Page 30 of Pucking the Single Dad
The honesty surprised me. "Maybe both can be true."
He looked at me then, really looked, and something shifted in the air between us.
"You're not random," he said quietly.
Before I could respond, Finn appeared, trailing his blanket.
"I can't sleep." His hand pressed against his chest. "It feels tight. Like someone's sitting on me."
Brad launched himself off the couch, injured knee forgotten, covering the distance in two limping strides. "Scale of one to ten?"
"Maybe six? Seven?"
I watched them go through their routine—peak flow meter, rescue inhaler, sitting position that opened airways. The tight feeling eased quickly, but Brad's tension didn't.
"Let's do a nebulizer treatment just to be safe," he said.
"But I feel better—"
"Prevention is better than reaction."
While Brad set up the nebulizer, I sat with Finn, pulling him against my side. "Want to hear a story about when my brother had asthma?"
Finn nodded, settling into my warmth.
"He played soccer, even though everyone said he couldn't. Know what his secret was?"
"Special medicine?"
"That helped. But the real secret was that he learned the difference between his lungs being scared and his lungs actually needing help."
Brad looked up sharply. "Serena—"
"Sometimes," I continued, "his chest felt tight because he was worried about his chest feeling tight. The worry made it real. Like when you think about yawning and then you have to yawn."
"That happens to me," Finn admitted in a small voice. "I get scared I won't be able to breathe, and then I can't breathe, and then Dad gets scared, and then I get more scared."
Brad flinched like he'd been slapped.
"Your dad keeps you safe," I said, rubbing Finn's arm. "That's his job. But you're seven now. That's old enough to start learning the difference between worry-tight and really-tight."
Finn considered this. "How do I tell?"
"Practice. And trust. Your dad will always err on the side of caution, which is good. But you're getting older, learning your own body."
Brad finished preparing the treatment, his expression unreadable. As Finn breathed in the medication, Brad sat on his other side, creating a protective bracket around the boy.
"Miss Serena's right," he said finally. "We can work on understanding the differences. Together."
The word 'together' hung in the air, carrying more weight than it should.
That evening, after Finn was asleep, I escaped to the deck despite the biting cold. The blanket I'd stolen from the couch smelled like Brad—pine and coffee and something indefinably safe. Stars were punching through the breaking clouds like promises, and I needed the sharp air to clear my head from whatever was building between us inside that too-warm house.
The sliding door whispered open behind me.
"You'll freeze," Brad said, but he was already stepping out, no coat, just a flannel shirt that the wind immediately pressed against his chest.
"Needed air."
