21. Chapter 21
Seren
“So you’re…seeing that guy?” Derek’s words came out quiet and unsure, a contrast to the confidence he walked into the stadium with earlier.
The ocean air fluttered around us as we sat outside the coffee shop, but my current mood was about to change the peaceful beach atmosphere.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I said, biting back. I was still baffled by his comments earlier, with zero idea what he expected would happen when he’d shown up.
He nodded slowly, like he’d expected that. “Yeah. Okay.” His gaze moved to the shore beyond the coffee cart we’d just bought drinks from, before lifting back to me. “I just…wasn’t expecting to see someone that close to you.”
“We were training together,” I said pointedly.
There was an awareness of how strange this must look from the outside, how different my life probably seemed compared to the version of it he’d stepped away from.
I used to just be Cai’s mom, but now I was more.
A whole person with a career and dreams he never once asked about.
I guess he didn’t know this version of me. Then again…he’d never asked.
I sipped my coffee, wincing as the heat splashed into my mouth. “I’ve gotta get Cai in, like, fifteen. Do you still want to come with me?”
His eyes brightened, looking so like our son’s, it was hard to stay annoyed with him. “I’d love that. I miss him.”
I turned my cup slowly between my hands, watching the faint swirl of steam curl into the air before I looked back up at him. “He misses you too.”
Derek swallowed hard, and his mouth twisted with something unsaid. I’d never experienced this weird tension with him before today.
“How’s work?” I asked, keeping my tone easy.
Derek huffed out a quiet breath, leaning back slightly in his chair, his fingers tapping once against the side of his coffee before going still. “Yeah. Maybe corporate finance isn’t all I thought. The travel is getting old.” His mouth tipped into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“You get to travel, though. You always wanted to do that.” In fact, it’s the very reason you hardly see your son, I thought.
There was a pause before he spoke again. “I’ve been…looking at moving departments, actually.”
That caught my attention. “Really?”
“Yeah.” His gaze dropped briefly, then came back to mine. “Something with less travel. More consistent hours.” He released a heavy breath. “I’m tired of missing things.”
“Cai would like to see you more,” I said honestly. It would also be way easier parenting with him if he did decide to settle somewhere.
His dark eyes held my gaze for a beat. “Yeah.” I wasn’t sure why that yeah didn’t feel quite like what he wanted to say, but he was a grown man; if he had something to say, I wasn’t going to push.
Maybe he was looking for more of a reaction from me, but I could only speak as his co-parent, not anything else.
My skin prickled with unease, that subtle pull of the conversation trying to move somewhere else, somewhere that wasn’t about daycare pickups or travel schedules or co-parenting.
Somewhere personal.
I leaned back slightly in my chair, creating space without making it obvious, and lifted my coffee cup. “Well,” I said lightly, blowing across the surface before taking another careful sip, “if you’re serious about switching departments, that could be really good for Cai.”
He tapped the table rhythmically, nodding once. “Do you think Cai would be the only one pleased about it?”
“That depends,” I said, keeping my voice even, “on why you’re asking.”
“I just meant—” He shook his head slightly, like he was already backtracking. “If I’m around more, if I’m…Does that make things easier for you too?”
That I could answer.
“Of course it does,” I said, because there wasn’t anything complicated about that part. “You’re his dad.”
“Right,” he murmured, then swallowed, his hand coming up to rub at the back of his neck again. “What if I moved here?”
“To Solterra?”
“Yeah, there’s an office in San Diego, not far from here. It could work.”
I had no idea what prompted this sudden change in him. It was always about him and his job, never us—never Cai—as a priority. The shift had my head spinning.
“Oh, okay.”
He huffed a bitter laugh. “Okay? That’s all you have for me?”
I shook the stupor from my face and blinked against the warm sun. “I’m a little shocked, is all. You’ve never wanted to settle before, and…I guess I’m just processing that it would be here where we are.”
“Where else would it be?”
I shrugged, no answer coming to my mind. This was the first time we’d had this kind of conversation.
This wasn’t the version of Derek I was used to. The man I knew chased the next thing, the next deal, the next city, like standing still meant losing something.
Now he looked…different. Not entirely, but enough that it made me pause.
“What changed?” I asked. “Did something happen?”
“I know it probably looks like it’s sudden, but it’s not.” His jaw shifted slightly, like he was choosing his words carefully instead of just saying the first thing that came to mind. “I’ve been thinking about it for a few months.”
I guess that explained the video call he surprised me with last week. Maybe he’d planned on telling me then, but chickened out.
It was hard to draw a clear line between us, because everything felt foggy where he was concerned.
I had love for him because of Cai, a connection that didn’t feel like something I could ever fully walk away from, and when I saw him with our son, it tugged at me in a way I couldn’t ignore.
It didn’t go beyond that on my end, though.
We’d never really been anything solid to begin with.
Back in college, it was casual because it was easy, something we fell into without thinking too much about what it meant.
Then I got pregnant, and choosing to keep Cai shifted everything.
Whatever we had didn’t grow into something more, it just…
stopped there, and that had been fine for us.
It’d forced me to grow into who I am today. For that, I was grateful.
“Carry on,” I prompted, because he hadn’t actually answered the part that mattered.
Derek leaned back slightly, exhaling through his nose, his eyes flicking out toward the ocean for a second before coming back to me. “I realized I don’t really like the life I’ve built,” he said, more plainly than I expected. “It’s empty.”
I hummed my acknowledgment, understanding not being happy in your job probably was a tough spot to be in.
“Different hotels, different people, same conversations over and over again. And none of it matters.” His fingers tapped once against the table before stilling. “Then I come back here and Cai’s bigger. Saying new things. Doing new things. And I’m hearing about it instead of being there for it.”
My heart squeezed, because I’d lived those moments without him.
The firsts, the small things that didn’t seem important until they were gone.
I’d felt bad every time I sent a video of him saying new words, or being just the cutie he is.
But I didn’t know how else to keep him involved when he wasn’t around.
Silence settled between us again, but it wasn’t awkward this time.
“So this is about Cai.”
Derek held my gaze, something steady in his expression. “Yeah,” he said. Then, quieter, “And maybe realizing I got a lot wrong the first time around.”
I knew things would change this year. I just wasn’t expecting exactly how much.
And here was another pivot for me. A part of me wanted to protect the life that Cai and I were building here, but I knew that, ultimately, I wanted what was best for him, and if that meant Derek being around more, then I guess we’d figure things out.