Chapter 16
Sixteen
Anna, usually a placid baby, joins my quiet symphony of despair, her cries echoing through the room in solidarity. She’s inconsolable. Each wail is a cruel reminder of how I feel.
Somewhere in the fog of exhaustion and frustration, Mason’s voice cuts through. “Can you take her downstairs? I need rest if I’m going to hit the slopes tomorrow.”
The urge to smother him with a pillow is overwhelming.
Instead, I scoop Anna into my arms and retreat to the sunroom.
My footsteps are soft against the hardwood floor, a lullaby of motion as I bounce and sing until my voice cracks with exhaustion.
Hours blur into a cycle of soothing and nursing, trying to comfort her while holding myself together.
As dawn paints the sky in soft streaks of gray and lavender, Anna succumbs to sleep.
Her warmth is a fragile comfort in this hollow space.
Exhaustion claims me, and I drift into a restless slumber in the armchair.
It doesn’t last. A clatter in the hallway jars me awake. I blink, disoriented, as muffled voices and shuffling feet move through the house.
James appears in the doorway, wearing sleek army-green ski pants and a fitted midnight-blue base layer that clings to his chest. I must look as wrecked as I feel, because whatever he sees makes something flicker across his expression.
Pain? Pity? I offer a weak smile and a thumbs-up, silently telling him to let us be.
He nods and slips away, leaving me to stare off into the cold landscape, hoping sleep will return.
Coffee wafts through the air as the house falls silent.
A floorboard groans.
James stands in the doorway again, this time in old jeans and a soft sweater, a steaming mug in one hand and a tray in the other.
“Figured you could use some caffeine.”
“Weren’t you going skiing with everyone?”
“Changed my mind.” He pauses. “Honestly, you looked like you had a rough night. I thought… maybe I could help.”
“You stayed to help me?”
“If you’ll let me. I can hold Anna while you get some real sleep in an actual bed.”
“I can’t ask you to do that. I’ll drink a pot of coffee and be fine.”
“Nope. I’m not taking no for an answer. I saw bottles in the fridge. She needs milk, a clean diaper, and arms to hold her. I’ve got that covered.”
He leans in and lifts Anna from me. His touch is gentle and sure, his chest a warm haven for my sleeping child. “I can’t give you a full night’s sleep like you asked Santa for, but I can give you this.”
I watch him. The way he holds Anna. The way he remembers that stupid little joke from our walk in the woods. The tenderness in his eyes as he looks at me.
“Are you sure?” I blink hard, trying not to cry from the relief, from the offer.
He nods without hesitation.
“Diapers and clothes are in the bag downstairs by the front door. Warm the bottles. And seriously, if anything feels off, wake me.”
I turn away before I can fall any further and collapse face-first onto my mattress.
The image of James cradling Anna loops in my mind, a lullaby I don’t want to shut off.
Soothing, impossible, and precisely what I need to sleep.
It brings back the dream I had the night I first suspected I was pregnant.
Green eyes full of something I didn’t yet know I needed.
***
I stretch, my muscles protesting the sudden movement, and blink at the unfamiliar light filtering through the bedroom window. The house is silent, eerily so. A glance at the clock sends a jolt through me.
Five hours! I slept for five hours!
Panic lurches me upright, guilt slamming into my ribcage.
I rush to brush my teeth, throw on a clean sweater with shaking hands, and bolt downstairs, adrenaline thudding in my veins.
I meant to nap for an hour, at most two.
Long enough to take the edge off, wash away the dark circles, and feel human again.
But now, James has been alone with Anna too long, and the shame of that burrows deep.
The sight I’m greeted with steals my breath. James lies sprawled on the sectional, Anna curled on his chest like she was made to be there. One fist rests beneath her chin, the other curled around his thumb.
Oh, my ovaries.
The intimacy of it punches straight through me. He’s with her. No phone. No half-attention. His arms curve around her, natural and effortless.
I stand there, rooted, breathing through the ache of wanting something so badly it hurts.
Eventually, I turn toward the kitchen, clinging to the ritual of coffee like an anchor. The low hiss and gurgle of the machine doesn’t break the spell. Even here in the kitchen, I feel them. The sense that something sacred unfolded while I wasn’t looking, and I almost missed it.
God, I want him. I want him for myself. I want him for Anna.
But I know this feeling. A pit in the bottom of my stomach when something matters too much. The voice that whispers:
This will never last.
Take the safer option.
Leave before you’re left.
I’m staring into my cup of coffee, repeating over and over in my head how this is a fairy tale, a hope I can’t believe in, as footsteps thud across the floor.
James steps into the kitchen. Anna is tucked in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder, one tiny fist clutching his sweater.
His eyes find me, and that familiar lopsided smile spreads across his face.
My heart clenches, despite every warning I’m giving myself.
“Hey, you. Feeling better?”
There’s no frustration in his voice, no resentment for the hours spent caring for my daughter.
“I can’t thank you enough.” I reach for Anna. “I feel so much better. Are you guys okay?”
“Of course. She’s a dream, just took a little singing and dancing. She seems partial to Maxwell, by the way. Once she had her bottle, she was out.” He rubs the back of his neck with a sheepish grin. “I might’ve fallen asleep, too.”
I can’t look at him, not when it would be so easy to picture this as something more than it is. I turn away, open the fridge, and search for dinner ingredients.
“Pretty sure I saw everything we need to make chili.” James peers over my shoulder, breath warm on my neck. “There’s crusty bread on the counter. Want to tag team it?”
“Let’s do it.” My voice squeaks, and I gain distance from him, from the pull. Settling Anna into her bouncy seat on the floor so she can watch us, I queue up a Maxwell album, one I’ve always loved to fill the quiet with something softer than my thoughts.
“I see why Anna knows this album by heart,” James says with a grin.
“Careful with the teasing. I will head straight to the pet rescue and come back with Dutchess 2.0.”
“Ruthless.” His deep laugh fills the room.
We move around the kitchen in tandem. Chopping.
Laughing. Sliding past one another with familiar ease.
The conversation meanders, winding around us, sharing old stories from college meals, bad road trips, and songs tied to nights we barely remember.
Little things that don’t matter, but neither of us holds back from sharing.
When Anna fusses, he confidently walks over and picks her up, swaying as he sings along. Instead of looking away, guarding my heart from further intrusion, I ask, “How are you so good with babies?”
“After we left my father, we moved near my mom’s family. My aunt is much younger, and she had kids while I was in high school. I got roped into a lot of babysitting.” Anna’s hands reach out to honk his nose. They both laugh.
“Is that why you don’t go home for the holidays? Because she has family nearby?” I keep pushing around the sautéing onions, not daring to look at them standing together, framed in the light sneaking past the windows.
“We left on January 10th.” He pauses, rubs his neck, then says, “I always go home after New Year’s to be with her.”
Something deep and quiet passes between us. Neither of us looks away this time. Only someone who knows what this means would understand. His eyes soften and I imagine mine look equally affected.
“I usually go home for the holidays. But last year my mom and a friend went on a cruise, and I had no interest in being the third wheel, so I came here instead.” He pauses, voice dropping and changing the air. “I’m glad I’m here now.”
His words wrap around me like a slow exhale, curling into every space I thought I’d sealed shut.
Anna fusses again, giving me an excuse I’m grateful for. “She needs to eat.”
I settle on the sectional while James stays in the kitchen tending the chili, and let my head fall back, trying to pull myself together, to lock away everything he’s bringing out.
The music shifts. Maxwell is gone. Tinashe’s lush voice flows like a confession.
He walks toward us, a glass of water in hand. His green eyes study me, memorizing this version of me. A woman completely undone and trying to hold her heart steady.
Not just looking.
Seeing.
I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve never had someone look at me as if I’m the sun and make me laugh like it’s his favorite sound. And it terrifies me more than Mason’s silence ever could because indifference is safe. You can’t lose what was never given.
But James is offering something real. Something solid. Steady hands. An open heart. The unbearable hope that I could have this. I could keep it.
What happens when he sees the truth? When the shine wears off and all that’s left is a thirty-seven-year-old woman with enough baggage to fill this cabin?
“Sydney, can I get you anything else?”
“No, I’m fine.”
His face falls, but he doesn’t ask where the warmth went. He simply sets the glass down and walks away.
I sit nursing Anna, watching him walk back into the kitchen to finish making dinner, and something shifts inside me.
This is about the kind of mother I want to be, the kind of world I want Anna to live in.
I want her to know that love is steady, not conditional.
That tenderness isn’t a trick. That absence isn’t something you excuse with a smile.