Chapter 34
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
KATE
Ihold it together all day.
I still get Hudson up for school. I still pack lunches, sign permission slips, and answer emails at work, as if my entire life isn’t quietly cracking apart beneath my ribs. I smile at parents in the school car park and nod along to conversations I barely hear.
I function. Nobody looks at me and sees the woman who cried in the bathroom this morning after reading Lukas’ message for the fifth time.
Félix is doing better today. The fever finally broke. Thank you for checking in.
He’s trying not to hurt me any more than he already has.
By the time I pull onto Emma’s driveway after work, exhaustion sits so heavily inside me I almost don’t get out of the car. The sky is grey and low, and for a few seconds, I just sit there gripping the steering wheel while my chest aches with the effort of keeping myself together.
Emma opens the front door as I approach, and at one look at my face, her entire expression changes. “Oh, honey.”
The tears hit so fiercely that I have to turn away from her, pressing the palm of my hand against my mouth because the sound trying to come out of me feels humiliatingly broken.
Emma doesn’t say anything else. She just grabs my arm gently and pulls me inside. “Hudson?” she asks softly once the door closes behind us.
“At football training with Mum,” I manage thickly. “She’s bringing him home later.”
“Good.”
The warmth of the house wraps around me, instantly familiar, safe, and unbearable all at once. Emma guides me toward the kitchen, pushing a mug of tea into my hands before I’ve even fully sat down.
I stare at it without really seeing it. “I’m being ridiculous,” I whisper finally.
Emma actually snorts. “You are absolutely not being ridiculous.”
“I’ve known him five minutes.”
“And?”
I let out a shaky laugh that threatens to turn into another cry. “And apparently that’s all it took.” My throat tightens painfully as I look down at my hands wrapped around the mug. “I’m in love with him.”
The words settle heavily between us, and Emma goes very still for a moment before exhaling slowly. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I know.”
I blink up at her. “You do? Because it blindsided me.”
“Kate.” Her voice softens. “You light up when he texts you.”
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” I admit. “I was supposed to be sensible about it. It was supposed to just be…” I gesture vaguely. “Fun. A little reckless, maybe.”
Emma raises an eyebrow. “You? Reckless? It was never about having a bit of fun for you.”
I huff out a watery laugh. But somewhere between coffee dates and hockey games and Lukas standing in my kitchen making Hudson laugh over mozzarella sticks, everything shifted without me noticing. Or maybe I noticed and ignored it because it felt too dangerous to name.
“He looks at me like I’m…” I stop, emotion climbing again into my throat.
“Worth loving?” Emma finishes.
“Yes.” My eyes burn as the word comes out cracked and quiet.
Emma reaches across the table, squeezing my hand. “Because you are.”
I shake my head in denial, tears slipping free anyway. “But this changes everything.”
“It changes a few things,” she corrects gently. “Not everything.”
“He has a child, Emma.”
“I know.” Emma watches me carefully before speaking. “A man discovering he has a child doesn’t erase the way he looked at you.”
That’s the part I keep trying to rewrite in my head. Maybe I imagined all of it. Maybe I projected feelings onto him because I wanted to believe someone could want me that way again.
But I didn’t imagine it. I know I didn’t.
I think about the way Lukas looked standing in my hallway with his hand against my face. The softness in his expression whenever Hudson spoke to him. The quiet certainty in the way he kissed me goodbye was like he already belonged somewhere in my life. Why is this so painful?
“If he’d cheated or lied or done something awful, this would be easier,” I admit hoarsely.
Emma nods in agreement. “Because then you could hate him.”
Instead, he’s trying to become a father overnight, and that makes me love him more. It’s the cruellest part of all.
Emma sighs and gets up to refill the kettle, giving me space to pull myself together. “You know what I think?” she says after a moment.
“What?”
“I think you’ve spent so many years surviving that you don’t know what to do with being loved properly.”
My chest tightens. “That’s not fair,” I whisper.
“No,” she agrees. “It isn’t.”
There’s nothing but silence for a few seconds, broken only by the sound of the kettle beginning to boil.
“I keep thinking about Hudson,” I admit eventually. “About what happens if Lukas disappears from his life, too.”
Emma turns back toward me immediately. “Kate, stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” Her voice is firm now. “Lukas is not Daniel.”
“I know that.”
“Then stop punishing him for something another man did.” There’s a hint of anger in her voice, and I flinch slightly because she’s right.
But fear doesn’t care about logic. It digs its claws in and whispers that loving someone is dangerous because eventually they leave. Sometimes by choice, sometimes because life changes without warning.
Either way, you lose them.
“I hate this,” I whisper.
Emma’s expression softens again. I wipe angrily at my face, embarrassed by how emotional I’ve become. I don’t do this. I’m usually the composed one. The practical one. Not the woman crying into cold tea over a hockey player ten years younger than her.
Emma sits back down opposite me. “Have you spoken to him properly since the cafe?” I shake my head. “Why?”
“Because I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
“The truth would be a good start.”
I laugh weakly. “What, exactly? Hi Lukas, I’m devastated by your secret child, even though it’s not actually your fault. Oh, and by the way, I’m in love with you.”
Emma grimaces. “Okay, maybe not that.”
Despite everything, another small laugh escapes me, but then my face crumples all over again.
“I miss him,” I whisper. The admission hurts.
I miss texting him stupid things during the day.
I miss the way he automatically reached for my hand, as if it belonged there.
I miss him already, and he hasn’t even left yet.
Emma reaches for my hand again. “Then let him figure this out.”
“What if figuring it out means there’s no room left for me?”
She holds my gaze steadily. “Then at least you’ll know it wasn’t because what you had wasn’t real.”
Beneath all the fear and hurt and uncertainty, that’s what I’ve been terrified of. Not losing him, but finding out, I imagined all of it.
The tears come harder after that. Proper ugly crying, I haven’t allowed myself in years, shoulders shaking while Emma moves to sit beside me, pulling me into a hug without saying a word.
And for the first time since Daniel left, I let myself completely fall apart.
By the time Hudson gets home later that evening, my eyes are swollen, and my head aches from crying, but I’ve managed to compose myself enough that he doesn’t immediately panic.
He studies me anyway. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie automatically.
His expression says he doesn’t believe me for a second. “Gran said you had a rough day,” he says, shrugging his bag off. He hesitates awkwardly before stepping closer. “Is it because of Lukas?”
“A little.”
Hudson shifts his weight, hands shoved into the pockets of his hoodie. “I still think he’s nice.”
Emotion climbs back into my throat. “Oh, sweetheart.”
“I mean it,” he says quickly. “I don’t think he did anything bad.”
“No,” I whisper. “Neither do I.”
And that’s the tragedy of this whole thing. Life collided with us at the worst possible moment.
Hudson looks uncertain, like he wants to say more but isn’t sure how. “You really liked him, huh?”
I manage a small smile through the ache in my chest. “Yeah.”
He nods slowly, absorbing that. Then, unexpectedly, he wraps his arms around me. It catches me so off guard that I nearly cry again.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into my shoulder.
I hold him tightly, pressing my eyes shut. “It’s okay, you don’t have to be sorry.”
But even as I say it, I realise something awful. It’s not okay, because without meaning to, Lukas became part of us. And now I don’t know what happens if he can’t be anymore.