Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Swayze
Colter and Oakleigh moved just ahead of me on the trail. Ludo loped around them in wide circles, snuffling at every bush and tree trunk like the world’s most enthusiastic forest inspector before coming back to lick my hand, as if laying claim.
“Ew,” I muttered, wiping his slobber off on my hiking pants. But I was still smiling. The big lug of a dog made today easier.
“Okay, okay, I’ve got one,” Oakleigh announced. “What did the fish say when it swam into a wall?”
Colter glanced back at her, grinning. “What?”
“Dam.”
I snorted despite myself.
Colter laughed. “That’s terrible. Where do you even learn these?”
“Faith has a surprisingly excellent collection. She says they’re essential for surviving boring work dinners.”
Colter stopped to examine a fallen oak sprawled across the trail, its trunk split where lightning had struck. He ran his hand along the charred wood, assessing. Oakleigh waited beside him, patient. She’d clearly done this before.
I hung back a few steps, watching them. The afternoon sun filtered through the bare branches overhead, catching faint hints of copper in Colter’s dark brown hair.
He pointed out something to Oakleigh, and she leaned in with genuine interest. I didn’t catch what he’d said, but my throat tightened anyway.
He was such a good dad. Patient. Present. The kind who made terrible jokes and still managed to make his kid feel like the most important person in the world. I’d seen him with Oakleigh enough times now to know it wasn’t performance. This was who he was.
And that made what I was doing so much worse.
Oakleigh had spent much of the past month at Lisa and Faith’s while Colter had been tied up with rehearsals and—let’s be honest—with me.
Especially the past couple of weeks. We’d been insatiable after finally crossing that line.
Every spare moment had been stolen kisses and tangled sheets and conversations that stretched into the early morning.
I hadn’t meant to monopolize him. Hadn’t even realized I was doing it until Lisa mentioned in passing, during drop-off yesterday, that Oakleigh missed having her dad around more.
The guilt had been eating at me ever since.
What if Oakleigh resented me for it? What if she saw me as the person who’d taken her dad away? She’d been nothing but sweet to me since we’d met, but that was before. Before Colter and I became an us.
“Your turn, Swayze,” Oakleigh called back to me.
I blinked. “What?”
“Dad joke. You have to contribute one.”
“Oh, I don’t think I—”
“Come on.” Colter straightened from the downed tree. His bright blue eyes held that warm gleam that never failed to make my pulse skip. “You can’t just be a spectator.”
I scrambled for something, anything. “Um. Why don’t scientists trust atoms?”
Oakleigh’s face lit up. “Because they make up everything!”
“You knew it?”
“It’s a classic. But I’ll allow it because you’re new.” She said it with such serious authority that I had to smile.
Colter moved on to the next section of trail, making notes on his phone about the deadfall locations. Oakleigh bounded ahead with Ludo, leaving me to fall into step beside him.
“You’re quiet,” he said, low enough that Oakleigh wouldn’t hear.
“Just enjoying the scenery.”
His hand found mine, fingers threading together. “You sure?”
No. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore.
But I squeezed his hand in reassurance. “Yeah. I’m just a little tired. Someone’s been keeping me up at night.”
His eyes sparked at that, and I could practically see the wheels turning about every single thing he wanted to do to me the next time he had the chance. That look made my knees go loose and my core clench.
I lowered my voice. “I’m gonna need you to stop looking at me like I’m dessert while your daughter is within view.”
“But you’re my favorite dessert.”
Heat bloomed in my cheeks as I thought of the many times he’d proven just that. “Behave yourself, you naughty man.”
“Dad! Come look at this! I found a nurse log.”
“For now.” He darted in to brush a quick kiss over my lips, then trotted ahead to where Oakleigh was examining something to the side of the trail.
I pulled my Nalgene bottle from the side pocket of my backpack and hung back for a moment to give myself a chance to wrangle my lust under control.
This man was too potent for his own good.
How the hell could he go from teasing me about sex to enthusiastically explaining something about mushrooms to his kid in less than a minute?
Was it a special skill developed by parents?
I’d never really thought about having kids.
JP hadn’t married. Paisley had gone through two ex-husbands before finding her way back to her first love.
As she’d been in her mid-thirties by then, they’d chosen to put all their focus on their marriage.
We had such a relatively small family, and kids just hadn’t been a part of it.
I liked kids just fine—case in point, Oakleigh was a delight—but I hadn’t wanted to limit myself by jumping straight into the idea of marriage and babies after college.
Not that there’d been any men in my past I’d wanted to keep permanently to begin with.
Neither JP’s dad nor ours had stuck around to actually parent, and I had a certain amount of cynicism about men when it came to parenting and sharing the load.
I wasn’t here for doing everything on my own.
But now here I was, careening into love, with a single dad whose roots sank deep into the mountain we were standing on.
That hadn’t been on my bingo card when I’d come here.
Finding Colter had been such an unexpected surprise.
Oakleigh—and okay, yes, Ludo, too—had been major bonuses.
Now I couldn’t quite stop myself from imagining what it would look like if I stayed.
To see Oakleigh go from a sassy as hell tween to a true young adult and beyond. I found I wanted to see that.
But nothing was that simple.
Colter came from an enormous family. Did he want more kids?
Was that something I’d want, if we ended up staying together?
I’d never had to consider it before, and I didn’t have an answer in the moment.
I knew without a doubt that he was an amazing dad, and he’d be a true partner in that area.
He’d shown that every day since we’d met.
But I didn’t know what I wanted. The whole situation was challenging my expectations of what I’d always thought my life would be like.
By the time I joined the two of them, conversation had evidently shifted from mushrooms.
“So, you’ve got a birthday coming up.” Colter tugged lightly at the ponytail she’d threaded through the back of her baseball cap. “You given any thought to what you want?”
“Yeah, actually.”
“Lay it on me.”
“I want to dye my hair blue.”
Colter’s steps faltered. “You want to what?”
“I mean, not like all blue. But with blue streaks. Or maybe purple. Like Bristol.”
He frowned. “I’m not sure about that, Twig.”
I might not have known this kid long, but I recognized the mulish set to her chin. “It’s my hair. It would be cool. Wouldn’t it, Swayze?”
Oh, God. I didn’t need to get in the middle of this.
I wasn’t a parent. But she was looking at me with such an expectation of solidarity with the cause.
“I mean, I think it’s definitely gonna depend on what your parents think, but if it’s not permanent, and it’s not against the school dress code, that seems like a fun way to express yourself. ”
I glanced at Colter, hoping I hadn’t overstepped. I had no idea what he considered a reasonable age for a girl to dye her hair.
He hummed a noncommittal note before tugging on the bill of Oakleigh’s hat. “Mom and I will discuss it.”
They lapsed back into dad joke territory for the next quarter mile. I contributed a couple of stinkers I could remember my brother throwing around when I was young. Then Colter darted off trail to go mark some trees.
Oakleigh hooked her thumbs in her backpack straps. “I should’ve gone with a tattoo.”
“What?” I barked the question in a laugh.
“Well, obviously they won’t say yes to that, so the hair really would seem tame in comparison.”
“Can’t fault your logic.” I tugged out my water bottle again, not because I was thirsty but because I needed something to do with my hands, because suddenly standing here more or less alone with an eleven-year-old was making me nervous.
Which was ridiculous.
Deciding to rip the proverbial Band-Aid off, I took a long sip of water and tried to keep my voice casual, though my pulse had kicked up a notch. “So I guess your dad told you we’re dating now.”
“Yeah.” No indication of how she felt in that one-word answer, her face carefully neutral as she watched a squirrel dart up a nearby oak. The lack of information made my stomach twist, so I tried again.
“That’s gotta be kinda weird for you.”
Oakleigh just shrugged in that way kids did when they didn’t want to commit to an actual response. The gesture was maddeningly vague, leaving me hanging in the uncomfortable silence.
Right. Direct and to the point it was. I twisted the cap back onto my water bottle and met her eyes. “How do you feel about it? I mean, if you’re not okay with it, that’s completely understandable, and I’d rather know than not. Your opinion matters.”
She fixed incredulous brown eyes on me, her expression shifting to something almost surprised. “Are you kidding? I think it’s awesome.”
Relief washed through me, immediate and overwhelming. “You do?”
“Yeah. My dad deserves someone who will focus on him and make him happy, because he always takes care of everybody else. You make him happy.”
Her words hit me like a gut punch, and my throat closed up a little. The simple honesty in her voice, the matter-of-fact way she’d assessed the situation—it was almost too much. I swallowed past the sudden knot lodged there. “He makes me happy, too. Really happy, actually.”
The girl narrowed her eyes at me, studying my face with a scrutiny that was far too perceptive for an eleven-year-old. “Are you crying?”
I blinked rapidly, trying to disperse the tears gathering at the corners of my eyes. “Absolutely not. But I just want to say I know this isn’t just about us. Because there is no him without you, and I just… I want you to know that I think you’re a really cool kid. One of the coolest, honestly.”
Oakleigh grinned, her whole face lighting up with it. “I am. And I’m always up for having more cool family.”
Family. As if Colter was unquestionably going to keep me. As if there was no doubt that this was heading somewhere permanent and lasting.
We were still a long way off from any kind of decisions about that, and I knew better than to get ahead of myself, but I couldn’t quite stop myself from reaching out to hook an arm around the girl’s shoulders and pulling her in for a quick, impulsive side hug.
“Thanks for that. Really.” Having her blessing meant more than I realized it could, more than I’d realized I needed until this exact moment.
Colter trotted back to us then, boots thudding against the packed earth of the trail, his gaze ping-ponging between us with curiosity and the faintest hint of concern. “Everything okay here?”
I smiled at him, lighter as the tension I’d been carrying dissipated. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re good.” Clearing my throat, I straightened and adjusted my backpack straps. “Okay, I’ve got another one.”
Colter’s eyebrows rose with interest, a smile already tugging at his lips. “Oh?”
“What do you call a bear with no teeth?”
Oakleigh tilted her head, considering the question with exaggerated seriousness. “I don’t know. What?”
“A gummy bear.”
She groaned dramatically, throwing her head back, but she was grinning wide enough that her eyes crinkled at the corners. “That’s so bad.”
“That’s the point,” I said, unable to keep the satisfaction out of my voice.
Colter laughed, that warm rumble that I was growing increasingly fond of, and reached for my hand again as we continued down the trail.
His thumb swept across my knuckles in an absent caress that felt both intimate and natural, like we’d been doing this for years instead of weeks.
The calluses on his palm were rough against my skin.
The touch grounded me in a way I hadn’t felt since well before the fire.
Ludo bounded back to check on us, his massive paws thundering against the ground, his tail wagging so hard his entire back end swayed precariously. He shoved his enormous head under Oakleigh’s hand, demanding attention with the subtlety of a freight train.
“You’re such a goofball,” she told him affectionately, scratching behind his floppy ears while he panted happily up at her.
The path curved ahead of us, winding deeper into the woods where the trees grew closer together and the undergrowth thickened.
Late afternoon light slanted through the canopy above, painting everything in shades of amber and gold.
My boots crunched over fallen leaves and the occasional branch.
The air smelled of pine needles and damp earth, with just a hint of wood smoke from someone’s distant chimney.
This. This right here was something I hadn’t known I needed—this sense of belonging, of being woven into something bigger than myself.
Something I wasn’t sure I deserved after everything that had happened.
But maybe I could keep it anyway.
Maybe I was allowed to have this, despite my mistakes.