“You spin,” she tells me, holding up a little plastic spinner.
I spin, landing on a red space. Maddie claps her hands. “It’s wed. You get the twiger.”
“I get the tiger?” I ask, picking up the tiny plastic piece.
“Uh-huh,” she says, nodding decisively. “It’s my favodite.”
“Well, then I’m honored,” I say, placing the tiger on my corner of the board.
Hopper joins us. Apparently this game doesn’t have rules because all the others do. It’s the only one Hopper lets her do whatever she wants. It’s old, from when he and his brothers were young. His mother gave it to him, for her only grandchild.
By the time bedtime rolls around, Maddie is starting to wind down. She clings to my hand as I walk her to her room, her little voice sleepy as she chats about everything and nothing.
“You stay?” she asks as I tuck her in.
I glance at Hopper, who’s leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed. “I’m not going anywhere, Maddie,” I say softly.
She smiles, her eyes already drooping. “Night, Nysa.”
“Goodnight, Maddie.”
Hopper steps forward, brushing her curls back from her face. “Night, pumpkin.”
“Night, Daddy.”
We leave her room together, the door clicking softly shut behind us. The hallway is quiet, the house settling around us like a sigh.
“Thanks,” Hopper says, his voice low.
“For what?”
“For being good with her,” he says, his eyes meeting mine. “She likes you.”
I smile, feeling something warm bloom in my chest. “She’s pretty great.”
“She is,” he says, his gaze lingering on me for a moment longer before he steps back. “Would you like to go out to the deck, have some wine?”
I freeze for a moment because even though it sounds like something I would enjoy, going out feels unsafe.
“Or we could stay here—the living room has a fireplace. I can get the fire going,” he suggests.
“I would like that. Let me go and change first,” I say because wearing red sauce in my hair and my clothes isn’t my idea of a good time.
“Take your time,” he says, his voice softer now, almost coaxing. “I’ll be downstairs.”
I nod, slipping away toward the guest room, but my heart isn’t moving at the same pace as my feet. It’s stalling, snagging on the moment in the hallway—the way his gaze lingered, the quiet in his voice that felt heavier than words.
I close the door behind me, exhaling as I lean against it. I press my fingers to my chest, as if that might settle the strange, aching tightness there. I shouldn’t be getting attached.
I should keep my distance.
And yet, there I was, sitting cross-legged on the floor, letting a two-year-old make up rules to a game that had probably seen better days. There I was, tucking her in, letting her slip under my skin with every sleepy word.
And now—now I’m about to sit by a fire with a man who keeps looking at me like I’m something fragile and untamed all at once.
I shake myself out of it, pulling off my sauce-stained sweater and grabbing a fresh one. My reflection in the mirror stops me. I look . . . soft. Like I belong here. The thought is unsettling, but before I can examine it too closely, I force myself out of the room.
Hopper is already in the living room when I return, crouched by the fireplace, coaxing a flame to life. The flickering light cuts across his face, catching on the rough edges of his jaw, the tired line of his mouth. He looks up when he hears me, his eyes warming in a way that makes something dip low in my stomach.
