25. Aiden
Aiden
On Friday morning, I’m packing sandwiches when I hear the back door open—a sound I shouldn’t hear unless someone has a key. Josie looks up from the kitchen table, where she is drawing a picture of Sprinkle wearing a crown and work boots.
“Who is that?”
“Someone with a key.”
Paige steps inside carrying two coffees and a paperback. Her hair is pulled into a ponytail. She’s traded her usual dress for jeans, hiking boots, and a fitted gray shirt. Forgetting my daughter is three feet away is suddenly, unnecessarily difficult.
Josie abandons the drawing and runs to her. “You came!”
“I said I would.”
“You used your key.”
“I’m conducting a trial.”
I take the coffee she holds out to me and kiss her. “How’s the trial going?”
“Well, the door opened. So far, so good.”
“You could’ve stayed at the cabin and read.”
“I know.” Her eyes hold mine. “I chose this.”
Satisfaction settles inside me, solid as a well-set post.
Josie tugs on Paige’s hand. “We have chores.”
“You have chores,” I say.
“She can help.”
Paige looks at me. “Can I?”
“Yes.”
“With something useful. Do not invent a decorative librarian position.”
“You can help Josie refill the water trough while I check the horses.”
“That sounds a lot like free labor.”
“I’ll provide lunch.”
“I brought the coffee.”
“I’m calling it a fair partnership.”
Her mouth curves. “Strong opening argument.”
Paige wrestles the hose into place with Josie, both of them laughing when the nozzle sprays wide.
She closes gates behind us without needing reminders and stays out of the way when I bring two horses through the narrow aisle.
She does what’s useful, never what’s designed to prove she belongs here.
Paige helps Josie drag the hose into place, closes gates behind us without needing reminders, and stays out of the way when I bring two horses through the narrow aisle.
She does what’s useful, never what’s designed to prove she belongs here.
When Josie gets distracted trying to convince a barn cat to sit in her lap, Paige takes the brush from her and finishes the mare’s coat.
“You’ve done this before,” I say.
“You took me riding.”
“Riding her once doesn’t explain how you know how to do that.”
“I listen when people show me things.”
I step behind her and put my hand at her waist. “That’s attractive.”
“So is competence. We’ve discussed this.”
My mouth brushes the place beneath her ear. “I remember.”
Josie turns around. “No kissing during chores.”
“You keep adding rules,” Paige says.
“Because you keep kissing.”
I release Paige, but she hooks a thumb in my belt loop, pulls me back for a hard, fast kiss, then returns to the horse.
We eat lunch on the porch with the last of the peaches Mom sent. Paige cuts one into slices because Josie claims whole peaches are too slippery.
Josie takes a slice. “It’s better when you cut it.”
“It’s the exact same peach,” Paige says, but she’s smiling.
Afterward, Paige reaches for her paperback.
“I’m going to read for an hour,” she says.
Josie looks toward the book in her own lap. “I’ll read too.”
“Alone,” Paige says.
Josie frowns. “Why?”
“Because I like quiet time by myself.”
“But we can be quiet.”
Paige’s gaze meets mine.
“Come on, Josie,” I say. “We need to check the south fence.”
“That’s not quiet.”
“It can be if you stop asking questions.”
She gives me a look that makes Paige laugh, but she follows me toward the truck.
When we return, Paige is stretched across the porch swing with her bare feet propped on the arm and her book open against her thighs. She looks peaceful, completely at home and completely herself.
She closes the book when she hears us.
“How’s the fence?”
“Still there,” Josie says. “Daddy said it probably would be, but we had to check.”
“Ranching sounds suspenseful.”
Paige shifts so Josie can climb beside her. She picks up the children’s book waiting on the table and holds it between them while Josie begins reading aloud.
I sit in the chair across from them with my coffee.
She chose to be here. She worked beside us, took the hour she needed for herself, then came back to read with my daughter without anyone asking.
It’s exactly what she said she wanted: a life that was still hers, just with us in it.
And it works. It could work every day. The thought arrives so naturally I can already see it: Paige using her key in the morning, her book beside mine on the porch swing.
Her quiet hour protected inside the noise of ranch work, and the certainty that they’ll both be here when the day ends.
Josie finishes the page and looks up at Paige.
“Are you always going to come on Fridays now?”
“Only if she wants to,” I tell her.
Paige looks from Josie to me. “Excellent answer.”
“I’ve been trainable all day.”
“Let’s not get reckless.”
Josie sighs over adults making a simple question difficult. “Do you want to?”
“I want to come next Friday,” Paige says. “We’ll decide the Friday after that when it gets here.”
It’s a clear answer. She chooses next week, and I know better than to press for more while she and Josie have a book open between them.
Still, I am already picturing the Friday after that too.
I leave Paige and Josie on the porch debating whether Sprinkle needs her own reading log and walk toward the old ranch office.
The repaired flashing kept last week’s storm out. The electrical work is finished, and the new pine flooring no longer dips beneath the windows. What started as a necessary repair has become a vision so clear the unfinished walls irritate me.
Paige stood here weeks ago, looked at the mountain view, and said the room deserved books.
She was right.
The framework along the far wall is already secured. I settle a precut board onto the brackets I installed yesterday and tap it level. These shelves are low enough that Josie can reach the bottom one and high enough to hold more books than either of them should reasonably need.
Although Paige would argue there is no such number.
I drive the first screw, then the second.
Once the shelf is secure, I step back and picture her filling it.
She’ll reject arranging anything by color because that system is attractive and useless.
Fiction will get one wall. Children’s books will end up lower, even if she insists this is her room, because she’ll want Josie to reach them.
The far corner needs a chair wide enough for Paige to curl up in with her feet tucked beneath her. I add it to the list on my phone, along with a lamp, another outlet, and a narrow cabinet for the things she keeps hauling between the cabin and my house.
She won’t need to pack a book every Friday. She can leave one here.
Or twenty.
I sit at the folding table serving as a workbench and open the calendar beside my supply list. Josie’s school orientation is already written in blue. The library’s end-of-summer celebration is in green because Paige mentioned the date twice; the branch cookout is circled at the bottom of the month.
The riding instructor texted this morning with an opening on Saturday afternoons beginning in September. I reserve it for Josie, then ask whether she can keep a horse available for Paige too. Paige enjoyed riding with me, and if she’s here on Fridays, Saturday lessons make sense.
Thanksgiving will be at Mom and Dad’s. Christmas plans usually begin before Halloween because no one in this family understands moderation. Paige will need warning, breaks, and somewhere quiet when the entire branch crowds into one house.
This room solves part of that.
She can close the door when she has had enough, read for an hour, and come back when she wants. She gets the space she needs without disappearing to the cabin every time the Slades become too much.
I add two more shelves to the order and a wide leather chair to the furniture list. The work feels good because it’s useful. She needs quiet, so I’m building a door to close. She brings a book every time, so I’m building shelves. It’s what I do: I listen, and then I solve it.
I hear the office door open behind me.
“You vanished,” Paige says.
“I told Josie where I was.”
“You told the six-year-old who is now giving me a full lecture on horse-girl chapter books.”
“She’s thorough.”
Paige walks farther inside with her paperback tucked beneath one arm. Her gaze moves over the mounted shelves, the lumber stacked along the opposite wall, then the measurements and notes scrawled across the open page of my planner.
She picks it up as I reach to close it.
Her eyes pause on the riding lessons, the holiday reminders, and the list headed PAIGE’S THINGS.
When she looks around again, her shoulders are tighter. The easy set of her mouth is gone.
“Why does this room suddenly look like a permanent library?”
“Because you said the room deserved books.”
Paige lowers my planner. “I said it deserved books. I didn’t realize that was a formal request for construction.”
“The building needed repairs anyway.”
“And the shelves?”
“You have books.”
“At my cabin.”
“You bring one every time you come here.”
Her gaze returns to the list. “Along with all of my other things, apparently.”
I glance at the heading she found. “That’s a bad label.”
“It’s an accurate label.”
“I meant you could leave things here instead of carrying them back and forth. Your other boots. That blue sweater. A toothbrush. Your books.”
“Enough books for a library.”
“I estimated conservatively.”
Her mouth almost curves, but she closes the planner and sets it on the table. “Did you schedule me riding lessons?”
“I asked her to keep a horse available.”
“That isn’t quite the same thing.”
“No.”
“Did it occur to you to ask me first?”
“It occurred to me that you enjoyed riding.”
“I did.”
“And you like this room.”
“I do.”
“You want more shelves.”
“Always.”
Every answer supports the choices I made, but she doesn’t move. She just stands there, her gaze drifting from the shelves to the empty space where a chair will go, as if trying to weigh the future she never agreed to build.
I reach for her hand. “I got ahead of myself.”
“You tend to build the road and assume I’ll appreciate the efficient route.”
“It is more efficient,” I say, because it’s true.
“That was the wrong response.”
“I knew it as soon as I said it.”
She lets me pull her closer. “The shelves are beautiful.”
“I can cancel the riding lessons.”
“You haven’t made the lessons yet.”
“Right. I can stop holding a place.”
“Ask me tomorrow.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“Because I don’t want every conversation about us to become an emergency meeting where we solve the next ten years before dinner.”
My instinct is to tell her there’s nothing wrong with knowing what we’re building. I stop because she wants enough time to choose the room, the lesson, and me instead of finding each one entered onto my calendar before she gets there.
“Tomorrow,” I agree.
“Excellent. We’ve successfully postponed one decision for almost twenty-four hours.”
“It’s uncomfortable.”
“I’m proud of you for surviving.”
I kiss her, slow enough to make her lean into me, then take the planner from the table and cross out the heading.
“What are you changing it to?” she asks.
“Miscellaneous items.”
“Very romantic.”
“It’s a supply list.”
“It has my name on it.”
“Had.”
When I start to step away, she grips my forearm. “I like that you think about me when I’m not here.”
The admission quiets every answer I could give her.
“You’re part of the routine now. Even when you’re not here.”
Her palm cups my jaw. “I know.”
By the time Josie is asleep and the kitchen is clean, the heat has broken enough for us to sit on the porch without the air clinging to our skin.
Paige curls into the corner of the swing with her ankles tucked beneath my thigh.
Loose strands drift around her face in the porch light.
She tells me about a seven-year-old who tried to hide three graphic novels beneath his shirt as a protest against his mother’s ten-book limit.
“He was already checking out ten?” I ask.
“His mother lacks vision.”
“You encouraged the crime.”
“I admired the nerve. Then I made him put them back.”
“You’re a harsh woman.”
“I enforce limits. You should take notes.”
I run my thumb along her ankle. “I’m learning.”
She looks toward the dark outline of the ranch office. “You’re trying.”
There’s affection in the words, along with the warning I keep wanting to turn into a problem I can solve.
I could ask what she sees when she looks at that room or whether she can imagine spending every Friday here.
I could open my planner and show her how easily our lives fit when every obligation has a place.
Instead, I look at the woman beside me and tell her the one thing that doesn’t require a calendar.
“I love you.”
Her lips part, but no words come out. For the first time since I met her, Paige has no answer. The porch light hums. A moth beats against the screen. My own pulse hammers in my ears, loud enough to fill the quiet she’s left.
Then she shifts onto her knees and cups my face.
“I love you too.”
I pull her onto my lap and kiss her, my hand sliding beneath her ponytail as her mouth opens under mine. She presses close, warm and solid against me, and everything I’ve been building toward finally has a foundation.
When she draws back, her forehead rests against mine.
“Aiden,” she says.
“I know.”
“I also need you to hear the rest.”
My hand tightens at her waist. “Tell me.”
“Loving you doesn’t mean I have every answer tonight. It doesn’t tell us where I keep my books at Christmas or how many Fridays I spend here next year.” Her thumb moves across my cheek. “It means I love you. I choose you. Can that be enough for tonight?”
“Yes.”
It’s as honest as I can make it. It means pushing down the instinct to plan, to build, to make another list. For tonight, I can just hold her.
She studies my face. “Are you sure?”
“I love you, Paige.”
Her smile is soft and unguarded. “You really do.”
I stand with her still wrapped around me, earning a startled laugh as she locks her legs around my waist.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking you inside.”
“I don’t remember approving that decision.”
“Do you want me to put you down?”
“No.”
I kiss her as I carry her through the door.
She loves me. She chooses me. For tonight, that’s more than enough.
After tonight, we need to talk about what forever means.