31. Wade
— ? —
Wade
She was pulling away.
I could feel it happening, watch it happening, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.
The dinner invitation I’d extended for Thursday was declined with a polite text.
The Saturday coffee suggestion was met with “maybe another time.” By Sunday, her messages had gone formal.
Professional. The kind of communication you have with someone you’re trying to keep at arm’s length.
And the part that gnawed at me worst was that I couldn’t find the thing I’d done.
The island had been perfect, the seawall, the beach, her mouth going soft against mine as the sun went down.
Then somewhere between the sand and her front door a shutter had come down behind her eyes, and I’d replayed that day frame by frame over and over since and still couldn’t locate the moment it turned.
She’d changed in a way I hadn’t been in the room for.
I just had to trust that whatever it was, she’d tell me when she was ready, and not one second before.
The old Wade would have retreated.
The old Wade would have called it “respecting her space” and thrown himself into work, telling himself that if she wanted him, she knew where to find him. He’d have sat in his office until midnight, convincing himself that distance was kindness.
But I wasn’t the old Wade anymore.
I stopped going to the dance class. Not because I was giving up, because I knew my presence there might feel like pressure. Like I was hovering, waiting, expecting an answer from her that she wasn’t ready to give.
But I stayed close.
I gave her things she couldn’t be expected to answer for.
A couch turned up at her door to replace the broken one she’d been apologizing to guests about for a year, no card, no name, nothing that demanded a text back.
An orchid, once. Pastries the grandmothers ‘happened’ to be dropping off.
I left every one of them and walked away before she could open the door.
Nothing I gave her would ever ask for anything back.
The night of book club, I did the one thing I’ve ever been genuinely good at. Homework.
I sat at my kitchen table at eleven at night with the club’s latest pick, a shifter romance thick enough to prop open a door, and I read the whole thing.
Then I read it again with a pen, because if that Thursday-night circle of women was the room where Luisa felt safest, then I was going to earn my way into it the only way I knew how: by taking it dead seriously while every Buckley instinct I owned screamed that a grown man does not annotate the emotional arc of a werewolf at midnight.
Three pages, handwritten. I traced the theme of found family and chosen bonds.
I made the case for the wolf as a metaphor for the authentic self buried under the social mask, and if my throat closed on that sentence, there was no one awake to see it.
I compared the hero’s arc to attachment theory.
I noted, respectfully, that the third-act conflict resolved too fast, and that I’d be glad to discuss the sequel if the club carried on with the series.
I had it delivered to the studio. I did not go.
Going would have been pressure, and pressure was the one thing I’d sworn I’d never be to her again.
But she’d know I’d been there. Still there. Still trying. Proximity without pressure, by then it wasn’t a strategy anymore. It was the whole architecture of my life.
***
The call came at 2:14 a.m.
I was awake, I’d been sleeping badly since the island, my dreams full of Luisa tensing in my arms, pulling away, closing doors I’d thought were finally opening, and I answered before the second ring.
“Wade?” Her voice was tight. Scared. “Wade, it’s Poppy. She has a fever. A bad one. I don’t know what to-”
“I’m on my way.”
I was out of bed and dressed in thirty seconds. In my car in forty-five. Breaking every traffic law within the first two minutes.
“How high is the fever?” I asked, phone pressed between my shoulder and ear as I drove.
“104.2. I gave her Tylenol but it’s not coming down. She’s shaking, Wade. She won’t stop shaking.”
“I’m almost there. Have you called the clinic?”
“They said to bring her in. But I can’t, my car won’t start, it’s been making that noise all week and I didn’t have time to get it checked-”
“I’m turning onto your street now.”
I pulled into her driveway, slammed the car into park, and was through her front door in seconds. Luisa was in the hallway, Poppy bundled in her arms, both of them pale and frightened.
“Give her to me.”
Luisa transferred our daughter into my arms. Poppy was burning up. I could feel the heat radiating through her pajamas, her small body trembling against my chest. Her eyes were glassy, unfocused.
“Wade?” Her voice was so small. “I don’t feel good.”
“I know, dragon. We’re going to fix it.”
I carried her to my car, strapped her into the back seat, made sure Luisa was settled beside her. Then I drove to the clinic faster than I’d ever driven anywhere in my life.
The nurse at the front desk took one look at Poppy’s fever reading and rushed us back immediately. A doctor appeared, young, competent, reassuring in the way medical professionals learn to be when dealing with terrified parents.
“Looks like a viral infection,” she said after examining Poppy. “The fever is high, but she’s responding well to fluids. We’re going to give her something stronger to bring it down, and I’d like to keep her for observation for a few hours.”
“But she’ll be okay?” Luisa’s voice cracked.
“She’ll be fine. Kids spike fevers like this sometimes. It looks scary, but her vitals are strong.”
They settled Poppy in a small observation room, soft lighting, a bed that could adjust, a TV mounted on the wall playing cartoons at low volume. She was already looking better, the medication starting to work, her eyes less glassy.
“Will you stay with me?” she asked.
“Of course, dragon.”
“Both of you?”
I looked at Luisa. She looked at me.
“Both of us,” I said.
The room had a small couch, more of a loveseat, really, barely big enough for two adults. Luisa settled onto it first, and after a moment’s hesitation, I sat down beside her. Close. Our shoulders touching, our thighs pressed together.
Poppy drifted off to sleep.
The room went quiet except for the soft beeping of monitors and the distant murmur of the hospital at night. Hours passed. We watched our daughter breathe, watched her fever slowly drop, watched the color return to her cheeks.
Somewhere around four in the morning, Luisa spoke.
“I’m sorry.”
I turned to look at her. Her face was pale, exhausted, her hair escaping its ponytail in messy strands. She’d never looked more beautiful.
“For what?”
“For pushing you away. After the island.” Her throat worked. “It was perfect. Too perfect. And I got scared.”
“I know.”
“You didn’t push back.”
“I didn’t want to make it worse.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then: “The couch.”
“What about it?”
“You bought me a couch.”
“Your old one was broken.”
“And the orchid. And the pastries. And the notes on the book.”
“I wanted you to know I was still here.”
Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I don’t deserve you.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” Her voice broke. “I keep waiting for you to give up. To decide I’m too much work. Too broken. Too scared.”
“Never.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I spent four years without you, and I know what that feels like.” I reached out, brushed a tear from her cheek.
“There is nothing you could do that would make me walk away. No wall you could build that would make me stop trying. I will be here, Luisa. Pushing when you need pushing, backing off when you need space. Whatever you need. For as long as it takes.”
She stared at me.
Then she leaned against my chest.
“I’m so tired,” she whispered.
“Then sleep.”
“What if something happens? What if her fever spikes again?”
“I’ll be watching. I’ll wake you if anything changes.”
She hesitated. Then, slowly, she let herself relax against me. Her head found the hollow of my shoulder, her body curling into mine, her breathing gradually evening out.
I sat there in that uncomfortable clinic chair, my wife asleep on my chest, my daughter asleep in the bed beside us. The monitors beeped their steady rhythm. Dawn began to lighten the windows, pink and gold seeping through the blinds.
I felt like the luckiest man in the world.