Chapter 13 Selene
THIRTEEN
SELENE
It had been only three weeks, but already it felt like Austin had always been here—this shadow moving through my mornings, a steady presence in the house beside mine.
Winnie was humming to herself as she picked at the moss in her fairy garden, rearranging tiny ceramic mushrooms around a pale-pink bench that Austin had added one morning last week.
He hadn’t said a word about it—just left it there like a secret offering.
She’d discovered it on her way out to water the dandelions, and the sight of it had clutched at her chest harder than I’d expected.
Now it sat beneath the hydrangea bush, a part of the ever-growing world my daughter was building.
One she believed in.
One Austin kept adding to when no one was watching.
I stood on the back step, coffee warming my palms, pretending not to stare at him as he watered the row of planters along the shared porch.
The tank top he wore was threadbare and loose around the neck, but it clung to his back where sweat darkened the fabric in a familiar triangle between his shoulder blades.
He didn’t glance my way, but I saw the faint twitch of his mouth.
He knew.
Of course he did.
This was our new rhythm.
By early September, it had settled into something that felt suspiciously like routine. Winnie’s school year had begun, and Austin—whom I’d officially hired without any real end date in mind—slid into our days as if he’d always belonged here.
In the mornings he slipped in just after I finished brushing my teeth. I’d leave the door unlocked. Sometimes he brought over muffins. Sometimes he just made my coffee. But he always left something—small, quiet things I wasn’t meant to find right away.
A note on the fridge:
Decaf again? What did caffeine ever do to you?
A sticky note on the mirror, after fixing the drawer that had stuck for weeks:
Your bathroom’s nicer than mine. I’m filing a formal complaint.
They were silly. Teasing. Just ink on paper, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away. I kept them tucked in the back of my top drawer, underneath my bras, as if they were too private to be seen—even by me.
We’d also managed to keep any interactions strictly PG—no more mentions of touching ourselves, or each other. Though I couldn’t say the same about what I actually did in the privacy of my own bed.
He was everywhere. In my home. In my daughter’s orbit. In my routines and rituals and quiet moments when I used to have space.
I took a long sip of coffee, letting it coat my tongue before swallowing.
“Fairy Queen,” Austin called to Winnie. “Are you good out here while I run in for breakfast cleanup?”
I straightened. “I can do it.”
Austin flashed me a smile. “Nah, it’s no big deal. Enjoy a few more minutes with her.” My heart thunked against my ribs.
Winnie gave him a thumbs-up with both hands, face scrunched in concentration as she fixed something in the fairy garden. “Next time please don’t touch the moss. It’s curated.”
He laughed, a deep, full sound that felt too large for the porch. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
As he passed me on the step, his hand ghosted the top of my shoulder for a fraction of a second.
It wasn’t long enough to be real.
Just long enough that I still felt it minutes later.
We walked. Not because we had to, but because the morning air was still laced with summer softness, and Winnie liked to skip over the sidewalk cracks in her pink sneakers. When she’d asked me to join them, I couldn’t resist.
Winnie clutched Austin’s hand, launching into a detailed retelling of how Waffles—the class frog—had escaped his tank during story time yesterday.
Her ponytail swished behind her with each hop, a glittery scrunchie keeping it wrangled.
Austin listened with his whole body, nodding and murmuring at all the right places, his laugh low and unhurried, like the story really was the best part of his morning.
I trailed beside them, a few paces slower, letting the two of them take the lead. From the outside, we probably looked like a family. The thought knotted something deep in my gut. It wasn’t unpleasant, just . . . dangerous.
I saw the way a woman slowed her car just slightly as she passed. The way a man nodded politely and then glanced back a second time. People in town were noticing.
Austin, of course, was oblivious.
He didn’t see the glances. Didn’t clock the subtle curiosity in the expressions of the other parents lingering at drop-off.
Why would he? He wasn’t the one doing calculus in his head over how it might look—him, younger, tattooed, handsome in that distractingly rough-cut way.
Me, older, composed, trying not to fidget with my sleeve or wonder whether they thought I was babysitting him.
When we reached the school steps, Winnie dropped Austin’s hand to hug my waist. “Are you coming with me today?”
“Just to the door, kiddo,” I said, brushing a crumb from her cheek. “You’ll have a fun day—you’ve got music.”
She lit up like a sunrise. “We’re learning to play ‘The Ants Go Marching.’ Austin, you’ll love it.”
“I can’t wait,” he said, pressing a hand over his heart.
At the doors, she kissed me and ran inside, her little backpack bouncing behind her.
The walk back was quiet at first. Our steps fell in rhythm. Austin didn’t fill the silence and didn’t reach for banter. That was something I’d come to notice about him—he had this way of not needing to talk just to fill space. Sometimes he simply let silence breathe.
Still, I felt the weight of curious eyes.
Other parents milled about the schoolyard, saying goodbyes, sipping coffee from travel mugs as they chatted.
A couple of moms glanced our way, the polite kind of curious that wasn’t quite gossip.
I didn’t blame them. I was aware of us too.
Me, walking beside a man who was younger and indecently handsome.
Tattooed forearms, work boots, and a worn ball cap pulled low.
He had a look—the kind that made people glance twice.
Austin, of course, was still completely unaware.
He turned to me as we rounded the corner. “Do you always wear heels on Tuesday mornings?”
I glanced down at my boots—block-heeled, leather, more fashion than function. “I have a meeting in town.”
He nodded. “You clean up nice for a school drop-off.”
I lifted an eyebrow. “I wish I was in sweatpants right now.”
His mouth curved.
We stopped at the crosswalk, waiting for the light. I folded my arms, trying to ignore the warmth blooming at the base of my neck. “Are you always this charming before nine a.m.?”
Austin crossed behind me, making sure I was on the inside of the sidewalk. “Only when I’m walking back with you.”
There it was again—that unstudied, easy confidence that never tipped into arrogance—and it was doing something to me. Something traitorous.
The duplex came into view—two connected units with matching cedar siding and flower beds that Austin had sneakily weeded last week while I was working late. He hadn’t even mentioned it. I just came home to tidy mulch and a clipped hydrangea bush, like it had magically fixed itself.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside first, toeing off my boots. Austin followed and headed toward the kitchen like it was second nature now.
The door clicked shut behind him, quiet and certain.
In the stillness that followed, the house exhaled—just a soft settling of silence—but I felt it in my chest like a shift, like something was changing.
Austin moved through the kitchen with an ease that made my stomach twist. He didn’t ask where things were anymore.
He didn’t hesitate when he opened drawers or reached for the bag of coffee.
He knew where I kept the mugs. Which one was mine.
The stupid pink one with the cracked handle and faint lipstick ghost that wouldn’t scrub off.
He set his own tumbler under the machine, waiting for the slow, steady drip to finish. Then he rinsed my cup from the morning and turned it upside down beside the sink.
He didn’t say anything, because he didn’t need to.
It had become a ritual of sorts—small, unspoken, and somehow intimate.
The cup was always there when I wandered out mid-morning between meetings, warm from the rinse, placed precisely where I would reach without thinking.
The first time it happened, I nearly dropped it, heart lurching with the simple suggestion of thoughtfulness.
Now I just stared at it, quiet, like it had said something too loud in the hush of the kitchen.
“I’ll get that later,” Austin said, tapping a finger on the loose drawer handle. His voice was casual, easy—already halfway out of the moment. “It’s coming off the track.”
He pulled his travel mug free, screwed the lid on tight, and ran his hand over the back of his neck. I watched the movement, the long line of muscle shifting beneath the sleeve of his shirt. His biceps stretched the cotton just enough to draw the eye—and mine went there, traitorously.
I folded my arms tighter, trying to ignore the way the house smelled like him now—like pine soap and clean cotton or like the faint, sun-warmed scent of whatever detergent he used. It clung to the air and to the couch cushions.
My home—the one I had fought to rebuild—was no longer entirely mine.
Winnie had started drawing pictures of him.
Crayon stick figures with big smiles labeled in wobbly block letters: AUSTIN. Her latest drawing had been slipped under a magnet on the fridge, and I hadn’t moved it.
He was in her art. Her morning routines. Her vocabulary. He was in my walls.
And worst of all—I didn’t want to chase him out.
“You sure you don’t need anything before I go?” he asked, thumb hooked in the belt loop of his jeans.
I shook my head, maybe a little too quickly. “No, I’m good.”
He lingered, just long enough to stretch the moment taut.
My voice caught somewhere between my throat and my ribs. “So I’m . . . thinking about pizza tonight.”