Chapter 5
Five
The smell of coffee pulled Ethan from sleep like a hand reaching into dark water.
For one disorienting second, he didn’t know where he was.
The scent was wrong. Not the stale, day-old coffee he usually made in the evenings and reheated in the mornings, but fresh-brewed, rich and dark.
And there was something else beneath it.
Bacon. The sizzle and pop of it cooking, the savory smell that filled the house and made his stomach clench with unexpected hunger.
Then memory slammed into him like a freight train.
Lydia. Eli. Rosie.
The family he’d brought home from the hospital yesterday afternoon, installed in the upstairs bedrooms, given clean towels and showed them where everything was before retreating to his own space like a hermit crab pulling into its shell.
He’d barely seen them after that. Had made an excuse about needing to catch up on sleep, had gone to his room and closed the door and spent the rest of the evening staring at the ceiling, wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into.
Now, someone was cooking in his kitchen.
Ethan sat up, the morning light slanting through his bedroom window in golden bars.
His room was on the first floor. The master bedroom that he and Sarah had planned to share, the one with the en suite bathroom and the French doors that opened onto the back porch.
He’d kept it after she died, even though being in it felt like living in a museum dedicated to a future that never happened.
He pulled on a pair of jeans and a faded Army t-shirt, ran his fingers through his hair, and tried to prepare himself for whatever was waiting in his kitchen.
The house felt different. Alive, somehow. He could hear voices as he walked down the hallway. A child’s laughter, bright and clear, echoed through the house, and then a woman’s voice, warm and patient: “No, baby, you have to wait for it to bubble before you flip it. See? There.”
Ethan paused at the kitchen doorway, and for a moment he could only stand there and stare.
Lydia Harper stood at his stove. The ancient gas range that had come with the house and that he kept meaning to replace but never did.
She was wearing one of his old flannel shirts over her jeans.
The shirt was too big for her, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, the hem falling nearly to mid-thigh.
Her rich brown hair was pulled back in a messy bun, and she was wielding a spatula with the competent ease of someone who’d cooked too many breakfasts to count.
Rosie sat on the counter beside her, strictly against every safety rule Ethan had ever learned.
Her blonde curls was still mussed from sleep, her gaze keen as she watched her mother flip pancakes with the intense concentration of a surgeon.
Eli sat at the kitchen table, his chin propped on his hands, but when he saw Ethan in the doorway, his face lit up.
“Mr. Cole!” he said, straightening in his chair. “Mom’s making breakfast. She makes really good pancakes.”
Lydia turned, and something complicated passed across her face when she saw him. Embarrassment, maybe, at being caught in his kitchen, using his stove, wearing his shirt. But there was also something else. Something softer, more vulnerable. It made Ethan’s chest tighten.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said quickly.
“I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep, and I saw you had eggs and bacon in the fridge, and I thought—” She stopped, her cheeks coloring.
“I should have asked first. I’m sorry. I just wanted to …
after everything you’ve done, I wanted to do something to help. ”
“It’s fine,” Ethan managed, his voice rough with sleep. “More than fine. I usually just have coffee.”
“I made that too.” Lydia nodded toward the counter where the coffee maker was doing its job.
Actually doing its job, not the half-hearted dribble it usually produced when Ethan remembered to clean it.
“I wasn’t sure how you take it, so I—” She paused, and her eyes went distant for a second, like she was accessing a memory.
“No, wait. I do know. Black, no sugar. You had a cup at the hospital while I was doing my discharge paperwork.”
She turned back to the counter and poured him a mug, and handed it to him. Their fingers brushed when he took it, and Ethan felt the touch like a small electric shock.
“Thank you,” he said, taking a sip. It was perfect. Strong, perfectly brewed. Which shouldn’t have felt as significant as it did.
“Pancakes will be ready in a minute,” Lydia said, turning back to the stove. “I hope you’re hungry.”
Ethan wasn’t sure he’d been hungry in three years.
Not really hungry, the way you got when your body actually craved food instead of just accepted it as necessary fuel.
But standing there in his kitchen, watching Lydia flip pancakes while Rosie giggled and Eli set the table without being asked, Ethan felt something in his chest crack open just a little.
This is what the house was supposed to feel like. This is what he and Sarah had planned. Weekend mornings with coffee and pancakes, children’s laughter filling the empty spaces, the comfortable chaos of a family.
And here it was, three years too late, with the wrong woman and the wrong children, and it hurt so much Ethan couldn’t breathe.
“I can help,” he said abruptly, setting his coffee down. “What do you need?”
“Just sit,” Lydia said, her voice gentle. “You’ve done enough. Let me do this.”
So, Ethan sat at the kitchen table across from Eli, and watched a stranger move through his kitchen like she’d been doing it for years.
She knew where the plates were. Must have found them while he was asleep.
Knew which drawer held the silverware. Moved with the easy confidence of someone who’d spent a lifetime cooking breakfast for her family.
When she set a plate in front of him—three pancakes, four strips of bacon, eggs scrambled just the way he liked them even though he’d never told her, Ethan had to look away before the emotion showed on his face.
“This is amazing,” Eli said through a mouthful of pancake. “Mom makes the best breakfast.”
“Chew first, baby,” Lydia said automatically, sliding into the seat beside him with her own plate. Rosie was already eating, syrup on her chin, her small feet swinging under the table.
They ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes, and Ethan tried to remember the last time he’d had a real breakfast. Not coffee and a granola bar eaten in the truck, not leftover pizza from two days ago, but an actual meal at an actual table with actual people.
He couldn’t.
“This is really good,” he said finally, and meant it. “Thank you.”
Lydia smiled, and the transformation it made in her face nearly stopped his heart. She’d been pretty in the hospital, even exhausted and injured and wearing a hospital gown, but smiling, relaxed, in his kitchen with morning light catching in her hair, she was beautiful.
Ethan looked away quickly and focused on his pancakes.
When the plates were cleared and Eli had convinced Rosie to help him wash the dishes, a small miracle that made Lydia’s eyes shine with maternal pride, Lydia turned to Ethan with that expression he’d seen before. The one that said she was about to try to thank him again.
“Don’t,” Ethan said, before she could start. “You don’t need to thank me.”
“But I do,” Lydia insisted. “You’ve done so much. Given us a place to stay, brought our luggage from the barn, made sure we had everything we needed?—”
“It’s nothing,” Ethan interrupted. “I have the space. You needed help. That’s all there is to it.”
“It’s not nothing,” Lydia said, and there was steel in her voice now. “You opened your home to strangers. You’re letting us stay here when we have nowhere else to go. That’s not nothing, Ethan. That’s … that’s everything.”
She was crying now, silently, tears tracking down her cheeks that she tried to wipe away with the back of her hand. Ethan felt panic rising in his chest. He didn’t know what to do with crying women. Hadn’t known even with Sarah, when he’d usually made things worse.
“Hey,” he said awkwardly. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You can stay here as long as you need to get back on your feet. I meant what I said. There’s no rush. Take your time.”
Lydia looked up at him, and the gratitude in her eyes was almost painful to see. Then, before Ethan could process what was happening, she closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around him in a fierce hug.
Ethan froze.
He couldn’t help it. His body went rigid, his arms hanging uselessly at his sides, his mind blanking out completely.
She was warm against him, soft in all the places he’d forgotten a woman could be soft.
Her head barely reached his shoulder, and when she pressed her face against his chest, he could smell her hair.
Blueberry and something fresh, like clean air and sunshine.
His heart was hammering so hard he was sure she could feel it. His hands hovered uncertainly, not quite touching her, caught between the instinct to return the embrace and the panic of what that might mean.
Then Lydia pulled back, just enough to look up at him, and Ethan found himself staring into her eyes. Warm brown with flecks of gold, and she was looking at him like?—
Like what? Like he was a hero? Like he mattered? Like he was something more than just a guy with an empty house who’d made an impulse decision?
The moment stretched, time slowing to honey-thick seconds. Ethan could see the rapid flutter of her pulse at her throat, could see the way her pupils dilated slightly, could see the exact second when she realized they were still touching, still standing too close, still?—
Lydia jumped back like she’d been burned, her cheeks flooding with color. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly, turning away and busying herself with the already-clean counters. “I didn’t mean to … I shouldn’t have?—”