Chapter 6 Noelle #3
When the door clicks shut behind him, I breathe out slowly.
Oh shit. What am I going to do now?
The question loops through my head like a siren I can’t shut off. My pulse still hasn’t slowed from the second Grant said grandson.
It echoes in my ears, heavy and relentless, until I can’t even hear the quiet carols playing anymore.
Grant, Callum, and Dean coming back into town is a mess all on its own—emotional landmines everywhere I look—but if they see Eli?
If any one of them catches even a hint of familiarity in his face?
I’ll be screwed. Completely, irreparably screwed.
Grant might not say anything.
He’d keep it to himself, analyze what he was seeing and sit on it until he was sure what he’d found out was one hundred percent fact. Callum would be good at hiding his emotions, too.
He’d keep his distance, bottle everything up until he could catch me alone and ask me.
But Dean?
He wears his heart on his sleeve. There’s no filter between his thoughts and his mouth.
If he figures it out—if he even suspects what Grant does—he’ll blurt out the obvious before he can stop himself.
Then my house of cards will collapse.
Years of quiet stability gone in a single breath.
Panic claws up my throat as I glance back toward the counter where Eli’s still sprawled on his stomach with his tiny cars now lining up in neat little rows.
The sight of him so peaceful, so unaware, only twists the knife deeper.
He’s mine.
My one good thing that came out of my colossal mistake of a weekend fling and the idea of losing this safe little life we’ve built makes my stomach turn.
Desperation propels me back toward the counter.
My phone sits where I left it beside the register.
I snatch it up, hands trembling, and scroll through my contacts until I land on the one name that feels like a lifeline.
Lila.
My thumb shakes as I tap the screen.
The phone rings once.
Twice.
Three times.
Each tone stretches longer than the last until finally she answers.
“Hey, girly-pop.” Her voice bursts through, bright and chaotic as ever. “What’s up?”
I close my eyes, exhaling slowly through my nose, trying to pull myself together before words fail me. “Hey.”
Eli’s still humming quietly to himself, making engine noises as he ploughs a car through a fistful of fake snow I used for the window display that I have no earthly idea when he managed to grab.
He’s blissfully oblivious to my minor panic attack and I make sure of that before I move, sneaking around the counter toward the back aisle.
From here, I can keep one eye on him and the door, just in case anyone else decides to walk in.
“We have a giant problem,” I finally manage to say.
There’s a shuffle on the other end of the line—Lila’s signature chaos, no doubt juggling her phone with one hand and a toddler with the other.
“Oh? Like what? Did your shipment of new ornaments arrive shattered again. Or, oh my god, don’t tell me…
did Mrs. Harper tell you your Santa display looks ‘too secular’ again? ”
Despite the pounding in my chest, a strangled laugh escapes me. “Worse.”
That gets her attention.
“Worse?” she repeats, suspicious now.
My throat goes dry. I glance at Eli again before lowering my voice to a whisper. “You know how I told you that I wasn’t really sure who Eli’s dad was?”
“Girl,” she says immediately, her tone both sympathetic and exasperated. “Join the damn club. If I knew my baby daddy’s name, I’d already have that motherfucker on child support helping me pay for these daycare extortionists.”
A small, involuntary smile tugs at my lips.
We’d met years ago, back when Eli was barely one, at a Mommy & Me class.
It was me, her, and a sea of pastel sweaters and diamond wedding bands.
We’d been the only single moms there, the ones who got polite smiles and lingering looks like our missing husbands were a contagious tragedy everyone else was terrified to catch.
Lila had cracked a joke under her breath about “needing a stiff drink after this baby yoga class” and the rest was history.
She was the only person I could ever really talk to about motherhood without the fear of feeling shamed.
The only one who knew what it meant to build something out of chaos because of stupid choices made when life was easier living it recklessly.
But even with her I’d never been entirely forthcoming. I’d never told her the full story about that weekend, about my dad’s three best friends.
I’d never lied to her like I had my dad and said that Eli was the result of some anonymous hookup.
At least that part I’d been truthful: that it was a mistake tangled up in loyalty, friendship, and too many lines crossed.
Still, Lila’s no fool.
She’s pieced enough together over the years to know my “wild weekend” was the turning point of everything.
To her credit, she’s never once judged me for it.
That fact alone is what has made her my best friend.
I pace the back of the store with my heart in my throat and whisper, “They’re here, Lila, in town. All three of them.”
There’s a sharp inhale on the other end. “What?”
“Yeah. They came back for Dad’s birthday. One of them stopped by the shop and saw me. I didn’t know what the hell to do. And he knows about Eli—well, doesn’t know know—but he knows Eli exists. What the hell do I do?”
“Your dad’s birthday?”
I wince, realizing what I’ve just said. I can already hear her connecting the dots, filling in the blanks she’s had circled for years with no context clues to point her in the right direction.
Now I’ve just given her the damn key to the cipher.
“I—”
She cuts me off. “You know what? We’re going to unpack that later. Right now, deep breaths. We’re not panicking yet.”
“I’m already past panicking!” I hiss. “If any of them put two and two together—”
“They won’t,” she says quickly, though she doesn’t sound entirely convinced either. “Just breathe, Noelle. You’ve kept this secret for six years. You can survive one weekend.”
I groan. “I don’t know.”
“Look at it this way, if any of them say anything, you’ve already got plausible deniability.
Especially with your dad. He’d never accuse you of lying about Eli’s father being from some one-night hookup in college.
Just run with that. If the guys are stupid enough to say something”—she pauses for dramatic effect—“I don’t know, kick them in the balls?
Yell at them for harassing you? You’re good at that. ”
I laugh weakly. “Yeah…okay.”
“I’m serious!” she insists.
I can picture her now pacing around her kitchen, phone balanced between shoulder and ear as one hand waves a spoon in the air still coated with peanut butter from adding it to her morning shake.
“If it comes down to it, the worst that’ll happen is them making fools out of themselves.
From what you’ve told me, they don’t seem like that type, but men get so weird about kids sometimes.
I swear, it’s that whole bogus legacy thing. They get it in their heads that—”
Her words start to blur, fading into the background hum of my thoughts.
Lila continues to rant about men and their fragile egos, the myth of fatherhood as ownership and the whole nine yards but I’m not really hearing her anymore.
Because my situation isn’t that simple.
Dean, Grant, and Callum aren’t deadbeats.
They wouldn’t be the kind of men who would have run if I’d told them.
If anything, they would’ve done the opposite.
They would’ve stepped up and tried to fix things, make it right, and do what they thought was best for me and the baby.
At least, that’s what the fantasy version I’ve concocted in my head says.
I never wanted to be someone’s obligation.
I didn’t want Eli to grow up feeling like a mistake his fathers had to correct.
I wanted him to be mine, born out of chaos, yes, but raised with love not guilt. So I never gave them the chance to be fathers.
Still, I’ve wondered more times than I care to admit what would’ve happened if I had gone through with it.
If I’d picked up the phone back then and told one of them the truth.
Would they have believed me?
Would they have fought each other trying to claim him, or would they have laughed it off as impossible?
The chances were so low. I was on birth control, and it hadn’t failed me yet.
It’s a thought that always hits late at night when the house is quiet.
I’ll be lying there in bed, staring up at the ceiling, and my mind drifts to the what-ifs. It’s a cruel kind of daydream because I know it doesn’t change anything.
My life, the way it is now, is still good. Eli’s happy, my business is thriving,
Dad’s proud of me. But the romantic in me is never quiet.
It whispers on those sleepless nights, painting alternate versions of my life in soft, impossible fragments of light. Ones where I never had to hide, where love didn’t have to be something secret and stained by guilt.
Lila’s voice cuts back in. “—and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, okay? You’re a badass mom. You made something beautiful out of a mess. Nobody gets to take that from you.”
I blink, pulled back to the present. Her words steady me, a lifeline in the storm raging inside me. “Thanks, Lila. I needed that.”
“Hey, I’m always here for you, okay?”
Deep down, though, the ache lingers like a faint bruise beneath the surface that only hurts when pressed.
It’s the quiet, wistful longing for a life that might have been.
A version of myself who didn’t have to hide. A version where I told the truth and it didn’t destroy everything in its path.
But that’s not my life.
My life is this: raising my son with my dad, turning exhaustion and fear into something steady and bright.
Building Noel’s Winter Wonders from nothing but an idea and a stubborn streak that refused to quit, creating beauty and joy out of solitude.
I’ve done so much with so little.
I’ve fought for this life, and I’m proud of it.
Still am.
Grant, Dean, and Callum coming back is just a minor setback. A bump in the road. One more thing to navigate and outlast like I always do.
I blow out a shaky breath, letting my shoulders sag as the tension drains from my chest. “Thank you for listening to me. I love you.”
Lila’s voice brightens immediately. “I love you too, girly-pop. And hey—keep me updated, alright? If you need someone to pop by and play bad cop to your good cop, I’m only a phone call away. I’ve got a pair of steel-toe boots I’ve been waiting to use on some unlucky bastard.”
Her tone makes me laugh, the first real one since I opened the shop this morning.
“Thanks,” I say, still smiling as I end the call.
I rub a hand over my face, fingers pressing into my eyes until colors bloom behind my lids.
I glance around the corner where Eli’s playing, lost in his own little world.
For a moment, I just watch him.
He looks so content and safe.
In that stillness, something inside me steadies.
No matter what happens, no matter who comes back or what truths threaten to surface,
I remind myself that this is what matters. Him.
Us.
I take another deep breath, drop my hand, and force a faint smile across my face.
Then I turn back toward the counter, slip my phone into my pocket, and get back to work.