Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
KATE
Ibarely sleep. Not properly, anyway.
The night passes in splinters rather than hours, broken up by the sound of Hudson moving around, my phone lighting up on the bedside table, and every thought I try to shut off before it spirals into something worse.
Each time I close my eyes, I see the same thing. Lukas standing outside the rink, completely still. Camille holding that little boy’s hand. And the child looking up at him with Lukas’ eyes.
By three in the morning, I give up pretending rest is happening and sit at the kitchen table with a mug of tea gone cold between my hands while the rest of the house stays dark and quiet around me.
Everything feels different now. Fragile. As if one unexpected moment has cracked straight through whatever this was becoming between us.
I think that’s the worst part. Not even the shock itself, but how quickly my brain started trying to protect me afterwards. The immediate instinct was to step back before it could hurt me properly. Before it hurts Hudson.
Because that’s where my mind keeps going, no matter how hard I try to stop it.
Hudson.
He’d started to trust Lukas.
Not completely, not blindly, but enough that I saw the walls lowering little by little. Enough that he’d started relaxing around him instead of analysing every interaction, as if he were waiting for proof that Lukas would eventually disappear.
And now this.
I scrub both hands over my face with a quiet groan and stare out into the dark garden beyond the kitchen window.
God, what a mess.
Upstairs, footsteps creak softly overhead, followed by the bathroom door opening and closing. A few seconds later, Hudson appears in the kitchen doorway, wearing joggers and a faded Panthers hoodie, his hair sticking up messily on one side.
He stops when he sees me already awake. “You’ve not gone to bed?” he asks.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
He shrugs slightly, moving toward the fridge. “Couldn’t sleep.”
The silence stretches as he grabs orange juice, and I can practically see him thinking. Hudson’s never someone who blurts things out. He sits with them first. He watches and processes first. Which means I know exactly what’s coming before he says it.
“Did he know?”
My chest tightens as I try to keep my voice careful. “I don’t think so.”
“But you don’t know.”
“Well,” I admit quietly. “He said he didn’t.”
Hudson leans back against the counter opposite me, arms folded loosely across his chest. He looks so grown up. Taller, somehow. Or maybe it’s just that moments like this force me to remember he isn’t little any more.
“He looked shocked,” Hudson says after a minute, then he nods slowly, staring down at the floor tiles. “I think he was telling the truth.”
The words catch me off guard. “You do?”
“Yeah.” He shrugs again. “He looked… freaked out.”
That’s probably the most fourteen-year-old-boy way possible to describe what I saw written all over Lukas’ face last night, but it’s also accurate. He looked devastated.
I wrap both hands tighter around my mug. “Adults have complicated lives sometimes.”
Hudson’s gaze flicks back to mine. “That sounds like teacher-talk. I’m not a child, you don’t have to sugarcoat everything.”
A helpless laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Maybe it is a little teacher-ish. I’m sorry.”
“You always say stuff like that when you’re trying not to tell me the real answer.”
Smart arse. “The real answer is that I don’t have any answers yet. Only that he didn’t know.”
“But if that kid is his…”
His voice trails off awkwardly, like even saying it out loud feels strange.
I nod. “Then he’s probably trying to figure things out.”
Hudson studies me, far too perceptive for his own good. “Are you okay? I mean, I know you’re not, but you will be, right?”
That’s the question I’ve spent the last twelve hours trying not to answer for myself. I force a small smile that feels fragile around the edges. “I will be.”
His expression tightens slightly before he looks away again. “Is he going back to Canada?”
The question slices through me sharply, because I haven’t let myself think that far ahead yet.
Lukas has a son. His life is in Canada.
And suddenly, the future I’d only just begun to imagine feels uncertain in a completely different way. “I don’t know,” I say honestly.
Hudson presses his lips together. “Right.”
I hate the disappointment I hear in that single word. Not because Hudson is exactly attached to Lukas, but because he’d started hoping. I saw it even when he tried to hide it. Someone showing up consistently matters to him, especially now.
I stand and move around the counter before I can think too much about it, then stop beside him and rest a hand lightly against his shoulder. “Hey,” I say with a smile. “Nothing bad has happened yet.”
“Feels like it has.”
Emotion catches painfully in my chest at that. I smooth my hand down his arm gently. “Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it.”
He nods in agreement, but I can tell he isn’t fully reassured. But then neither am I. The kitchen falls quiet again for a few moments before Hudson finally pushes himself upright.
“I’m going back upstairs,” he mutters.
“Okay.”
He hesitates in the doorway before looking back at me again. “I liked him.”
The confession lands somewhere deep and aching inside me. I know how much that cost him to admit. “I know,” I tell him. So did I.
Hudson disappears upstairs before I can say anything else. The emptiness he leaves behind feels enormous. I sink back into my chair, pressing both palms against my eyes until stars burst behind them.
I liked him too. Too much.
My phone buzzes beside me, and my stomach drops before I even look at it.
Emma.
Relief floods through me so quickly it’s almost embarrassing, and I answer straight away. “Hi.”
“Well,” she says without preamble, “You sound terrible.”
I let out a shaky laugh that’s dangerously close to becoming something worse. “That obvious?”
“Kate, you called me after your emergency appendix surgery, sounding more cheerful.”
Fair point. I lean back in the chair, exhaustion pressing heavily into my bones now that the adrenaline has worn off. “Hudson’s struggling.”
“And you?” I stare down at the table, contemplating how to answer that. Emma sighs in sympathy. “Oh, honey.”
I swallow hard. “I don’t even know what I’m upset about exactly. It’s not like he cheated on me. He didn’t even know.”
“But?”
“But everything changed in five seconds.”
Emma goes quiet, listening.
“He has a child,” I whisper at last, saying it aloud for the first time. “A whole little person. And suddenly there’s this entire part of his life none of us knew about.”
“That’s a lot,” she says gently.
“Hudson asked if he’s going back to Canada.”
“Ouch.”
“Exactly.” I press my fingers against my forehead. “And the worst part is, I don’t even blame Lukas. He looked totally blindsided.”
“Then you have to give him the chance to explain.”
I close my eyes. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” I say quietly. “I’m just scared.”
Emma’s voice softens immediately. “Of getting hurt?”
“No.” I pause. “Of Hudson getting hurt.”
Because that’s the truth. I can survive heartbreak; I’ve done it before. But watching my son start trusting someone only for that person to disappear? Absolutely not.
Emma seems to understand without me saying it out loud. “Kate,” she says carefully, “Protecting Hudson is important. Of course it is. But shutting Lukas out before he’s even had a chance to process this properly won’t protect anyone either.”
I stare out at the pale early-morning light creeping across the garden. “I know,” I whisper again.
I spend most of the day drifting through it, half-distracted. Cleaning things that don’t need it. Folding washing I already folded yesterday. Trying not to check my phone every ten minutes, even though my entire body feels wired with anticipation and dread.
Lukas doesn’t message, and part of me is relieved. The other part aches.
By evening, I’m curled on the sofa pretending to watch television while Hudson shouts at his friends through his headset upstairs.
I must drift off eventually because the sudden vibration of my phone against my chest jolts me awake. Darkness fills the room. For one disorientated second, I forget where I am. Then I see the screen.
Lukas.
My heartbeat stumbles agonisingly, but I open the message anyway.
Lukas: Can I see you tomorrow? Please.
I stare at it for a long time, long enough for my screen to dim twice, because I don’t know how to handle this version of pain.
The quiet kind, where nobody technically did anything wrong, but everything still hurts.
Part of me wants to ignore it. Part of me wants to drive to his flat and demand answers neither of us has yet.
Mostly, I just miss him. And that realisation terrifies me. I close my eyes briefly before typing back.
Kate: Okay.
The reply comes almost instantly.
Lukas: Merci.
I stare at that single word until my vision blurs. Then I lock my phone and sit alone in the dark listening to my own heartbeat, wondering whether tomorrow is going to break mine completely.