Page 109 of At First Flight
Because it would kill me if I were. If loving me meant she lost a piece of herself, I wouldn’t be able to live with that. I’d walk away before I ever let that happen.
“You’re not,” she whispers, fingers threading through mine. “But I need to know that I’m not just filling a space until it closes.”
I squeeze her hand, my thumb brushing along the ridge of her knuckle. “You’re not a placeholder, Lila. You’re the reason I stopped feeling like something was missing.”
I pause, letting that truth sink into the space between us.
“If you want that lab job, take it. I’ll be cheering you on every step of the way. Hell, I’ll drive you to the airport myself and set up a second home in Chicago if that’s what it takes. But I won’t let you forget that you’re not in this alone. Not anymore. Whatever you want—career, family, a life filled with purpose—you can have it. All of it. And I’ll be right beside you for every step, every stumble, every fucking triumph.”
Her eyes glisten with something that looks a lot like hope.
And at that moment, I swear, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep that hope alive in her. Nothing.
She leans into me then, her head on my shoulder, her breath warm against my neck.
“I’m not ready to say I’m giving it up,” she whispers. “But I’m not ready to let it go either.”
And somehow, that feels like everything. Because love doesn’t always come wrapped in certainty. Sometimes it comes in a butterfly that hasn’t hatched yet. In hands that still shake. In a deck shared in silence. And that’s just enough to keep hoping.
Chapter Twenty-two – Lila
It’s one of those hot, high-summer mornings when the sun glints off everything too sharp. The humidity is thick enough to drink, and every breath I take tastes like honeysuckle and leftover thunderstorm. The cicadas’ song fills the spaces between Oliver’s distant laughter and Evelyn humming something tuneless in the screened-in deck.
I’m at the kitchen table folding laundry, sock after sock, towel after towel, when there’s a knock.
Not loud. Not frantic. Just… steady. Measured enough that it puts something unfamiliar in my chest. The kind of feeling that saysthis knock isn’t here to borrow sugar.
I toss the clean dish towel aside and move toward the door, every step slowing without permission. Worry that it may be Dean’s father is at the forefront of my mind, quickly followed by an unpleasant visit from Prescott.
And when I open it—I stop breathing because I recognize the person on the other side immediately. It’s her. Marin. Prescott’s wife. Her eyes meet mine, and for a second, I swear the entire world holds still.
She’s changed.
She’s not the perfect, polished, porcelain woman I remember seeing in the magazine articles Ashvi showed me with bloodred lipstick and pearls clutched like armor. Today, she’s all soft linen and flats. Her hair is dyed dark and tucked behind her ears like she gave up trying to style it, and her eyes… they aren’t sharp anymore.
They’re tired. Haunted.
That explains why no one has recognized her. Why I barely recognized her.
“I know I’m the last person you expected to see,” she says. Her voice is too quiet for someone used to taking up all the oxygen in a room.
I don’t answer right away, and my grip on the doorknob tightens.
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Nervous. Marin Keating-Hoolihan looks nervous. “I just… Can we talk?”
Part of me wants to slam the door. Lock the past behind it, not that she has done anything wrong herself. It feels like I’m inviting Prescott back into my life.
But the rest of me, the part that survived her husband, the part that lived through the whispers and the sleepless nights and the questioning of my worth, sees something else in her eyes.
I step aside. “Come in.”
She exhales like she’s been underwater for days.
We sit at the table, the one coloring books and crayons strewed about and lemon tea rings on the wood. The laundry pile is still there. So is the sunlight and the sound of Evelyn laughing in the distance.
And somehow, that makes this feel real. Like she’s not in control here. Like she came to me.
“I know you probably want to know what I’m doing here still married to Prescott,” she says after a beat.
