Page 112 of Forever Flames: Padraig & Stevie
I’m not ready to launch, but I will be. When my heart stops feeling like a battlefield, I’ll have something to step into. A business I own. I’ll be able to show my kids how to survive the worst tragedy and move through it. Hopefully, I’ll be an example they can look up to.
Until then, I do my best. I parent. I grieve. I breathe. I build.
Quietly. Carefully. For all of us.
Glancing, at Jude, I can’t help but laugh. He’s halfway through his cone, babbling to himself, “Yummy. Yummy. Yummy.”
“You’re a nutter,” Lila tells him with a grin while Isla sits stoic with her arms crossed.
Something in the air transforms. Not suddenly. More like a tide rolling in, peaceful but unstoppable.
I feel it before I see it. A pull in my chest. A pause in the air.
My gaze lifts toward the door.
There he is.
Padraig. With baby Rafferty curled against his chest, snug in a sling-like carrier.
He doesn’t see us. Not yet. He places an order with the girl behind the counter, rocking his son absently, a familiar rhythm in the sway of his hips. His hair’s long again, pulled back into a knot at the nape. Chin dusted in scruff. He’s thinner than I remember from the last time I saw him at my parents’ house.
Today, every part of me always remembers every part of him.
Then I notice, Mara’s beside him, clutching a small diaper bag.
I freeze.
Mom told me they moved up here a few months ago and Mara’s living in Liam’s townhouse—one of the matching units Rory built a few years ago for each of his sons as way to make amends for everything he put the family through. Apparently, Padraig’s staying at his own place next door and they’re coparenting. Nothing more.
By the way they interact, I’m not sure I believe it. She stands this close and gazes at him like he belongs to her. Old feelings bubble up unexpectedly. New ones too.
I don’t understand how she can live with herself for trapping him and pushing him into a life he wasn’t ready for. He deserved a real choice in the matter.
God, I’m judgmental. Like I’m one to talk. Cooper and I hadn’t been together more than a couple of months when I realized I was pregnant and we had a happy life.
Mara gestures toward a painting on the wall. She leans in to say something to Padraig. They laugh, with her hand resting lightly on his arm. He doesn’t seem to mind her touch. If anything, he looks comfortable with her.
My gaze drifts, almost without permission, to whatever she’s pointing at.
The moment feels preordained. As if my eyes were always meant to see the painting, which pulls me in before I canthink. Jagged textures clash and merge, layered scraps stitched together in deliberate chaos. The colors don’t sit stagnant, they breathe, expand, and fold in on themselves like they’re alive.
He’s the artist. I’m sure of it. Every stroke feels like something I’ve known in my bones.
Padraig, pressed into canvas.
I can’t look away. My pulse thrums loudly in my ears. The painting feels like a message I was supposed to find in this exact, perfect moment.
Then he turns.
Not toward the counter. Not toward Mara. Toward me.
The moment lands like a punch. His eyes lock on mine, and everything else dissolves. The whirr of the coffee maker. The chatter at the tables around us. The weight of this past year my kids and I have survived.
Time folds in on itself until it’s only the two of us, suspended in a space we’ve always carried no matter how many years we’ve been apart and how much distance has been between us.
For a second, neither of us moves. The sounds of the shop fade. The kids, the chatter and the clatter of scoops in the metal bins all blur. We…stare.
He takes a single step. Then another. Like there’s a string tied between us, pulling him across the room and suddenly he’s in front of me, arms wrapping around me without a word. My body folds into his side like no time has passed.
