35. Jordyn
JORDYN
The school bus sighs to a halt at the corner, and I watch Brody climb down, his small form a familiar silhouette against the afternoon light.
By the time he’s home, the backpack is off, the shoes are by the door, and the routine resumes its unbreakable rhythm.
Snack. A quiet show about planets. Dinner.
The methodical march toward bedtime. I move through it all on autopilot, my hands performing the tasks my brain can’t focus on.
I check the water temperature for his bath.
I lay out his weighted blanket. The house settles into its nightly hum, the soft glow from the hall nightlight casting long shadows.
This quiet used to be a relief. A crater of peace after a day of noise and vigilance. Now, it feels different. Crowded. Each silent corner of the house holds a ghost just out of view.
I sink back against the kitchen counter, the cold a shock against my arms. My head drops back, and I stare at the ceiling, replaying the last few days. My body still aches in ways I don’t want to name. It’s a messy collage of sensations.
Tate’s slow, steady breath against my neck, the weight of his hand in mine, a quiet promise of safety that let me finally stop bracing for impact. It was a release, a gentle uncoiling of every muscle I keep clenched.
Then Wes. His rough hands gripping my hips, the raw desperation in his eyes that mirrored my own.
A fire, not a warmth. He didn’t soothe the chaos; he met it, challenged it, dragged a response from me that was all sharp edges and urgent need.
His forehead pressed to mine, a silent declaration that he wasn’t letting go.
And Dean. The deliberate, consuming way he took control, stripping away every layer of my defenses until there was nothing left but raw nerve and surrender. His low commands still echo in my ear. You can have what you want, Jordyn.
Three men. Three completely different truths that somehow occupy the same space inside my head, inside my body.
Stepping into my life not one by one, but all at once.
It’s not a choice between them. It’s a collision.
A messy, terrifying pile-up in the one place I thought I had everything under control.
My gaze drifts to the window, to the streetlamp that paints a perfect, lonely circle on the pavement.
Out there, the town is sleeping, but in the morning it will wake up.
It will start talking. This isn’t the city, a place where you can be anonymous in a crowd.
Here, every new face is a story people are waiting to write the ending to.
The new single mom. The quiet kid. And the three men who suddenly orbit them like a rogue constellation.
Gossip in a place like this isn't just noise. It has teeth. It will follow me into the grocery store, into the principal’s office.
Whispers that stick like burrs to your clothes, impossible to pick off completely.
I can already hear the judgments forming, the sideways glances that question my choices, my stability.
They’ll see a mess, a woman tangled up with men who belong to the town, not to her.
And every ounce of their scrutiny won't just land on me. It will splash onto Brody. He’s already a target. This just gives them a bigger one.
I push off the counter, the floor cool beneath my bare feet as I walk down the hall.
I pause in his doorway. The faint light from the hall spills across his bed, illuminating a scene that stops the frantic spin of my thoughts.
He is perfectly still. His face, usually a tight map of his day’s anxieties, is smooth.
His hands are uncurled by his head, palms open.
He’s not fighting sleep. He’s sunk into it.
This quiet, deep rest isn’t an accident.
It’s what’s left after a day where he felt seen.
A day where Tate knelt and gave him a schedule, where Wes became a physical wall between him and the crowd, where even Dean’s commanding presence held the chaos of the world at bay.
They built a fortress around him, brick by brick, without even knowing it.
This peace in my son’s face, this rare and precious stillness, is their fingerprint.
And whatever this is, this complicated, dangerous thing I’ve stumbled into, it’s also the source of that.
The alarm cuts through the morning quiet at six-thirty, same as always.
I reach over and silence it before the sound can travel down the hall to Brody's room.
The house feels different today, charged with something I can't name.
I pull on jeans and a faded t-shirt and pad to the kitchen, my bare feet finding every cold spot on the hardwood.
Coffee first. The machine gurgles to life, and I lean on the counter, staring at nothing while the caffeine brews.
My reflection catches in the window above the sink—hair escaping its ponytail, shadows under my eyes that weren't there a week ago.
I look like someone who's been turned inside out and reassembled slightly wrong.
"Mom?" Brody's voice drifts from the hallway, soft and sleep-rough.
"Morning, buddy. Pancakes or cereal?"
"Cereal. The square kind."
I pull the box from the cabinet, measure out exactly three-quarters of a cup into his blue bowl. The milk goes to the precise line he's drawn with permanent marker. Routine is our religion, and this morning I cling to it like a lifeline. Normal motions. Predictable outcomes.
But my hands shake slightly as I pour, and the milk splashes over the line.
Brody notices immediately. His shoulders tense, and he stares at the bowl like it's betrayed him.
"It's okay." I grab a spoon and carefully remove the excess. "See? Back to normal."
He nods, but his fingers find the hem of his shirt, working the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. The tell-tale sign that his day is starting with a crack in the foundation.
I watch him eat, methodical and precise, each spoonful exactly the same size.
My mind drifts despite my efforts to anchor it here, in this kitchen, in this moment that should be simple.
Instead, I keep circling back to last night—to three different sets of hands, three different ways of being seen.
The memory sits heavy in my chest, equal parts warmth and panic.
"Time to go, Brody."
He rinses his bowl, places it in the dishwasher exactly where it belongs, and retrieves his backpack from its hook by the door.
We drive to school in comfortable silence, but I feel the weight of unasked questions between us.
He's too perceptive, too good at reading the subtle shifts in my energy. If I'm off-balance, he'll sense it.
The cafeteria at lunch buzzes with its usual chaos, but today the noise feels sharper, more pointed. I move through my tasks—wiping tables, refilling napkin dispensers, monitoring the flow of kids through the lunch line—but my attention keeps fragmenting.
A cluster of fourth-graders sits three tables away from where Brody eats alone. They're not looking at him directly, but their conversation carries just enough to catch fragments.
"...weird kid..."
"...my mom said his mom is..."
"...those firefighter guys..."
The words hit like small, precise cuts. I step closer, pretending to clean a table that's already spotless, but the kids notice and fall silent. Their eyes dart between me and Brody, calculating and cruel in the way only children can be.
Mrs. Patterson, the lunch supervisor, appears at my elbow. "Everything alright, Jordyn?"
"Fine." The word comes out clipped, harder than I intended.
She follows my gaze to Brody, who's carefully eating his sandwich in perfect squares, oblivious to the attention. "He's adjusting well, don't you think? The other children are just... curious."
Curious. As if that makes it better. As if curiosity excuses the way Tate Morrison just whispered something that made three other kids giggle and glance in Brody's direction.
"Right. Curious."
Mrs. Patterson's smile is the kind adults wear when they want to smooth over something they don't understand. "Children can be resilient. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."
But I am worrying. I'm watching the careful distance other kids maintain around my son, the way conversations pause when he walks by, the subtle but unmistakable message that he doesn't belong.
And underneath it all, the growing awareness that I've made him more visible, more vulnerable, by becoming entangled with three men this town considers their own.
The smell of sour milk and disinfectant hangs thick in the air. I’m wiping down a table sticky with spilled juice when I see it. Not out of the corner of my eye. Not a half-glimpsed possibility. I see it head-on, clear as a photograph.
Tate Morrison, the same boy from before, leans across his table toward Brody’s.
He picks up a single French fry, places it meticulously next to his carton of milk, and then moves a tater tot with exaggerated slowness to form a perfect line.
He looks at his friend, a pale kid with a shock of red hair, and widens his eyes in a parody of intense focus.
The redhead snorts, a spray of chocolate milk hitting the tabletop.
Brody freezes.
His fork, loaded with a neat square of sandwich, stops an inch from his mouth.
His entire body goes rigid, a statue carved from tension.
His gaze is fixed on the checkered pattern of his napkin, but I know he isn’t seeing it.
He’s gone inside himself, to that quiet, locked room where nothing can get in, but nothing can get out either.
He doesn’t cry. He doesn’t even blink. He just stops.
That stillness is a thousand times worse than a scream.
A wave of heat rushes up my spine. The din of the cafeteria—the clatter of trays, the high-pitched chatter of a hundred children—fades to a low, distant hum. For a half-second, I can’t move. All I see is my son, isolated on his little island, while the sharks circle.
Mrs. Patterson is three tables away, scolding a girl for throwing a carrot. She doesn’t see it. No one does. The moment is too small, too quiet, too fast. It’s over before anyone can step in. But it happened. And it will happen again.
This isn’t manageable. This isn’t a small problem I can fix with a quiet word to a teacher.
The whispers I heard earlier, the mocking I just saw—they’re all tangled together.
The story getting passed around isn’t just about the "weird kid." It's about his mom, the one who is suddenly surrounded by the town’s firefighters. My life, the messy, complicated thing I’m building with Tate and Wes and Dean on nights and weekends, isn’t separate from Brody’s life in this loud, bright room.
It’s bleeding into it, painting a bigger, brighter target right on his back.
And it's all my fault.