Page 158 of ICED
Today, I felt safe.
The words sit there, stark and simple. The truth of them makes my throat tighten. I breathe through it. Let it come.
I think about all the days I never thought I’d get here. The nights I stayed awake, heart pounding, trying to convince myself the sound outside was just a fox or the wind, not Jamie. The times I didn’t have enough money for rent or food, when all I could give Lila was a smile and a lie about how it would be okay.
But now?
Now I live in a house where the radiators work. Where the neighbours wave good morning. Where Owen leaves his socks in weird places and Lila has a loft bed with a slide and a nameplate on the door that reads “Jellybean.”
This house is warm. Not just from heating, but from love. From laughter in the kitchen. From pancake Saturdays and shared toothbrush cups. From the photo I’ve just finished hanging on the wall above the bookcase, me and Lila in our matching aprons, flour on our noses, both of us grinning so hard our eyes are nearly closed.
Owen took it. I remember the way he looked at us after. Like he was seeing the sun.
I hear the key in the front door and a second later, Owen’s voice floats through the hallway. “Baby? I come bearing another flat white. Also, someone forgot their lunchbox, so I got called Mr Bear by half the nursery school.”
I laugh, already on my feet. “How many times do I have to say sorry about that?”
“Never stop,” he says, stepping into the living room and handing me the coffee. “It’s my Roman Empire. I will think about it daily.”
He leans down and kisses my cheek. His hand grazes the small of my back as he notices the photo on the wall. “You hung it,” he says softly.
“Mmhmm.” I sip the coffee. “It felt right. Today felt right.”
Owen glances around the room. “It looks like home now.”
“It is home.”
He studies me for a beat, like he’s trying to commit the moment to memory. Then he says, voice low, “Do you want to go for a walk before pickup? It’s nice out.”
We end up in the little park near the school. The air smells like cut grass and summer sun. We sit on a bench beneath the big oak tree, sharing the last of the croissant and talking about nothing and everything.
Owen tells me about practice. About Murphy’s baby, who apparently hates silence and sleeps better when the Raptors’ goal horn plays on loop. About Ollie trying to bake protein muffins and accidentally making something closer to drywall.
“Did he use actual cement?” I ask with a smirk.
“Pretty sure,” Owen says. “The texture was... aggressive.”
I tell him about the stew I want to make for dinner. About how I might sign up for a local craft fair, sell cupcakes and jam tarts and hope. I love working at the community bakery programme, it gave me this life after all, but the dream would be to open my own bakery someday. Call it a pipedream, but I can hope.
“I could make signs, Ollie would help. He loves a sign.” Owen offers. “We could call it Cupcakes & Chaos.”
“Sounds like our life,” I say, smiling.
He bumps his shoulder against mine. “Exactly.”
After a while, Owen grins like he’s got a secret. “We’ve gottime after pickup before Lila needs to eat. Want to stop by the rink?”
“The rink?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Lila’s penguin buddy misses her.”
We pick Lila up from school together. She comes barrelling out of the gates in her rainbow trainers, arms wide, face alight.
“Mummy! Bear! We did painting today! And I didn’t even get any in my hair this time!”
Owen lifts her like she weighs nothing. “A true professional,” he says.
She beams. “I gave my apple to Max because he was sad. But I kept the cookie.”
