Chapter 39
Flashback
Claire
The memory hits me before I can stop it.
I see him at seventeen, leaning against the hood of that beat-up truck he loved more than common sense, tossing his keys up like he didn’t have a worry. That careless grin, sun in his hair, acting like rules were optional.
“Let’s skip class,” he’d said, smirking at me. “Come on, Claire, don’t be boring.”
I remember pretending to be annoyed even while my heart did that stupid little leap.
I was easy for him in a way I’ve never been for anyone else.
Then all the other memories slide in, uninvited:
Ethan forgetting my birthday until almost midnight and showing up with a gas-station cupcake, looking proud of himself like it counted.
Ethan sleeping through our plans, more than once.
Ethan kissing me like I was the center of his universe…
and then vanishing into silence whenever responsibility came into question.
He was exhilarating and exhausting.
Beautiful and impossible. Lightning in human form, bright, unpredictable, and gone before you could make sense of it.
And now…
Now he’s sitting on Lily’s tiny bed, carefully trying to turn a page because her little fingers are in the way.
The contrast sits in my heart.
Something tightens low in my chest, small but unmistakable.
I don’t want this reaction. I don’t want to feel anything for him.
Not after everything.
But watching him try this hard for Lily…it shakes something loose in me.
A part of me that remembers the boy he was and sees the man he’s trying to be.
◆◆◆
Lily falls asleep halfway through laughing at one of Ethan’s ridiculous dragon voices. Her small hand lands on his knee like she’s done it a hundred times.
I watch him tuck her in, pushing a curl from her forehead with a gentleness I don’t think I’ve ever seen from him.
“Goodnight, bug,” he whispers.
Something pulls tight in my throat.
It’s unfair, the way he gets to be this now, steady and present.
When he looks at me, it’s not the old Ethan at all. No swagger, no heat, no boyish charm covering a hundred insecurities.
Just… quiet gratitude.
It disarms me. A softening I don’t want to acknowledge.
I gather my bag to leave, needing distance before this feeling grows legs. I’m almost at the door when he says my name.
“Claire.”
I turn.
“Thanks,” he says. “For helping.”
For a second, I can’t read him.
And that’s what scares me.
that he’s becoming someone I don’t know how to protect myself from.
“It’s no problem,” I manage.
But when I step out into the evening air, something bothers me.
Helping is easy.
What’s starting to happen inside me, that’s… not.
◆◆◆
The shift between Ethan and me doesn’t happen in one moment.
It happens in small ones. Quiet ones. The kind you don’t even notice until they’re stacking up on each other.
It starts with simple conversations.
“Did Lily finish her homework?”
“Yeah. She needed help with the last question, but she got it.”
“Did you eat anything today?”
“Sort of.”
“You need to work on the ‘sort of.’”
Short, almost awkward exchanges.
Careful, like we’re both trying not to overstep. But he listens. That’s the part that surprises me.
He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t get distracted.
He doesn’t shut down or disappear into that old fog he used to hide in whenever emotions were involved.
If I mention a long day, he actually asks what happened. And if Lily struggles with something, he pays attention and tries to adjust.
He apologizes in small ways. Cleaning the kitchen before I show up,
Leaving me an extra plate of lunch even if he says it’s “nothing,” thanking me without making it uncomfortable.
The steadiness is new.
It might be the biggest difference of all.
One night, after we get Lily to bed, I walk into the living room and find him sitting at the table, sorting through Lily’s school papers with this completely focused look on his face.
Old Ethan would’ve scoffed at the scene.
This version? He’s trying.
Trying in ways I didn’t expect, that make something quiet in me ache with all the what ifs.
It’s a strange place to be, noticing someone you used to know inside and out, and having to learn them all over again.
I don’t trust it yet.
But I see it.
And sometimes, when he looks up and meets my eyes, I catch a flash of that nineteen-year-old I once loved, just steadier and older.
I don’t know what to do with that.
So, I do the only thing that feels safe.
I ignore it.