Chapter 9 Morgan
NINE
Morgan
Six days had passed since my meltdown in the music room, and I hadn’t gone to counseling or another group session since then.
No one forced me to change my mind, even though attendance was one of the rules at Guardian Hall.
They let me be on my own, but I hated the thought of disappointing anyone, especially Alex and Marcus.
I had silently and stubbornly promised myself that in two hours—exactly a week since I skipped group—I would go back.
Alex had already offered to babysit Gabbi since Jazz was at college, saying he’d use the kitten-creche idea, and Gabbi loved that.
The room was too quiet, Gabbi was down for a nap, and intrusive thoughts were creeping in.
I tidied to keep my hands busy—folding blankets, stacking toys, straightening things no one but me cared about.
The hat Cole had bought her lay half-buried between the folds of her blanket, and I picked it up without meaning to, rubbing the yarn between my fingers.
Cole.
I kept telling myself I was his charity case, his good deed for the week, a messed-up ex-soldier with a baby and no idea of where the future was taking him.
But Cole kept turning up—three times this week, I’d walked into the kitchen and found him there.
Not hovering. Not fussing. Just… there. He’d crouch beside Gabbi, murmur something to her, and leave before I could figure out what to do with the knot in my chest.
And every damn time he brought her something new.
And every time, something inside me twisted—warmth, resentment, confusion, all of it tangled together.
I didn’t know why it got to me so much. Maybe because no one had ever shown up like that before—not for me, not for anything that mattered to me.
A tiny jacket to match the hat. A ridiculous stuffed sloth she immediately drooled on.
A set of bright plastic stacking cups, he claimed, were essential developmental tools, but they clattered across the floor and made her giggle.
None of it was for me. All of it was for her.
And somehow that made it worse.
He was something to me, whether I wanted to admit it or not.
My lawyer had called earlier—voice tight, formal.
He’d been proactive, contacting Annie’s parents, who decided they wanted to see Gabbi—odd, given they’d thrown their daughter out and told her never to go home.
Apparently, talking to them was entirely up to me.
Harold had been honest with me, though—they could sue for access, maybe even custody if they proved…
whatever it was lawyers proved. I didn’t know.
I didn’t want to know. The thought of strangers deciding anything about my daughter made my skin crawl.
He reassured me that this wasn’t going to happen, rambled on about a job, a place to live, an education, and I listened and said what I thought he wanted to hear. I didn’t know what to do first.
I sat on the edge of the bed, still holding the hat, my hands shaking. “I’m not losing you,” I whispered to the empty room. “Not now.”
I leaned back against the wall, the stack of books on my bedside table catching my eye.
The complete Willard Price action adventure stories, brand new, in a collection box.
Untouched. Homework. I had homework. Elena would be disappointed I hadn’t done it, and there had to be a reason she asked me to read them, right?
I cracked open the case and pulled out my favorite book— Adventure.
The cover looked different from the dog-eared copy my dad used to read to me, but the feel of it was the same.
I remembered the story in flashes: two brothers thrown into the middle of the rainforest, all danger and heat and wild animals, everything bigger than life.
Shipwrecks. Poachers. A mission gone wrong.
Kids surviving things adults would’ve run from.
I used to think I loved it because it was exciting. Now I understood it was something else—those boys weren’t afraid to rely on each other. They weren’t alone.
I had no idea what I was supposed to get out of re-reading it, but maybe that was the point. I cleared my throat and began to read out loud.
Group went well. I’d gone back because I had to—because Gabbi needed me steady, because Alex told me he believed I could handle it, and maybe because part of me wanted to prove to myself that I wasn’t a fuck up.
The flood of emotion that had knocked me flat last time was still there—waiting, heavy—but it didn’t blindside me.
I could see it coming, let it hit, let it move through me without drowning in it.
A couple of the others talked more this time.
Jason, a Marine who carried himself as though he was still waiting for orders, spoke in this slow, steady voice about sandstorms that felt like they’d peel your skin off, and the way silence could be louder than gunfire.
And then Rivera—Air Force, sharp-tongued, funny as hell—talked about the loneliness of long nights on base, how you could be surrounded by a hundred people and still feel like a ghost drifting through it all.
Listening didn’t hurt the way it had before. It just… settled. Like maybe we were all versions of the same story, told with different scars.
When I came out this time, I’d done all my crying in the group.
I was wrung out—as if someone had taken out everything inside me, rinsed it through, and put it back wrong but lighter.
My eyes were gritty, my throat raw, but I wasn’t shaking.
That counted as progress. We’d talked about family today, and fuck, that was a hard thing for me to talk about.
I needed my Gabbi-hug and headed straight to the music room.
Cole was there again.
Relief hit me first. Then annoyance, because why the hell did I need him to be here? And underneath both, buried too deep to name, was that tug I pretended I didn’t feel. The one that made me want to walk toward him instead of away.
Sitting on the floor, legs stretched out, the kitten was batting at his shoelaces. Alex sat opposite him, cross-legged, tapping something on his tablet. They both looked up when I stepped inside.
Cole was in jeans this week—probably learned his lesson after getting baby drool and kitten claws all over his suit last time. He looked… normal. Comfortable. His hair was pushed back, his T-shirt mussed as if Gabbi had grabbed at it. And when his eyes met mine, something in my chest loosened.
Alex gave me a small nod, gentle, understanding. But Cole—he didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at me as if he were checking for cracks, making sure I was still standing.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
I wasn’t. But I wasn’t falling apart either.
“I… yeah. Okay.”
“I have a call to make,” Alex said as he left, pulling the door behind him.
I lowered myself to the floor beside them, my knee brushing his—just a light, accidental touch that sent a stupid spark up my leg.
I pretended it hadn’t happened, but my body didn’t get the memo.
I reached for Gabbi as Cole lifted her into my arms, her little fists bunched in my shirt, her cheek warm, and for a second, I just breathed her in. Safe.
I didn’t say anything at first. Didn’t trust my voice not to crack. Cole waited—he seemed to be good at that—just watching me with that quiet, steady patience that made everything in me twist.
“Thank you for letting me cry on you last week,” I said. He smiled, and I didn’t know what to do with that, so I smiled back—small, awkward, real.
“How did today go?” he asked.
“Today was about family,” I said, my voice a little rough.
“And I don’t… I don’t have much of one, you know?
My dad died young. My mum was barely there after that, and then she remarried.
Honestly, we don’t really talk. I got in trouble a lot as a teen.
Signed up to sort myself out, eight years to get an education, and get somewhere.
That’s my life.” It sounded pathetic out loud, like a résumé with half the pages missing.
I stared at Gabbi’s tiny fingers curled around mine. “What about your family?”
“Mine?” He looked surprised to have been asked.
“My parents are good people. I’m an only child, and they’ve always expected big things from me.
I’ve tried to live up to that but…” He blew out a breath, shoulders tense.
“I ended up joining the family firm because it was expected. I ‘invest things’—or really, I have people who do that for me while I sit in meetings pretending I’m contributing.
It’s comfortable. Predictable. And I don’t know if any of it is actually mine.
Honestly? I don’t even know what I want anymore.
” He blinked at me then as if he’d never meant to say any of that.
He rubbed his palms on his jeans, nervous in a way I hadn’t seen before. The air between us shifted—quiet, heavy, warm. Gabbi let out a sigh, and Cole’s eyes dropped to her, then lifted back to me with something raw in them. Something that made my pulse jump.
“I like being here,” he said, voice lower now. “With you. With Gabbi. It feels… real. Guardian Hall is more real than anything else I do. But it’s not just that.” He gave a shaky laugh. “I’m all confused because I’m also trying to make sense of you being vulnerable, and the timing… and just… you.”
“Me?”
“You,” he said quietly. “You walk into a room and everything in me—” He stopped, swallowed hard. “It just settles.”
I didn’t know what to do with that.
“Sh—sugar, I messed that up.” Cole stared down at his hands again, fingers flexing nervously. “I’m not great at saying things the right way. Or… knowing if I should say them at all.”
He looked up.
And in that second, I felt it—like the room narrowed to just us.
I shifted Gabbi carefully, laying her on the blanket beside us. She stirred but didn’t wake. Cole watched every movement; his gaze focused in a way that made my chest ache.
When I turned back to him, he was closer. Not touching—but close enough that the warmth of him reached me.
He exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath for a week. “Morgan, tell me to stop.”
“I’m not telling you that,” I said, and my voice was more steady than I felt.
He leaned in—slow, giving me every chance to pull away.
I didn’t. Our foreheads brushed, a tentative press that made every nerve in me spark.
His hand hovered near my jaw, waiting. Asking.
I turned into the touch. And that was all it took.
Cole’s lips met mine—gentle at first, questioning, as if he wasn’t sure he was allowed this.
Allowed me. I answered with the slightest tilt forward, and the kiss deepened, still careful, but real.
My first real kiss in a very long time.
I eased back first, barely, my breath unsteady, my heart hammering in a way that was both terrifying and…
good. Really good. Cole’s eyes were still closed for a second, like he was memorizing the moment before he let it go.
When he opened them, there was no panic in his face.
No regret. Just certainty. Warm, steady certainty aimed straight at me.
“Morgan,” he whispered, his voice wrecked in a way that made something low in my stomach flip, “I want to take you out. Both of you.” His gaze flicked to Gabbi, sleeping on her blanket, then back to me. “An actual date.”
My brain short-circuited. “A… date?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Somewhere good for her. Somewhere with colors and lights and noise, she’ll love. The Chicago Children’s Museum has this whole sensory area—bright, safe, perfect for babies her age. And I thought maybe…” He hesitated for only a beat. “Maybe you’d both like to go. With me.”
My mouth went dry. Dating wasn’t in my job description as a barely functioning single dad whose life was a legal minefield. Still, the way he said it—calm, confident, like he wanted me, as if he’d already pictured us there—something in me leaned toward him instead of away.
“You want us on a date,” I said. “Gabbi and I?”
“Yes. If you want that too.”
Panic and hope tangled in my head. Going outside again—where the world was real, where people looked, judged, where anything could go wrong—facing all the shit inside me? Could I do that? “What if it all goes wrong?”
“I won’t let it,” he said with extreme confidence.
Gabbi should do things that ordinary kids do, see outside, see lights and hear noise.
“Okay then,” I whispered. “It would be good for her if I at least tried to leave Guardian Hall.”
He smiled then—small, warm, relieved—and it landed somewhere deep inside me, right where the fear usually lived.
A date. With him.
Us.
How the hell would I process that?