Chapter 20
Pauline
I woke up to a wet nose pressed against my face and the distinct sensation of being stared at by something that desperately needed to pee.
“Meatball,” I mumbled into my pillow. “It’s six in the morning.”
The nose pressed harder. A small whine of urgency.
“Jack. Meatball needs to go out.” I wiggled against the arm wrapped around my waist.
“She can’t keep interrupting our morning activities like this,” came his muffled complaint from somewhere under the covers beside me.
Meatball—fifty pounds of enthusiasm and terrible timing—put her paws on the bed and licked my ear.
“Jack—“ Whatever I was about to say averted to a laugh when Jack pushed off the covers with a resigned sigh.
He looked at Meatball doing her urgent pee dance, then at me.
“Want me to take her?”
“I’ve got it. You make coffee.”
I said climbing down from the bed with Meatball looking at us with approving eyes.
“Come back fast.” Jack said, squeezing my hip. “I’ll have coffee ready. And a few other ideas.”
I quickly leaned to cover Meatball’s ears, shooting him a playful bashful stare. “Behave. Not in front of the child!”
He laughed and headed for the kitchen, and I watched him go—all lean muscle and confidence, in a way that still made my stomach flip.
“Come on,” I told Meatball. “Before your father makes me combust.”
By the time Meatball and I made it back upstairs, Jack had coffee waiting and was attempting to cook something that involved eggs.
“Should I be concerned?” I asked, eyeing the pan like it might explode.
“Probably. But I’m committed now.” He gestured at the counter with the spatula. “There’s something for you. Came this morning.”
I found the envelope next to my coffee mug. Thick, expensive paper. My name in elegant script.
‘California Journalism Awards’
My hands weren’t steady when I opened it.
Dear Ms. Wells,
We are pleased to inform you that your feature story “Love and Custody: The Tucker Family’s Fight” has been selected as the recipient of this year’s Excellence in Feature Writing award…
I read the first paragraph three times. Then looked up to find Jack watching me, spatula forgotten, eggs probably burning.
“I won,” I whispered, my voice hollow with disbelief. “Jack, I won!” This time it came out as a squeal.
He was across the kitchen before I could blink, lifting me clean off the floor, spinning me while I laughed and cried at the same time and Meatball barked frantically because clearly something exciting was happening and she wanted to be involved.
“I’m so proud of you,” he said against my hair. “So goddamn proud.”
“The eggs are burning.”
“I don’t care about the eggs.”
“You’re going to care in about thirty seconds when the smoke alarm—”
The smoke alarm went off.
Jack set me down, swearing creatively, as he lunged for the stove while I opened windows and Meatball howled at the ceiling like she was personally offended by the noise.
By the time we got everything under control—alarm silenced, eggs scraped into the trash, windows open to air out the kitchen—we were both laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.
“This is a disaster,” Jack said, staring at the ruined pan.
“This is perfect.” I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressed my face against his bare chest. “This is exactly perfect.”
He held me there in the kitchen that smelled like burnt eggs and victory, and I thought about how far I’d come from that girl who couldn’t get out of bed, who couldn’t eat, who couldn’t imagine feeling anything except grief.
I was here. I was happy. I was winning awards and adopting dogs and burning breakfast with the man I loved.
The award ceremony was in two weeks, but today I had somewhere else to be.
Jack drove me to the cemetery without me having to ask. He just knew—the way he’d started knowing things about me over the past six months. When I needed space. When I needed company. When I needed him to hold me while I cried and when I needed him to make me laugh until I forgot why I was sad.
We’d gotten good at this. At being together. At building a life that made room for grief without being consumed by it.
Meatball came with us because leaving her home meant coming back to destroyed furniture and guilt-inducing sad eyes. She sat in the backseat with her head out the window, ears flapping, living her best life.
“You want me to come?” Jack asked when we pulled into the cemetery.
“Give me ten minutes?”
“Take as long as you need.” He squeezed my hand. “We’ll be here.”
I grabbed the roses from the passenger seat—white—and walked through the grounds alone.
Spring had arrived while I wasn’t paying attention. The trees were blooming. The grass was that impossible green that only happened for a few weeks before summer burned it brown. Everything smelled alive.
My grandmother’s headstone was simple.
Margaret Anne Wells
Beloved Grandmother
I knelt on the grass, set the roses against the stone, and took a breath that hurt less than it used to.
“Hi, Grandma.”
The wind rustled through the trees. A bird sang somewhere close by. The world kept moving, the way it always did, indifferent to loss.
“I’m getting married next month,” I said—conversational, like we were sitting in her kitchen over tea.
“Jack proposed on the anniversary of the day we met in college. He had this whole speech planned—I could tell because he kept forgetting words and starting over—and I said yes before he finished because I couldn’t wait anymore. ”
I traced her name with my finger. The stone was warm from the sun.
“He’s good to me. You’d like that. He makes me coffee in the morning even though he’s terrible at mornings. He adopted a dog with me whom he absolutely adores. He holds me when I miss you so much I can’t breathe, and he doesn’t try to fix it. Just stays.”
A tear slid down my cheek. I let it fall.
“I won an award. For the Tucker story. Remember I told you about that interview? How nervous I was?” I laughed, wet and thick. “You told me I was going to be brilliant. You were right. You were always right about me, even when I didn’t believe it.”
More tears now—the good kind. The kind that felt like release instead of drowning.
“I’m happy, Grandma. I’m actually, genuinely happy.
And I know you’d tell me that’s what you wanted—that you didn’t raise me to spend my life mourning you.
But I miss you anyway. Every single day.
I see something funny and reach for my phone to call you.
I have good news and my first thought is telling you.
You’re just… everywhere. In everything.”
The wind picked up. The roses I’d brought shifted slightly, their petals catching light.
“Jack’s waiting in the car. Probably entertaining Meatball—that’s our dog, I told you about her last time.
Golden retriever. Absolute chaos. She ate my favorite shoes last week and looked so guilty I couldn’t even be mad.
” I stood slowly, brushing grass from my knees.
“I’m going to marry him next month. I wish you could be there.
I wish you could see it. But I think… I think you knew.
In the hospital, when you put our hands together. You knew this was coming.”
I pressed my fingers to my lips, then to the headstone.
“I love you. I’m going to keep loving you. But I’m also going to keep living. Because that’s what you taught me to do.”
When I turned around, Jack was standing twenty feet back, giving me space but close enough. Meatball was sitting beside him, her tail sweeping the grass, and when she saw me looking, she bounded forward with that graceless enthusiasm that made everything better.
I caught her before she could knock me over—barely—and she licked my face with single-minded determination while I laughed and cried and held onto her like an anchor.
Jack appeared beside me, his hand warm on my back.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah.” I wiped my face on Meatball’s fur, which she tolerated with heroic patience. “I’m ready to go home.”
“Home,” he repeated, and something in his voice made me look up.
He was watching me with an expression I couldn’t quite read—soft but intense, like he was memorizing this moment.
“What?” I said.
“Nothing. Just you.” He cupped my face, thumbs tracing the tear tracks on my cheeks. “You called it home.”
“Well.” My throat went tight. “That’s what it is, isn’t it.”
“Yeah.” He kissed me—gentle, careful, like I was something precious. “Yeah, it is.”
We walked back to the car together, Meatball trotting ahead, and I didn’t look back at the grave. Didn’t need to. My grandmother was with me. In the way I moved through the world. In the strength I’d learned from her. In every choice I made to keep living even when loss tried to stop me.
That night, we had dinner at Claudette and Michael’s.
Claudette yanked the door open before I could knock, her eyes immediately dropping to my left hand. She grabbed it, shrieked, and pulled me into the house so fast I nearly tripped.
“MICHAEL!” she shrieked. “They’re engaged! Look at this ring!”
“We can see the ring from here,” Michael called from the kitchen. “You don’t have to scream.”
“I’m excited! I’m allowed to scream!” She was turning my hand in the light, examining the ring from every angle. “Oh my God, it’s perfect. It’s so you. How did he—when did he—tell me everything.”
Behind me, I heard Jack laugh as Michael pulled him into one of those back-slapping bro hugs that men did instead of actually expressing emotion.
“Congrats, man,” Michael said. “About time.”
“Took me long enough.”
“Only seven years.”
“I was working up to it.”
They headed for the kitchen, already arguing about whether Jack’s proposal counted as romantic or just overdue, and Claudette dragged me to the couch.
“Okay, start from the beginning. How did he do it? Was it romantic? Did you cry? Did he cry?”
“Library anniversary,” I said. “And yes, very romantic. And no, neither of us cried, but it was close.”
“I knew it!” She bounced on the couch. “I told Michael he was going to propose soon. He had that look. That panicky ‘I’m about to do something terrifying’ look.”
“How do you know that look?”
“Because Michael had it before he proposed to me again.” She grinned. “Men are very transparent when they’re planning something important.”
From the kitchen, we heard Michael yell, “I heard that!”
“You were supposed to!” Claudette yelled back, then immediately returned to grilling me. “So. Wedding. When? Where? What are we thinking?”
“We haven’t really—”
“I’m your maid of honor, obviously. We need to start planning immediately. Colors, venue, flowers—”
“Claudette—”
“I have binders.”
“Of course you do.”
“I’ve been preparing for this since college.” She said and I laughed.
“Remember when I said I’d be your maid of honor someday and Jack’s best man and I’d wear half a suit and half a dress just to make a point?”
“Oh my God, I forgot about that.”
“I didn’t. I have sketches.” She was completely serious. She grabbed my hand again, staring at the ring. “I’m just so happy for you. Both of you. You’re perfect together. You always have been.”
My throat went tight. “Yeah. We are.”
Dinner was loud and chaotic and exactly what I needed. Jack and Michael argued about sports and business.
After dinner, while Michael and Claudette did dishes—Michael washing, Claudette drying and critiquing his technique—Jack and I stood on the back patio looking at the city lights.
“Claudie’s going to take over the entire wedding,” I said.
“She absolutely is.” His arm came around my waist, pulled me against his side. “You okay with that?”
“Honestly? Yeah. She’s going to make it beautiful.”
“She’s going to make it very huge.”
“You’re a billionaire. You can handle it.”
“Fair point.” He turned me to face him, both hands on my hips now. He kissed me—soft, sweet, completely inappropriate for someone’s back patio.
I stole a quick kiss, and through the window I could hear Claudette and Michael laughing about something.
“Let’s go home,” I said against his mouth.
“Yeah?” His voice had gone lower, rougher. “You have plans?”
“Several. None of them involve clothes.”
“Best idea you’ve had all day.”
We said goodbye to Claudette and Michael—Claudette making me promise to look at venue options she was going to email me, Michael shaking his head like he’d given up trying to control his wife’s enthusiasm—and drove home with Jack’s hand on my thigh the entire way.
When we got home, Meatball greeted us like we’d been gone for years instead of hours, and Jack kissed me against the front door until I forgot how to form coherent sentences.
Later, in bed, with Meatball sprawled across the foot and Jack’s arm around my waist, I stared at my would-be husband. My heart was overflowing with happiness I didn’t know was possible.
I turned in his arms, found his mouth in the dark. “I love you too.” I whispered it fiercely.
Jack’s breath caught. His whole body tensed, and when I pulled back enough to see his face, his eyes were bright—wet and stunned and so full of emotion it made my chest hurt.
“Say that again.” His voice was thick with emotion.
“I love you. I love you so much, Jack Specter.”
“Again.”
“Jack—”
His hand came up to cup my face, and it was shaking. “I’m making up for seven years of not hearing it. Humor me.”
I laughed against his lips. “I love you. I love you. I love you so much it’s actually ridiculous.”
“There it is.” He kissed me thoroughly, unhurried, like we had all the time in the world. Like there was nowhere else either of us would rather be.
Meatball sighed dramatically from the foot of the bed, clearly disapproving of the distribution of attention.
“She is definitely judging us,” I said.
“And she can wait.” He pulled me closer, his hand sliding into my hair. “I’m not done hearing you say it yet.”
“I love you,” I whispered, and watched his eyes go dark with emotion.
“Perfect,” he said, voice rough. “Say it every day for the rest of our lives and I might eventually believe it.”
“Deal.”
He kissed me again, and I let myself fall into it—knowing I was caught, knowing I was loved, knowing that everything we’d been through had led us here: this moment, this man, this love that had survived everything we’d thrown at it.