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Especially now. She was in her pajamas, her hair up, her attention focused wholly on Lucas. She was far better with him than I could have ever imagined, and my mind kept pointing out that she was exactly what I was looking for. She ticked the most important box.
“I’m sorry we can’t go to the lighthouse today,” Ava said quietly as she rolled the dice on the board. She moved her little figurine six paces forward. “Maybe another time?”
Another time.
“It’s okay,” Lucas shrugged. “This is fun, too. I like hanging out with you.”
It was such a flippant sentence, but it felt like a fucking dagger to my chest.
————
With the cookies in the oven and Lucas practically coated in flour and sugar, the calm settled in again. I could get through today. We all could.
Even with the rain battering the house, Lucas found a way to have fun with it—he drew little stick figures in the pile of flour on the counter, coating his hands further, much to Mrs. Henderson’s dismay as she tried to clean around him.
“Lucas,” I said, trying not to crack a grin as he drew another little figure right in the spot she’d just wiped down. I made a mental note to make her tip this weekend heftier than usual. “Why don’t you go take a shower, bud?”
“Okay!” He jumped down off the step stool, sending a cloud of flour dancing through the air.
“Oh my God, he’s covered,” Ava laughed.
I pushed off the counter I’d been leaning on and walked up to him. “Arms up, Luc.”
He lifted his arms above his head. I tried to keep most of the flour contained in his shirt as I pulled it off of him, but it rained down through the neck hole and onto the top of his head.
“You’re so lucky you’re cute,” Mrs. Henderson deadpanned.
“Just use the downstairs shower. Walkverycarefully, and do not shake your head,” I instructed.
He fuckingnoddedbefore taking off in the direction of the bathroom.
Ava and I helped with the cleanup—I couldn’t bear to leave it entirely up to Mrs. Henderson. But the moment she’d left the kitchen to put Lucas’s shirt in the wash, I couldn't help but bring myself closer to Ava, couldn’t help but see her in that light again.
She’d done so much unnecessary work this weekend, so much that hadn’t been expected of her. I’d hoped that this would at least give her a bit of a vacation, but with Grace unwell and the amount of work I had to do, parenting had somehow fallen on her.
“Hey,” I said, slotting in beside her against the kitchen island.
“Hi,” she replied. She lifted a brow at me.
I rolled my eyes at her questioning stare. “I’m sorry if this weekend hasn’t gone how you were hoping.”
The brow dropped, and instead, her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Imeanthat I wasn’t expecting you to have to help me so much with Lucas, and I appreciate what you’ve done,” I explained.
She let loose a breath.She… fuck, she thought I meant something else.
Does she want that? Still?
“Oh, don’t worry about that. He’s a good kid.” The little smile she gave me didn’t quite reach her eyes. “And the stain came out of my shirt, so he’s done literally nothing wrong, apart from driving Mrs. Henderson insane.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I’ll tip her well for that. Don’t worry.”
Her gaze met mine and held.
“You’re great with him,” I said, and I didn’t care how she took it. I wanted it known. “I know I insinuated that maybe Lucas wouldn’t be okay with this back at David’s, and I should have clarified sooner, but it’s been eating me up all day. If it wasn’t clear, I said that to try to get out of it. Not because of any preconceived notion I had that you two wouldn’t get along for whatever reason.”
Her chuckle and the genuine little smile that accompanied it made my chest ache, made my hands twitch in her direction. “I figured, but thank you for saying that.”
