchen in three long strides.
“I—uh…the knife slipped.” I hold up the towel-covered finger awkwardly, like I’m presenting him with a tragic magic trick. Part of me wants to hide the wound, hide this weakness, hide everything from him.
He reaches for my wrist but I pull back instinctively. “It’s fine, really. It’s just a little—”
“It’s bleeding through the towel, Harp.” His voice softens but stays firm. “Come on. Let me see.”
I falter because suddenly he’s too close.
Close enough that I can smell him, clean linen mixed with something warm and familiar that makes me want to both lean in and run away.
His hand is steady around my wrist, thumb brushing lightly against my pulse.
The kitchen feels smaller now and the air thicker.
For a moment I swear time folds in on itself and we’re college students, sneaking kisses and talking about the future we were never going to have… the future I destroyed.
He lifts the towel and inspects my finger and I hate how much I like that he’s holding my hand. Even if it is my blood he’s looking at.
I hate the sight of blood.
“Damn,” he mutters under his breath. “You really did a number on it.”
My cheeks burn with embarrassment and anger at myself for needing his help. “I was just…slicing basil.”
His eyes rise with a slow, amused lift of his eyebrow. “Basil fought back, huh?”
A laugh slips out, more breath than sound, before I can stop it. “Apparently. The leafy bastard.”
He adjusts his hold, his palm cradling the back of my hand, warm and careful as if I’m something fragile he’s afraid to break. His fingers brush mine, lightly steadying them, sending a pulse of warmth up my arm. The spark I thought I’d buried years ago flickers to life soft but unmistakable.
“We need to wash it,” he says quietly. “C’mon.”
He guides me to the sink, nudging the faucet on with his elbow while still holding my hand. Water rushes over the cut, and I hiss at the sting.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, closer now, breath brushing my temple. “Should’ve warned you.”
I swear to God my brain is short-circuiting.
Words?
What are those?
Never heard of them.
“It’s okay,” I whisper back.
He looks at me then—really looks—and something inside me tilts dangerously. His gaze drifts from my eyes to my mouth and back again, and for one suspended heartbeat, nothing exists but this impossibly gentle contact and ten years of unresolved history humming beneath our skin.
His eyes hold mine, and I can’t read what’s behind them. I want to look away but…I can’t. I swallow, forcing my voice to be steady.
“I, um…God, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this—”
“It’s not a big deal,” he says quietly, still holding my hand like it’s something precious. “You’re hurt.”
I should pull away. I need to pull away.
But his thumb brushes the inside of my wrist, and my pulse jumps traitorously.
He grabs a clean towel, pressing it gently around my finger.
The pain dulls under his touch, replaced by something worse.
A longing that makes me want to both lean into him and shove him out the door.
Every gentle press of his fingers feels like an accusation. Like forgiveness I haven’t earned.
“You don’t have to—” I start, but my voice catches.
“I know,” he says.
In the doorway, Connor peeks in. “Mom? Coach Harrison? Are you guys making out?”
My stomach drops through the floor. “Connor! No. Oh my God!”
Harrison chokes on a laugh, his forehead dropping for half a second toward our joined hands. “Buddy,” he calls back, voice a little strained, “we’re just taking care of a cut. Do you know where Mom keeps the first aid kit?”
Connor glances at me and I remind him, “There’s one in the cabinet underneath the sink.”
“I’ll get it,” Connor states like a man on a mission. “But also, I think the garlic bread is burning.”
My eyes go wide. “Oh, shit!”
Harrison moves before I do, reaching around me, opening the oven, and grabbing a potholder like he’s lived here his whole life. The sudden closeness steals my breath again, his chest brushing my shoulder, his arm sweeping across my side.
It’s not deliberate.
It’s not intimate.
But it feels like both.
He sets the slightly-too-browned bread on the stove, then he turns to me again, holding onto my hand, gentler this time.
“Let me get you bandaged up and then I’ll finish dinner,” he says softly.
“Harrison, no—”
He shakes his head. “Harper, you’re bleeding. You should sit. This is the least I can do. I’ve got this.”
I stare at him, stunned. “You can cook?”
“I’ve been on my own for ten years and a man’s gotta eat so…yeah. I’ve picked up a few things,” he says with a wry half-smile. “And I won’t ask the basil to surrender this time.”
“I’ll help! Mom lets me help stir spaghetti all the time. She even lets me taste the sauce right out of the pan.”
Harrison gives Connor a fist bump. “You’re on, bud. We’ll team up and have dinner on the table in no time.”
Connor opens the first aid kit and removes the items Harrison asks for, repeating each one as he pulls them out like he’s handing over surgical tools in an operating room. Once he’s bandaged my finger, he pats my leg and tells me to sit tight while he and his sous chef finish dinner.
I silently mouth, “Thank you,” to which he nods before putting a hand on Connor’s shoulder and watching him stir the simmering sauce on the stove.
Despite the pain, despite the nerves, despite everything, I smile.
And God help me it feels dangerously easy.
Dinner is…well, a mess.
I mean, the spaghetti is fine. Surprisingly fine, considering I spent half the cooking time bleeding and sweating like I was on a cooking competition show where I did not outwit, outlast, or outplay the basil.
But the garlic bread?
The garlic bread is a tragedy.
A dark, crispy, borderline-inedible tragedy.
I want to sweep it into the trash and pretend it never existed, but Connor is already proudly setting the basket in the middle of the table like it’s a centerpiece.
“I don’t know, Coach,” he says with a cautious wince. “I think the garlic bread might be sick.”
Harrison smiles kindly. “Nah. It’s perfect. I love a good crunchy garlic bread. It’s my favorite.”
He’s lying.
I know he is.
But Connor doesn’t know that. “It is?” he asks, brows high, eyes wide.
I keep my eyes on my plate, cheeks burning as Harrison answers enthusiastically. “Heck yeah. The crunch is the best part.”
“You don’t have to be so kind, Harrison,” I tell him, frowning at the charred disaster on my plate. “It’s a little overdone.”
“A little?” Connor picks up a piece and knocks it against the table. It makes a hollow clack that echoes like a tiny, judgmental drum.
I bury my face in my hands. “Okay. It’s ruined. I ruined it. You don’t have to eat it.”
When I peek through my fingers, Harrison is already reaching for a slice.
He bites into it.
Crunches into it, actually.
Like he’s eating a roof shingle.
My mouth drops open. “Harrison! You do not have to—”
“No, it’s good,” he says with the straightest face I’ve ever seen. “Really good.”
Connor snorts. “Coach, you just lied. I saw it in your eyes.”
“I didn’t lie,” Harrison protests. “I said it was good. I never said it wasn’t…crunchy.”
I groan. “Please stop eating it.”
Another loud, explosive CRACK echoes through the dining room as he takes another bite. Then he wags his brows and hums, “Mmm.”
Connor giggles so hard he nearly falls out of his chair. “This is the funniest dinner ever!”
Conversation flows surprisingly easily.
Connor tells Harrison all about school.
Harrison listens like it’s the most important information he’s ever heard. I keep staring at them, my chest feeling too full, too tight. And somewhere between bites of pasta and the world’s worst bread, new territory begins to open up between us.
Not romantic.
But soft and real and delicate enough that one breath too hard might shatter it. When dinner winds down, Connor claps his hands.
“Best spaghetti night ever!”
“Oh yeah?” Harrison asks, amused.
“Yep! Even with the bread.”
I hide my face again. “Please stop talking about the bread.”
“Never,” Connor declares dramatically.
Harrison laughs, the sound warm and deep and horribly, beautifully familiar. When our eyes meet over the table, the smiling fades, not in a bad way, but in the kind of way that means everything underneath is shifting and something flickers between us.
Something like ten years of buried electricity sparks back to life.
Then Connor stands up to clear the plates, humming as he goes, and the moment breaks just enough for me to breathe again.
Harrison sets down his last piece of charcoal masquerading as garlic bread.
“You really didn’t have to do all that,” I murmur once Connor’s focused on the dishes.. “Seriously, Harrison. The bread was awful and you ate like, four pieces.”
He leans closer, voice low, warm. “It’s not about the bread.”
My stomach swoops. “It’s not?”
“I ate the bread,” he adds softly, “because Connor thinks you’re Supermom…and I’m not about to be the guy who ruins that.”
Oh.
Well…
Okay.
So now my heart is melting like butter on…God, I wish I could say garlic bread, but that ship has sailed and burned.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
He gives me a small smile, the kind that sneaks under my ribs. “Anytime.”
We try to return to normalcy, or whatever version of normalcy exists when the father of your child is at your dinner table for the first time in a decade.
“It really wasn’t that bad,” he says quietly.
“One more bite and your teeth would’ve shattered,” I whisper back.
He grins, slow, crooked…dangerous, and I suddenly remember exactly why loving him was so easy.
And why trying not to again might be impossible.