I'm not here to ask you to forget it. I just James, I have nowhere else to go. And I wouldn't be standing here if I did. The baby made another sound. A small questioning sound.
The sound of something very new to the world that wasn't sure yet whether the world was safe. James looked at the baby again. Something shifted in him. He didn't want it to. He actively resisted it.
But he was a father and some things you cannot turn off once they've been switched on. How old? He asked. Sophia exhaled. 8 months.
He nodded slowly. Looked up at the sky for a moment. Dark, heavy with clouds. The kind of November night that promises rain before morning. "Come inside," he said.
Sophia sat on his couch like someone who wasn't sure she deserved to be there. She kept the baby pressed against her chest even after James offered to take him. It was a him. She'd said his name was Noah, and James didn't push. He went to the kitchen, made her a cup of tea because he didn't know what else to do with his hands, and stood at the counter for a moment, listening to the small sounds coming from his living room.
He had not invited a woman into this house in 3 years. The last one had been a woman named Diane, who he'd met at a church function his mother dragged him to, and who was perfectly kind and perfectly decent and perfectly wrong for him, in a way he hadn't been able to explain then and couldn't explain now. They'd gone out four times. He'd ended it gently. Diane had understood, or at least she'd said she understood, and James had gone home that last night and sat in the kitchen for an hour before he admitted to himself in the privacy of his own mind, that the reason it didn't work was not complicated at all.
He was still not over Sophia Mitchell. He had been furious about that. Genuinely privately furious because James Carter was not a man who allowed himself to be weak. And loving someone who had walked out without explanation felt like the weakest thing he'd ever done. So he'd buried it.
He'd gone back to work. He'd gone back to Ava. He'd told himself every morning that forward was the only direction that mattered. He brought the tea into the living room. Sophia looked up.
"Thank you. Don't thank me yet," he said. He sat in the armchair across from the couch, not beside her, not close. Exactly far enough to make the point without being cruel. Start talking.
She wrapped both hands around the mug. I didn't plan to come back here. I believe that I was in Atlanta. I had a job, office management. It was a good position.
I had an apartment. I had things figured out mostly. She paused. Then the company restructured in February. The whole department I was managing got eliminated.
I lost the job. Then the apartment. Then she stopped again. Looked at Noah. Things got very bad very fast.
James listened. He was good at listening. People sometimes mistook his silence for coldness, but it wasn't coldness. It was the discipline of a man who had learned that every problem was better understood before it was solved. I tried other jobs, Sophia continued.
I tried three different cities. I had some help for a while and then the help ran out and I was James. I was out of options. I was genuinely out of options. She looked at him.
I know what this looks like. I know it looks like I only came back because I need something and you have every right to believe that. What do you want me to say to that? Nothing. I'm not asking you to tell me it's okay.
I'm asking you. I'm asking you if there is any version of your heart that has enough room to let me and Noah stay somewhere safe for a few weeks while I get back on my feet. The word weeks hung in the air. James looked at this woman. This woman who had been in his future once who had sat at this same table.
No, not this table. He'd bought this one after she left. Who had sat in this kitchen and talked about where they were going to be in 10 years. Who had laughed at things he said that weren't even funny just because she found him genuinely amusing and that had always undone him more than the beautiful things the genuine amusement 's father James asked Sophia's expression didn't change but something behind it did ingot in the picture not in the picture meaning what exactly meaning he made a choice and the choice was not us James nodded He didn't press. He'd learned over the years that not every wound needed to be opened in the first conversation.
You got anything bags, car? Anything outside? Sophia blinked like she hadn't expected the conversation to turn practical this quickly. There's a bag in my car and a travel crib in the trunk. Keys.
She reached into her jacket pocket and held them out. Her hand wasn't quite steady. James took the keys, stood up, looked at her sitting there on his cachet with this baby against her chest and those gold hoop earrings and those exhausted dark impossible eyes. I'll get your things, he said. The guest room's in the back.
Sheets are clean. There's an outlet by the window for the baby monitor if you have one. He walked to the front door. James, he turned. Why?
She asked. Her voice broke slightly on the word. Just slightly like she was ashamed of it. You don't owe me anything. You don't owe me this.
So why? He looked at her for a moment. Thought about all the versions of that answer living inside him. He picked the simplest one. Because my daughter watches everything I do, he said.