14. Chapter 14 #2
That didn’t make me reckless, and it didn’t make me a bad mom. It just meant I was allowed to exist inside a moment that felt good without punishing myself for it.
“We’ll have to walk, though. Whatever it is you have planned, you don’t have a car seat.”
Jake nodded, taking in my words. “Yeah, actually, I was wondering if we could maybe take the bus. They have these tour ones because of the beaches, and they pick up from the sidewalk over there. It’s dumb, but I figured if Cai likes trucks, it could extend to buses too?”
It wasn’t dumb. It was thoughtful and kind, and it showed that he’d really thought about this, without it being solely about me. My nose tingled again, and I had to tear my eyes from this sweet giant man in front of me.
“Oh,” I murmured, looking at Cai, who was trying to twirl while holding my hand. “What do you think, baby? Wanna go on a bus?”
“Bus, bus, bus, Cai go too!”
His excitement amped up to a hundred, and I adjusted my grip on him and glanced at Jake. “Lead the way,” I said, gesturing toward him.
He gave me a little salute like an idiot—a sexy, hot, insanely sweet idiot—and stepped in beside us, matching his pace to mine instead of striding ahead.
That small thing shouldn’t have mattered, but it did.
He didn’t take over. He didn’t assume. He just slotted himself into our space without making me feel crowded or controlled.
The sidewalk ran alongside the beach, warm underfoot even through my sneakers, the late-afternoon sun turning everything soft and gold.
Cai kept bouncing between, trying to walk and launch himself at things that caught his attention, so after the third near-swerve toward a seagull, Jake reached out.
“Can I?” he asked, already looking at me rather than just taking.
It was ridiculous how much that got to me. He was asking if it was okay to hold Cai’s hand. God, my emotions were a mess today.
I swallowed hard. “Yeah.”
Jake held his hand out to Cai. “You stay with me, little man. No chasing birds unless you can fly.”
Cai slapped his tiny hand into Jake’s much bigger one, and just like that, they were walking side by side, Cai taking two fast little steps for every one of Jake’s.
Jake looked down at him. “So what do you reckon, my guy? Window seat?”
“Window!” Cai shouted.
“Excellent choice.”
Then Cai yanked Jake’s arm, wildly jumping up and down. “Bus!”
The bus stop sat just up the road, one of those open-sided beach shuttles already visible in the distance, painted in bright colors with tourists climbing on and off. Cai made another excited noise that was somewhere between a squeal and a laugh, and Jake laughed with him, the sound deep and easy.
This was how it started, wasn’t it? It wasn’t about grand gestures or dramatic declarations, but with little things.
Someone remembering your kid liked trucks, so he found a bus.
Someone walking at your pace and asking before they touched.
Someone making time for you both like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The subtle things that slipped past your guard before you even realized you’d let them.
And the way Jake Ledger was with me, with my son, was risky for both of us because he was so easy to be around.
The bus pulled up with a hiss, and Cai nearly bounced out of his skin.
Jake looked back at me, eyes smiling before his mouth did. “You good?”
No, not even a little.
But I nodded anyway. “Yeah,” I lied, as we boarded the bus. “I’m good.”
We sat down together, snagging the sideways seats on the aisle, and Cai immediately turned his body around and pressed his face to the window, his breath steaming it up.
Then, just as I was going to suggest he move back and not smother himself in all the germs, Jake did the same, without hesitation, fogging up the glass twice as fast.
Cai let out a little gasp, turning his head to look at Jake like he’d just discovered his new favorite person all over again, and Jake just grinned, dragging his finger through the mist to draw a very clear heart.
He made sure I saw it, then raised an eyebrow at me with a smirk.
What was I supposed to do with that? My body was melting internally.
“Mommy, do it!” Cai said, tapping my shoulder. I definitely wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t have the same carefree spirit as these two yahoos.
“But you’re the best at it; I can’t top that,” I said with as much praise laced into my voice as possible.
“Mommy, peeeeeas?” Cai said with the cutest head tilt known to mankind. This kid could twist my arm in a split second with that sweet baby face.
Jake copied him, extending his lower lip in a pout, and now I had two insanely adorable faces urging me to copy them. As much as I didn’t want to do it, my resistance was a lost cause. Leaning forward, I blew out hot air, steaming up the window and drew a smiley face with a little heart.
Cai erupted into claps and threw his little arms around my neck, babbling things I loved but rarely made sense of. His joy was my joy, and nothing could compete with that feeling.
When I looked over at Jake, he was lowering his phone, a smile tugging at his mouth.
“I couldn’t pass it up,” he said. “The way you both were smiling, it was so cute.”
My heart created a ruckus in my chest. My camera roll was overflowing with pictures of Cai. But there weren’t many of the two of us together because I was always behind the camera. Most of motherhood felt like that. Being present in every memory whilst somehow existing in none of the evidence.
Jake turned the screen toward me, and I saw Cai’s big grin as he looked at me, arms wrapped around my neck. My smile mirroring his. It was perfect.
“Send me that?” I asked.
“Already sent,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if Jake knew how much that meant to me, but when he grabbed my hand and linked it behind Cai’s back as he announced every bird, every dog, every tree on the journey…I realized that my cheeks were starting to ache from smiling so much.
The afternoon slipped by after that. We wandered along the boardwalk, Cai swinging between us, his feet barely touching the ground as he shrieked with laughter. We shared fries that Cai fed us, then howled when Jake almost got attacked by hungry seagulls.
At some point, I stopped watching the clock, stopped worrying about training tomorrow, and I existed inside the warmth of the setting sun, the smiles from Cai, the brush of Jake’s hand against mine.
And when we finally got home, with a sleepy Cai draped on Jake’s shoulder, all I could think about was how easy it was to be around this man I’ve only just met.