The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 138

Chapter 125: Morning After

Bella POV

“Are you a real family now?

Tom’s question hung in the air between us, and neither of us answered right away.

Caleb’s chin was still resting on my shoulder, his arms still loosely around me, both of us blinking at our son perched at the foot of the bed in his dinosaur pajamas with that gap-toothed grin climbing up his face.

“Yeah, buddy,” Caleb said quietly. “I think we are.”

Tom’s face split wide open and he launched himself up the bed with zero regard for anyone’s ribs, landing squarely between us in a chaos of bony elbows and wriggling. “I knew it,” he announced, beaming at the ceiling. “I told Aunty Maya you’d figure it out.”

“You told Maya?” I said.

“She said it would take forever. I said it wouldn’t.” He looked very pleased with himself. “I was right.”

Caleb made a sound against my hair that was almost certainly a laugh he was trying to smother, and I pressed my face into the pillow for a moment, not trusting my own expression.

My son had been running a timeline on us. I pulled Tom close and kissed the top of his head, breathing in the warm, familiar scent of his curls and over his head I looked at Caleb, who was watching me with those quiet grey eyes and not trying to hide anything in them.

“Pancakes,” Tom declared, sitting up energy. “Daddy, you said you’d make the ones with the blueberries.”

“Did I?”

“Yesterday.” Tom pointed at him. “You said eventually, this is eventually.”

Caleb looked at me as I raised my eyebrows. Your move.

“Blueberry pancakes,” he said, sitting up. “Give me ten minutes.

Tom scrambled off the bed immediately, already gone, his feet thundering down the hallway toward the kitchen, and Caleb stood and stretched – unhurried, unselfconscious, like this was simply how mornings worked now – and picked up his shirt and trousers from the floor.

He wore his trousers and looked over at me while he buttoned his shirt, with a mischievous grin on his face. “You need another ten minutes?” he asked.

“I need coffee and possibly a new nervous system, but yes, I’ll be right there.”

He was already smiling as he left.

I stood in the doorway of the kitchen for a moment before either of them noticed me. Tom was on his step stool at the counter, narrating everything Caleb was doing and Caleb was nodding seriously at each update while he measured out flour, and the morning light was coming in at an angle through the window

13

Chapter 125 oung After

Claim

and catching the grey in Caleb’s eyes, and it looked, from here, exactly like what Tom had declared it to be. A real family.

The thought moved through me quietly, oh, this is what it feels like – and I crossed the kitchen and took my coffee from the counter and leaned against the opposite wall, watching them.

“Mummy watches, she doesn’t help,” Tom informed Caleb.

“I help,” I said.

“You stand there with coffee,” Tom said. “That’s watching.”

“That is essentially my contribution to mornings, yes.”

Caleb set a plate of blueberry pancakes in front of Tom with the particular expression of a man who had just earned something, and Tom immediately drowned them in maple syrup with the conviction of someone who had never once in his life been told that was enough, and I sat across from him at the kitchen island and watched my son eat pancakes while his father cleaned the pan and they argued companionably about whether dinosaurs would have liked blueberries.

I drank my coffee and felt something settle in me that had been unsettled for a very long time.

Later, after Tom had disappeared to his room with his dinosaur figurines and the remains of his morning mischief, I found Caleb on the terrace with his laptop and two fresh cups of coffee, one of which was already waiting on my side of the table.

“Tom mentioned he wants to visit the new natural history exhibit,” he said, without looking up. “This weekend, if you want.”

“He told you that?”

“This morning. Extensively.” He glanced at me then. “He made a fairly compelling case.”

I sat down and wrapped my hands around the mug. “Caleb.”

He looked up.

“I’m happy,” I said. “I’m not performing it and I’m not pretending and I’m not waiting for the part where something goes wrong. I’m just-” I stopped. Looked at my coffee. “I wanted you to know that.”

He was quiet for a moment. “That’s the most you’ve given me without asterisks in a while.”

“Don’t push it.”

“I wouldn’t dare.” But the warmth in his voice was unmistakable, and when he reached across the table and covered my hand with his, I turned my palm up and held on.

I didn’t see the notification until after lunch. I’d been putting Tom down for his rest, half-listening to his recap of the dinosaur facts he’d curated for the museum visit, when my phone buzzed with an alert from the building’s external security system – a flag on the lobby camera feed.

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