Chapter 4
FOUR
TYLER
By ten, the house had settled into its familiar nighttime hush. After dinner, homework, a video call with his parents, watering his garden, and the usual flood of WhatsApp messages from the family group chat—most of them courtesy of his two brothers—the night was finally his own.
Emma was asleep down the hall—door cracked open, a slip of light spilling into the hall from the small constellation of glow-in-the-dark stars scattered across her ceiling.
Tyler had checked on her twice already. A habit that stuck with him through the years, back when she was a toddler and would wake him up throughout the night.
But she wasn’t a toddler anymore. She was in second grade, and her life was growing bigger than him every day. And yeah, that terrified him, too.
He shut the door to his office with a soft click and exhaled, leaving the worry behind. He wasn’t the first father to realize his daughter was growing up too quickly.
This room was his—his one adult space in a house that otherwise belonged to stuffed animals, school projects, and the plethora of presents she’d got last month for her birthday. Tyler had long ago learned that there were certain benefits to being the first and only grandchild in the family.
The office was all dark wood and clean lines with a heavy walnut desk, a leather chair, and shelves packed with hardcovers. A single desk lamp cast a warm pool of light across his keyboard, leaving the corners of the room in shadow.
Tyler wore navy linen pajamas with thin white stripes and leather slippers that somehow made him feel like a man who had his life together.
Even if his sink currently held an abandoned dinosaur-shaped bowl from dinner.
His glasses sat on the desk beside the laptop—he didn’t need them during the day, but at night, after hours of screens and manuscripts, they were a must. He’d decided long ago there was nothing heroic about eyestrain.
He should have opened the manuscript he’d promised himself he’d review before morning. He should have tackled the notes from his New York editor. He should have done something productive with the two quiet hours he had before he gave in and went to bed.
Instead, his fingers did what they always did lately, opening his browser, a familiar site loading. His username appeared at the top right corner: Welcome, ReadsAfterBedtime97.
He clicked through to his favorite page.
AfterHoursAuthor had posted.
Tyler’s chest loosened. He didn’t even pretend he was going to “just skim.” He devoured the chapter, one paragraph at a time, the slow burn finally tipping into something hotter.
By the end, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling like it might offer him guidance.
He cleared his throat, adjusted the waistband of his pajama pants, and told himself he was a grown man with responsibilities.
A father. A professional editor. He was not someone who should be taken out at the knees by an anonymous romance writer with impeccable pacing and a talent for leaving him wrecked.
And yet.
He couldn’t help himself, especially when he saw that she was online.
The one liners, the quips, the innuendos…
Tyler let himself sink into it. Deeper than he meant to.
It had been a long time since he’d flirted like this—light and easy—with someone who loved books and language as much as he did.
It had been an even longer time since he’d felt… wanted.
His mind, traitor that it was, offered him an image of Robyn leaning across the book nook table earlier, his hand cupping her cheek, her gaze flicking to his mouth.
Tyler’s stomach tightened.
He shouldn’t be thinking about her, either.
But he had been thinking about her for weeks.
The last woman he’d let close—really close—had left.
Vivian, Emma’s mom, hadn’t stormed out dramatically. She’d just… backed away, little by little, until one day Tyler came home to a half-empty closet and a note on the counter.
I’m sorry. I can’t do this.
As if “this” was a messy kitchen and not a family.
As if Emma hadn’t been two years old, clutching a stuffed llama and asking where Mama was.
Tyler had learned a lot from that season of his life. Mostly that love could break you apart, leaving you in pieces, forcing you to build your life anew.
There was no way Tyler would put Emma through that again. His baby girl didn’t deserve the heartbreak. It was unbearably cruel the way Vivian had left, never once looking back. Tyler never wanted Emma to relive that again.
So he didn’t do casual hookups. He didn’t do “no strings attached.” He didn’t do anything that might teach Emma to attach her heart to someone who wouldn’t stay.
Instead, he’d built a life. A good one. Emma, his career, and—he wouldn’t be embarrassed by this—his garden.
He was damn proud of that garden. He’d started with nothing but a patch of dirt and a bag of seeds.
Now he had raised beds full of tomatoes, peas, three varieties of peppers, and more gourds than he knew what to do with.
He’d take it. Last summer, he’d grown a pumpkin the size of a small child. Emma had named it Gerald.
It was a good life. A full life. Tyler didn’t regret the shape of it.
And yet.
His needs came last. His sex life had been nonexistent for so long that it had stopped feeling like a dry spell and started feeling like part of his personality.
All these years, he’d been so careful, so damn responsible that he didn’t even think about what he was missing.
And now one woman with her caramel-kissed skin and her sparkling hazel eyes had him lying awake at night like a teenager, wound tight and restless, reading romance chapters in the dark and pretending that counted as a substitute for being touched.
Tyler glanced at the screen again.
AfterHoursAuthor.
He didn’t know who she was.
He didn’t know her face, her real name, or what her voice sounded like. But over the last few months, she’d become vivid in his mind—witty, bookish, warm. And the shape of that voice in his head felt uncomfortably close to Robyn’s. Which was foolish. Robyn belonged at Yale, not in his arms.
The glow of the screen washed his office in pale light.
He was craving everything so badly: the connection, the shared moments, the quiet intimacy that came from someone knowing you, seeing you, and showing up every day.
His mind slipped back to Robyn, wondering what it would be like to learn her body, what she would feel like under his touch, her nipple going stiff as his palm grazed it before taking her into his mouth.
The way her back would arch, chasing the touch, or how she might grip his hair, holding him in place.
Tyler shut the laptop with a decisive click, pushing away from his desk before letting the fantasy go any further.
He turned, staring out the window, as if the darkness of the night might hold all the answers.
But all he saw was his own reflection. And the moon, bathing the backyard in a soft glow, offering up the faintest, most aggravating spark of hope. How much longer could he hold out?