Chapter 3
THREE
ABBY
As we walk home, I’m holding Daisy’s hand so tightly, my knuckles are turning white.
Daisy is still talking. Of course she is. Daisy comes out of scary things the way she comes out of everything: bright-eyed, busy, determined to turn it into a story she can hold.
“And then you said, ‘I’ve got you,’” she tells Brendon as he walks beside us, “and you picked me up like I weighed nothing.”
Brendon casts her a sidelong glance, his eyes soft. “You weigh a little more than nothing.”
“I do to heroes,” Daisy announces.
He makes a thoughtful sound, like he’s taking that in and carefully placing it somewhere inside himself. “Heroes are just people who show up.”
Daisy wrinkles her nose. “That’s boring.”
“It’s true,” he says.
I swallow. My throat feels tight in a way I can’t explain without admitting the obvious.
It’s him. My first love.Helping me bring my daughter home after saving her life.
And now he’s about to invade the home I’ve spent the last decade building.
Everything is fine.
This is totally normal.
And yet my pulse is sprinting like it doesn’t believe in normal anymore.
Daisy glances up at me. “Can we show Brendon my rock collection?”
Brendon clears his throat, shifting in his seat. “It’s okay, kiddo. I’m sure your mom has a lot to do.”
I close my eyes for half a second. Daisy is safe. Daisy is here. Daisy is asking for spaghetti like the world didn’t almost knock her out from under me.
I can do this. I can handle one dinner. One hour. One polite thank you.
“I already told you he’s welcome,” I say. “Come on.”
Daisy squeals and scrambles out, boots hitting the snow with a crunch. I follow, my breath fogging in the cold. Brendon steps out last, towering and solid, his movements careful like he’s trying not to startle anything.
I catch him looking at my house before he follows us up the walkway. Not in a nosy way. In a quiet, thoughtful way, as if he’s trying to fit his memories of teenage me into the reality of adult me and finding it doesn’t quite line up.
Good.
It shouldn’t.
Inside, warmth wraps around us immediately, the familiar smell of clean laundry and the vanilla candle Daisy begged me to light “because it makes the house feel happy.”
The entryway is cluttered and untidy after racing to get out of the house this morning. Daisy’s mittens are on the bench, her backpack hung on the hook I installed lower than the others so she wouldn’t have to reach, a pair of my boots drying near the vent.
My house is not fancy. It doesn’t look like anything on a Pinterest board.
It’s ours.
Daisy shrugs off her coat and kicks her boots off, then darts down the hall like a puppy released from a leash. “I’m changing into pajamas!”
“Hang on,” I call. “Wash your hands and face first.”
“Okay!” she yells, already halfway to her room.
I exhale, slow and controlled, trying to push the adrenaline down into something manageable.
Brendon stands just inside the doorway, not taking off his coat yet, as if he’s unsure whether he’s been invited for dinner or simply allowed to exist in the same room as me.
That thought prickles. I don’t want him to feel unwelcome.
I just don’t want him to feel… comfortable.
“Do you want to take your coat off?” I ask.
He blinks like he’s surprised I spoke again. “Yeah. Sorry.”
He shrugs out of it and hangs it carefully on the hook, like he’s used to doing things in a way that doesn’t take up too much space. Then he looks around again, his gaze catching on the wall by the hallway.
The growth chart.
It’s just pencil marks and dates. Daisy’s name written in my handwriting beside each year. Little notes like “first missing tooth” and “learned to ride her bike” scribbled in the margins because I couldn’t help myself.
Brendon’s eyes linger there.
My stomach flips.
I step in front of it like a shield, ridiculous and instinctive. “Let’s grab you something to drink. The kitchen is this way.”
I move too fast, suddenly aware of the living room. The throw blanket on the couch is folded neatly, but one pillow is slightly off-center. Daisy’s coloring book is on the coffee table. A stuffed bear is propped against the armchair because she insists it needs to “watch for bad dreams.”
All of it feels too intimate for his eyes.
Like I’ve been walking around in a robe and forgot to tie it.
“Sorry,” I say automatically, reaching down to straighten the pillow that doesn’t need straightening. “It’s a little messy.”
His mouth twitches. “It’s not messy.”
“It is to me,” I mutter, scooping up the coloring book and stacking it with the library books. My hands need a job. My brain is too loud without one.
He watches me, and I can feel the weight of his attention like heat against my skin.
“You always did that,” he says softly.
I freeze, coloring book in hand.
“Did what?” My voice comes out thin.
“Made things look put together and comfortable,” he says. “Even when you weren’t.”
My throat tightens. I set the book down carefully, as if it might break.
“That was a long time ago,” I say.
“Yeah,” he replies. There’s something in his tone that says he doesn’t think time erased as much as I want to make it seem.
Daisy comes skidding into the kitchen, hands wet, cheeks glowing. She’s already in her daisy pajamas, her hair damp and brushed back. She looks like a kid who thinks life is good and safe and full of surprises that end with spaghetti.
“Okay,” she says, hopping onto a stool at the island. “Dinner time.”
I laugh despite myself. “Someone sounds hungry.”
“I’m starving,” she declares.
Brendon leans a hip against the counter, giving Daisy his full attention. “What kind of spaghetti? With meatballs? Or just sauce?”
“With the good noodles,” Daisy says seriously. “The curly ones. And garlic bread.”
Brendon nods like this is an official order. “Curly noodles and garlic bread. Got it.”
Daisy’s grin spreads so wide it makes my chest ache.
I grab a pot, fill it with water, set it on the stove. My movements are automatic, calming. Cooking is one of the few places I don’t second-guess myself anymore. It’s simple. Feed your kid. Keep the house warm. Keep the lights on.
Keep going.
Brendon shifts. “Do you want me to help?”
My first instinct is to say no. Not because I can’t use the help, but because letting him help means letting him belong.
But Daisy is watching us, her gaze bouncing between us like she’s trying to connect invisible dots.
“Sure,” I say carefully. “You can set the table?”
He nods, relief flickering across his face like he’s grateful for the assignment. He opens drawers without asking, stopping when he realizes he doesn’t know where anything is. That, at least, gives me some control back.
“The plates are in that cabinet,” I say, pointing. “And the forks are there.”
He follows my directions. His hands move with confidence, but his eyes keep flicking to me like he’s checking whether he’s doing it right. It’s oddly disarming.
Daisy swings her legs and starts talking again, because silence is clearly not allowed in her world.
“Brendon,” she says, “do you live at the fire station?”
“No,” he answers, setting plates down. “I’m staying with my mom right now.”
“You have a mom?” Daisy asks, astonished.
Brendon laughs under his breath. “I do.”
“Does she make spaghetti?”
“Sometimes,” he says. “But she’s more of a stew person.”
Daisy nods, accepting this. “Stew is good too. But spaghetti is better.”
“I’ll make a note of that,” he says solemnly.
The water begins to boil. I dump in the pasta, the sound of it splashing oddly soothing.
For a few minutes, it’s almost easy.
Then Daisy says, casually, “My dad used to make spaghetti too.”
My hand stills on the wooden spoon.
Brendon’s movements pause as well, the air shifting subtly with the weight of the word dad.
Daisy doesn’t seem sad when she says it. She says it the way she says everything about him, like he’s a fact of her life. A story she knows by heart even if she never lived it.
“He made it with hot dogs,” she adds. “Mom says it’s illegal.”
I snort, grateful for the pivot. “It should be illegal.”
Daisy giggles.
Brendon’s gaze meets mine across the kitchen, and for a moment there’s something in it I can’t name. Not pity. Not sympathy.
But it leaves me feeling way too exposed.
“Mom says he was good at it,” Daisy continues. “He would cut the hot dogs into little octopuses.”
My throat tightens. “He did.”
Brendon’s voice is quiet. “I’m sorry you lost him, Daisy.”
She shrugs, earnest and small. “It’s okay. Mom says he loved me. Even though I wasn’t born yet.”
“He did,” I say, and the words come out like a promise I’ve repeated so many times they’re second nature.
It’s something I can’t think about too long or often. Her dad and I hadn’t been together long when I unexpectedly fell pregnant. While I hadn’t been sure if he was the love of my life, or if I was his, we’d made plans for a future together.
Then his accident at work…
The future we’d planned changed, but he’d taken care of us to the end. And his parents have stepped up to be the best grandparents a girl could have.
Daisy looks at Brendon, then announces, “You saved my life.”
Brendon blinks, caught off guard. “You saved your own life by listening to the sitter and getting out when she told you.”
“But you carried me,” Daisy says, matter-of-fact.
He glances at me again, and something passes between us that makes my stomach flip.
“Yeah,” he says softly. “I carried you.”
My throat swells again, and I rush to finish dinner. We sit at the table, and Daisy talks between bites, sauce on her chin, telling the story again. She adds details that didn’t happen. She embellishes. She makes Brendon sound like a superhero who walked through fire like it was nothing.
Brendon doesn’t correct her. He just smiles and listens.
That’s what gets me.
Not the rescue. Not the uniform. Not the way he looks older and broader and impossibly real.
The way he listens to my kid like every word she says is fascinating.