30. Chapter 30
Seth
The fairground dust still clung to my boots when I dropped them by the door, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. My shoulders ached from carrying Olive half the day, but even that ache felt different, lighter somehow. Like I’d been carrying something that mattered.
The house was quiet again, as it always was, but tonight, the silence didn’t feel as sharp.
It felt filled, echoing with memories that didn’t belong to these walls but had taken root anyway.
Olive’s laughter on the Ferris wheel. Madison’s voice, soft with wonder when she looked out at the town.
Her hand brushing against mine in the crowd, quick but enough to make my pulse stumble.
I dropped onto the couch, elbows on my knees, and exhaled.
I didn’t know how to do this.
For years, I’d built a reputation on being steady, reliable, unshakable. The man who didn’t flinch at storms or setbacks. And maybe that was true on the outside. But inside? I’d trained myself to keep everyone at arm’s length. If nobody got too close, nobody could see the cracks.
But today, hell, today Olive had climbed right over those walls without even trying.
She looked at me with absolute trust, calling me Uncle Seth like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And instead of pushing it away, I found myself leaning into it.
Carrying her bear. Buying her ice cream.
Letting her tug me from booth to booth like I’d been part of her little world forever.
And Madison…
I’d expected her to stay guarded, to keep me at arm’s length the way she always had. But on that Ferris wheel, when she finally loosened her grip on the rail and let herself breathe, I saw something shift in her. Something softer. Something that made my chest tighten in a way I didn’t want to name.
The truth was simple: I wanted to be the man she saw glimpses of today. The one who could make Olive laugh, who could give her a night where the weight wasn’t all on her shoulders.
But wanting that was dangerous because I didn’t know if I could keep it up.
Letting someone in meant letting them see the parts of me I’d buried.
The doubts, the insecurities, the fear that I wasn’t enough once people saw past the surface.
Madison had been through her own storms, she didn’t need mine.
I leaned back, running a hand over my face. I couldn’t deny it anymore: I was lowering my walls. Not all at once, not in some dramatic way. But piece by piece, brick by brick, Madison and Olive were dismantling what I’d spent years building. And the scariest part? A part of me wanted them to.