Chapter 13
Lauren
The morning walk had been Kylo’s idea.
The kids had made their position on that very clear.
“I don’t wanna speed walk,” Bakari said, with the full conviction of an eight-year-old who had thought this through. “Daddy walks too fast and he doesn’t stop.”
Nina nodded beside him like she was cosigning a formal complaint. “We want to make breakfast with Mommy.”
Kylo looked at his children. Then at his wife, who was already pulling out a mixing bowl and pretending she hadn’t heard any of it.
“Traitors,” he said.
Which was how Kylo and I ended up on the sidewalk alone at eight fifteen in the morning while the rest of the house made pancakes.
The neighborhood was quiet. The air was still cool, trees running down both sides of the street, the kind of block that had been well kept for decades and intended to stay that way. Kylo set a pace immediately that told me why his kids ditched him.
I lasted two blocks.
“Kylo.” I put my hand on his arm. “I need you to slow the hell down for a second.”
He laughed and slowed to something that actually resembled a walk rather than a drill. “My bad. I forget not everybody moves like me in the morning.”
“Nobody moves this fast in the morning,” I said, catching my breath and falling back into step beside him. “That ain’t no normal pace.”
He smiled as we walked in comfortable silence for a moment.
“I’m really glad you came,” he said after a while.
He looked at the sidewalk ahead of us. “Layla doesn’t really talk to anybody the way she talks to you.
She’ll go weeks carrying something before she says a word about it to me, but you show up and within one night she’s actually smiling. ” He paused.
I looked over at him and felt warmth move through me.
I had known Kylo when he was barely a hundred pounds soaking wet.
He was so skinny, eager, and so clearly in love with my sister that it was almost embarrassing to be in the same room with him.
He had been a boy back then, still figuring out the shape of himself, still finding his footing.
And somewhere between then and now he had become this man with a mortgage and a morning walk routine and children who called him Daddy and a whole life he had built with his own hands without a safety net under him the way we’d always had under us.
“You turned into a good man, Kylo,” I said. “I’m proud to call you one of my brothers.”
He nodded but didn’t deflect it, which told me he had done enough work on himself to receive a compliment without shrinking from it.
We walked another half block before he said anything else.
“Can I tell you something?” His voice had shifted into a lower register.
“Always.”
He was choosing his words carefully. “I just want to get this shit right,” he said finally.
“I don’t even talk to my dad anymore because I always felt like he never heard me out, and what I was going through never fully landed with him.
So I try to be different with Bakari. I try to actually listen.
” He exhaled. “But then this boy is out here fighting everybody. I had to put some fire on his chest about it, let him know that’s not how we move…
and then I’m sitting there feeling like a hypocrite because I fought every other day when I was his age. Every single day.”
“Why do you think he keeps acting out?” I asked.
He got quiet as if he had already been sitting with the answer and just hadn’t said it out loud to anyone.
“I think my son has ADHD,” he said. “His thoughts go a hundred miles an hour and his body follows them before his mind can catch up and make a decision. I see it.” He shook his head. “But I don’t want to get him diagnosed and have it follow him around. Mess up his future before he even gets to it.”
“Getting him diagnosed wouldn’t mess up his future,” I soothed. “Not getting him the tools he needs will.”
He looked at me.
“A diagnosis is not a ceiling, Kylo. It’s…. it’s a map. It tells him how his brain works so he can work with it instead of against it for the rest of his life. The kids who struggle are the ones nobody identifies early enough, not the ones who get the right support at eight years old.”
He nodded slowly, processing it.
“I just hate the idea of passing something down,” he said quietly.
“Like I already gave him something hard to carry before he even knew what was happening.” He looked out at the street.
“I felt it as a kid. Always moving, always destructing something, always ten steps ahead of myself with no way to slow it down. Nobody gave me language for it. I just got in trouble for it.”
I slowed my pace and he matched it.
“Bakari has something you didn’t have at his age.
” I looked at him directly. “He has a father who already sees him. Who is already paying attention, already asking the right questions, already willing to walk into an uncomfortable conversation at eight in the morning because he wants to get it right.” I held his gaze.
“You are doing an amazing job, Kylo. Not a good job, but an amazing one. And the fact that you’re this worried about it is exactly why. ”
Something happened in his posture that he probably didn't notice. His shoulders settled back, and he breathed out through his nose.
"Appreciate that, Laurie.”
We kept walking and I noticed the way he looked off to the side at nothing in particular, blinking more than he needed to.
I let him have a second with it.
Then I said, "You know what's crazy though?"
He looked over, grateful for the redirect.
"It's a lot of things in this life that will make you feel like you're not doing enough when you actually are," I admitted.
"Life just keeps happening and you start reading that as evidence that you're failing somewhere, that you missed something, that you should have known better or done more or been further along by now.
" I shook my head. "But that's not what it means.
Life happening to you is not a report card. "
He was quiet, wiping his tears before they dropped.
"Everybody gets handed different tools," I said.
"Different upbringings, different resources, different amounts of grace from the people around them.
You cannot compare what you built with what somebody else built when you weren't starting from the same place.
" I glanced over at him. "The only thing that has ever mattered is what you do with what you were given and what you learn from the things that didn't go right.”
“You make it so simple.”
“It’s not but we make things worse from overthinking everything.
Just keep doing your best. That's it. That's the whole assignment.
" I paused. "So don't walk around feeling like you're not doing good just because life keeps moving and throwing things at you.
That's just life, Kylo. It does that to everybody.
You got this, even when it feels like you don't. I promise you do. "
He nodded as we walked half a block before he said anything else.
"You knew," he said, but it wasn’t a question.
I looked over at him.
"About Layla and John." He kept his eyes on the sidewalk ahead of us. "I know she must’ve told you something about what’s going on."
"Yeah," I said. "She told me."
He nodded again like that answered something he had already suspected. His jaw tightened and he pushed his hands into his pockets and kept walking. I let him take his time with whatever was coming next.
"I'm trying to forgive her," he confessed.
"Like I really want to get past it and just move forward because I love her and I want my family together.
" He shook his head. "But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.
Because it does. Every single day." He paused.
"It's like she took the easy way out instead of just coming to me.
Instead of just saying something was wrong.
We could have fixed it, Lauren. Whatever it was, we could have worked through it together.
But she went outside of us and now I gotta sit with that and I didn't choose that shit. "
I stayed quiet for a moment because what he said deserved more than a quick response.
"Can I be honest with you?"
"That's why I'm talking to you," he said.
"Forgiving her doesn't mean what she did was okay," I said.
"It doesn't mean you erase it or pretend it didn't happen or rush yourself through the hurt to get to the other side faster than you're actually ready to go.
" I looked at him. "But you're still here.
You didn't leave, you didn't blow the whole thing up, you're going to therapy and working through it.
That means you already made a decision even if it doesn't feel right yet. "
He didn't say anything but he was listening.
"What you don't want to do is drag it out in a way that punishes both of you indefinitely," I said.
"Because if Layla feels like she will never get your trust back no matter what she does, she's going to stop trying, and then you both lose.
" I kept my voice gentle. "Forgiveness is not a feeling that shows up one day.
It's a decision you make and then keep making, over and over, on the days when it's hard and the days when it's harder.
" I paused. "Move at your own pace. Take your time. But move forward, not in circles."
He exhaled slowly.