Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
KATE
Ispent almost the entire next day feeling sick.
Not curled around a toilet or crying into tissues like some tragic film heroine sickness, just kind of nauseous.
It’s quieter than that. A low, constant ache sits beneath my ribs and never quite eases, no matter what I do.
I know he’ll have been to early practice this morning, then he’ll have been in the weights room or running drills, or whatever it is he does.
Mentally, I picture him skating and laughing with his team.
Wondering whether he’s even thinking about Hudson or me.
By three o’clock, I’ve reorganised my classroom cupboards twice.
By four, I’ve checked my phone enough times to irritate myself.
And by five-thirty, when I pull into the small café car park that Lukas texted me the address for earlier, my hands are cold despite the heating blasting through the car vents.
I sit there for a moment, staring through the windscreen at nothing in particular.
The café sits just outside the city centre, near the canal, tucked between an old bookshop and a florist. Warm light spills across the pavement, and people drift past, carrying takeaway coffees.
Everything around me looks uncomfortably normal. Meanwhile, my entire life feels as if it’s balancing on a knife-edge.
I spot Lukas through the window. He sits at a small table near the back corner, shoulders tense beneath a dark jumper, one hand wrapped around a coffee cup he probably hasn’t touched. Even from here, through rain-speckled glass, I can see tiredness etched all over him.
My heart clenches at the sight, he looks exactly how I feel. I force myself out of the car before I can lose my nerve.
The bell above the café door chimes softly as I step inside, and warm air wraps around me, along with the smell of coffee and sugar. Lukas looks up instantly.
And God, his face. Relief hits him first, sharp and immediate. Then something heavier settles behind it when he properly sees me. For a second, neither of us moves as the last few days hang between us like a physical thing.
He stands automatically as I approach, that same instinctive politeness he always has around me still intact despite everything collapsing around us.
“Hi,” I say quietly.
“Hey,” His sounds rougher than usual.
I sit opposite him, carefully shrugging off my coat while my pulse thunders against my ribs. Lukas waits until I settle before sitting again.
There’s a coffee already waiting in front of me. My usual order, and the sight of it, almost undoes me, of course he remembered.
“I wasn’t sure if you would still want it,” he admits, noticing where my eyes land.
“I do. I’m shocked you remembered.” My voice comes out smaller than I intend, and I barely recognise it. Silence stretches briefly after that. It feels heavy and ever-so-slightly awkward.
“Of course I remember.” There’s a slight irritation to his tone.
Lukas drags a hand slowly across his jaw before looking at me again, his eyes darker than usual.
“I did not know,” he says immediately. There’s no easing into it or rehearsed speech, just the truth.
The honesty of it hits me square in the gut.
“I know,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
His expression shifts slightly, pain flickering across his face. “I swear to you, Kate,” he says quietly. “If I had known… I would have been there. I would not have left Québec.”
Emotion clings to my throat. I can see the heartache it’s causing him, and I can feel it radiating from him. More importantly, I believe him.
And that’s the problem. If he’d lied to me or manipulated me or hidden something deliberately, this would be simpler. Anger would give me something solid to hold onto, and I’d have no problem in walking away with my head held high. I’m not okay with men who don’t face up to their responsibilities.
But he looks broken.
“I keep replaying it,” he admits after a moment, staring down briefly at his untouched coffee. “The timelines. The dates. Trying to understand how I missed two years of my son’s life without even knowing he existed. I don’t know why she didn’t tell me.”
The word son still sounds strange coming from him. Raw somehow.
I watch him carefully as he speaks. The exhaustion carved into his face. The tension sitting across his shoulders like he hasn’t relaxed properly since the rink.
“When did she tell you?” I ask softly.
“The night after you left.” He exhales slowly. “We talked properly the next morning.”
“And?”
His jaw tightens. “She found out after I moved here.” He pauses briefly before continuing.
“At first, she says she wanted to tell me, but the distance, and then I suppose pride, got in the way.” His mouth twists bitterly.
“Eventually, I think too much time passed, and she convinced herself she could do it alone.”
I absorb that quietly. It sounds horribly human. Messy and emotional and full of mistakes nobody can undo now.
“She still should have told you. You deserved to know you were going to be a father.”
“Yes,” he says immediately. Anger flashes briefly behind his eyes now for the first time since I sat down. “She had no right to keep him from me.”
The ache in my chest deepens because beneath the anger is grief. Not just for himself, either, for Félix and all the tiny moments that he’s missed.
“I met him yesterday,” Lukas says more quietly now. “Properly.”
His anger is replaced by the biggest smile, and I see a different side to him all of a sudden. Not hockey player Lukas. Not flirtatious Lukas. Not even the man I’ve been slowly falling apart over for weeks. I see the father.
It almost steals my breath.
“He’s beautiful,” Lukas admits, looking down for a second, as if even saying it aloud overwhelms him. “And he called me Papa without thinking about it.”
Emotion cracks visibly through the last of his composure. I can see him trying to fight it.
God. This hurts, and not because I’m jealous or because Felix exists, but because I can already see what this means. Everything is different now.
Lukas slowly scrubs a hand over his face before looking back at me. “I don’t know what happens next,” he says honestly. “I’m trying to figure it out while feeling like I can’t breathe half the time.”
“I can imagine.”
“No,” he says quietly, eyes locking onto mine properly now. “I don’t think you can.” There’s no cruelty in his words, only truth.
“I wake up feeling guilty,” he continues roughly. “Because every second I spend thinking about you feels like I am already failing him.” His voice catches before he steadies it again. “And every second I spend with him, I think about you.”
My chest physically aches, because I know exactly what he’s trying to say. He’s being pulled apart already.
“I don’t want you to feel guilty for caring about your son,” I say. “You need time to get to know him.”
His eyes close briefly. “That makes this worse.”
A sad laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Yeah. It does.”
Rain taps softly against the café windows while conversations murmur around us. Ordinary life continuing while mine quietly fractures at the edges.
Lukas looks like he’s carrying too much all at once. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he says finally.
The sincerity in his voice is clear. “I know.”
“Or Hudson.”
I glance down at my hands briefly before answering. “He’s worried about me.”
Lukas’s expression tightens immediately. “Tabarnak.” He leans back, guilt washing visibly across his face. “I hate that. I feel like I’ve let you both down.”
“He doesn’t blame Félix, or you,” I say quietly.
“Good.”
“He blames the situation.”
Lukas nods slowly as though he understands exactly what that means. “I care about you,” he says suddenly, firmly enough that my heart stumbles against my ribs. “This was not temporary for me, Kate. This wasn’t a bit of fun to pass the time.”
I look away because hearing that right now feels unbearable. “I know.” I blink rapidly to try to clear the mist from my eyes.
And again, that’s the problem. If this had only been fun for him, maybe I could have protected myself more easily. Instead, every word and emotion feels real.
Which means losing it will be real too.
Lukas goes quiet after that, watching me carefully. “I can see you pulling away already,” he says softly.
The observation is so accurate that it stings. “I’m trying not to.”
“But you are.”
I force myself to meet his eyes again. “Because I know what this looks like now.”
And there it is, the thing neither of us wants to say aloud yet. His son comes first now, and part of me loves him more for that, even while it quietly breaks my heart.
Lukas leans forward slightly, then, slow and careful, as if he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he moves too quickly. “I don’t want to lose you,” he says quietly.
Emotion surges behind my ribs, and my breathing stutters. I hate how much I love hearing that. “But you might,” I whisper honestly.
His face tightens, as if he knows it too.
After a long moment, his hand moves slowly across the table between us.
I can’t determine if it’s an offering or a question.
But my chest aches violently as I stare at it.
I already know this won’t fix anything, but I still want him.
So slowly, before I can rethink it, I let my fingers slide into his.
Lukas exhales shakily the second I do, and his grip tightens carefully around my hand like he’s grounding himself in it. And sitting there in that tiny café with his hand wrapped around mine, I realise something devastating. I still believe in us.
But I can already feel him slipping away anyway.