Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
CORD
I pulled up to Lucy’s house a few minutes early and killed the engine. The air was crisp—mid-October doing its best impression of fall, though half the trees hadn’t gotten the memo yet. I leaned back in the seat and told myself to chill.
This was a date. A real one. No kid. No stomach flu. No grandma hovering in the wings. Just Lucy.
She stepped out the front door right on time, tugging her cardigan around her like she wasn’t sure what to expect. Jeans. Boots. Hair down. Soft pink lips that curled into a hesitant smile when she spotted me.
She looked good. Like herself again.
But there was something in the way she moved that wasn’t quite the same.
Like she was holding herself a little tighter.
Not guarded, exactly. Just… cautious. I couldn’t blame her.
I’d been inside her house while she was basically dying in pajamas that might’ve predated the previous presidential administration.
I’d seen the laundry pile. The half-collapsed blanket fort.
The way she’d clung to consciousness and a thread of dignity at the same time.
And somehow, I wanted her more now than I had before .
I slid out of the driver’s seat as she reached the truck and circled around to open her door. I wasn’t trying to be fancy—just gave me something to do with my hands.
“You ready for this?” I asked.
She looked up at me, eyes clear, the corners crinkling just slightly. “Depends. What exactly am I being lured into?”
“Picnic,” I said. “I brought the good sandwiches. And I found a spot with a view and zero other humans.”
“Sold,” she said, climbing in.
As I shut her door and rounded the hood, I caught my own reflection in the glass—expression tight, hands flexing.
I’d never wanted a second date like this. Not with anyone. Not after seeing what their sick-day laundry looked like. Not that I’d ever gotten to that point before. But here I was, hoping like hell I didn’t screw it up.
And hoping even harder that she didn’t see how much I already gave a damn.
The picnic spot was just off an old logging road that backed up to a ridge. Nothing formal, just a sloping patch of grass with a killer view of the valley. I laid out the blanket while Lucy unwrapped the sandwiches, her nose wrinkling in amusement when she spotted the ridiculous spread I’d packed.
“Turkey, ham, roast beef… is that a vegetarian option, too?”
“I didn’t know what you were in the mood for,” I said, dropping down beside her. “So I covered my bases.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You say that like you didn’t bring half the deli counter.”
I bit back a grin. “You say that like you didn’t survive my grocery overkill last week.”
She laughed and leaned back on her hands, her hair falling across her shoulder. “Yeah, that soup run was… intense.”
“Hey, you said soup and crackers. You didn’t specify how many. ”
“I think you bought five kinds. In addition to what you made from scratch.”
“Six,” I said. “And popsicles.”
She laughed again, and that sound landed somewhere in my chest like a warm stone, grounding me. I didn’t even realize how tightly I’d been wound until she smiled like that—easy, genuine—and I felt something inside me loosen just enough to breathe.
We ate slowly. Talked about nothing for a while. Movies, music, which one of us would die first in a zombie apocalypse. (Me, according to her, because I’d try to rescue a cat.)
Then the food was mostly gone, the sun was starting its slow creep toward the ridgeline, and the quiet settled in.
Not uncomfortable. Not forced. Just still.
Lucy took a sip of her water and tucked her hair behind her ear. She wasn’t looking at me, but I could see her throat move as she swallowed. There was something softer in her posture now. Less armor.
So I asked, gently, “How long have you been doing it on your own?”
She looked over at me then—really looked—and the smile she gave me this time didn’t reach her eyes.
But it didn’t need to. It was enough that she didn’t look away.
She pulled her knees up, arms wrapping around them loosely, her fingers tangling at the edge of the blanket like she needed something to hold on to that wasn’t me.
“It happened fast,” she said, her voice soft but steady. “The summer after graduation. One minute I was picking out dorm bedding, the next I was staring at a stick and wondering how I’d explain it to my parents.”
I didn’t say anything. Just let her talk. Because I could tell she wasn’t looking for comfort—she was offering truth.
“Marcus was my high school boyfriend. Sweet enough, in the way boys are when they’re not tested by anything harder than Friday night lights. We were supposed to break up when college started. That was always the plan, you know? But plans change.”
Her smile was a tired one. The kind you give when the memory’s worn smooth from overuse.
“We got married because… well, because people do under those circumstances. Because it felt like the right kind of responsible. And for a while, we convinced ourselves it was. I took online classes when I could, tried to keep up with work, with diapers, with being someone’s mom when I was barely more than a kid myself. ”
Her fingers picked at the hem of her jeans. “Marcus tried. I won’t take that from him. But he never really got past the idea that fatherhood had stolen something from him. Like there was this other life he was supposed to have. And eventually he just… left. Liam was two.”
My jaw tightened, but I kept it to myself.
She looked out over the trees, not crying, not even close.
Just honest. “I didn’t chase him. I couldn’t afford to.
I had a kid to raise and a degree to finish and no time to waste feeling sorry for myself.
I finished school, got my teaching license, and when the job opened up here, I took it. Moved to be closer to my grandma.”
She looked back at me then, her eyes a little more guarded, like she expected me to flinch.
But I didn’t. Because what she said didn’t scare me. It floored me.
The grit of it. The reality. The way she didn’t paint herself as a victim or a martyr—just someone who had gotten dealt a hard hand and played it, anyway.
And won.
I’d thought I understood what tough looked like. I didn’t—not until I heard her tell it with zero self-pity. Just fact. Just strength so baked into her bones she didn’t even hear it anymore.
I reached out and covered her hand with mine, gentle. Steady.
She didn’t pull away, turning her fingers to curl with mine instead.
And that felt like the biggest yes I’d ever gotten.
She’d just finished telling me the kind of story that could make a man sit up straighter—pregnant at eighteen, marriage that didn’t hold, a baby she never once apologized for.
And the way she told it? No bitterness. No dramatics.
Just facts, wrapped in quiet strength. Like she’d had to get good at not needing pity.
I was still holding her hand. Still trying to piece together how someone could live through all that and still look at the world with eyes that soft.
She turned her head and looked at me, not guarded exactly, but bracing for something. “You looked like you’d been hit in the face with a shovel after you found out. About Liam.”
I swallowed. Because that? That was true.
“You don’t have to explain,” she added quickly. “I just… I wondered.”
I shook my head. “No, you deserve to know.”
The words were there before I’d even decided to say them. Maybe because she’d gone first. Maybe because I was tired of carrying it.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” I said slowly. “I’d been thinking about you—about us—like maybe there was something there worth chasing. And then when I heard him call you ‘Mommy’…” I let the sentence dangle, trying to catch the right thread.
“I froze. Not because of him. Because of me.”
Her brow furrowed slightly, but she didn’t speak. Just waited .
“I was the kid who got left,” I said finally. “My dad took off before I could form a memory of him. My mom—when she was around—mostly treated me like a problem she couldn’t solve.”
I flexed my fingers against my thigh. “I made a promise to myself, somewhere along the line, that I’d never mess up a kid the way they messed me up. That I wouldn’t even get close enough to try.”
She blinked, and I could see the shift happening behind her eyes—not judgment. Just understanding.
“I didn’t pull back because of Liam,” I said. “I pulled back because I didn’t trust myself.”
Silence stretched for a beat.
“But I think maybe I’ve been afraid of the wrong thing.”
Her lips parted, just slightly.
I kept going. “I thought distance meant I couldn’t hurt anyone. But the truth is… you’ve both already gotten under my skin. And not in a bad way.”
Her hand tightened on mine.
“I don’t know if I’d be any good at this,” I admitted. “But I know I want to try.”
She didn’t answer right away. Just watched me for a moment—quiet, steady. Like she was weighing everything I’d said and everything I hadn’t.
Then she turned toward me. “You didn’t run. You showed up. Sick kid, disaster house, me looking like death—and you stayed.”
My throat worked, but no sound came out.
She shifted closer, reaching up to cup my face. “You didn’t screw it up. Not even close.”
I leaned into her touch. Couldn’t have stopped myself if I’d wanted to. And I definitely didn’t want to. “I’m not a perfect guy.”
Lucy’s mouth curved. “I’m not looking for perfect. I’m looking for you.”
She leaned in, her lips ghosting over mine. An invitation. A question that I couldn’t help but answer with a resounding yes. My hand slid into the silk of her hair, and I sighed, pulling her closer.
I’d spent years building a whole rulebook around what I thought I couldn’t handle. Around all the ways I might fail.
But sitting here now, hearing that? Yeah. That undid something in me. Because this wasn’t about being fearless. It was about showing up, anyway.
And I had. For her. For Liam.
I still didn’t know what came next. But for the first time in a long time, I wanted to find out.