Page 11 of The Contractor's Rose
Teagan lost her mom too young. Seventeen. And that kind of hole? It didn’t just close up. It echoed.
Still, I never forgot that one night, years ago.
I should’ve been asleep.
I had a chemistry final the next morning, and I was stressed to hell. Midnight had come and gone. My highlighters were dry. My eyes were fried. I told myself I’d go downstairs, make hot chocolate, just breathe for a second, and then go to bed … Okay, maybe after one more practice test.
I padded down the stairs in socks, the old floorboards groaning like they were trying to warn me.
Halfway down, I caught sight of him.
Gavin, sitting at the kitchen island, shoulders hunched forward like the weight of the world had finally broken through his spine. His hands were clasped tight in front of him, head bowed. A glass of something dark—whiskey, I think—rested untouched beside him.
My dad sat next to him, elbows on the counter, with so much concern and care etched into his face. I could hear my mom’s voice from the other side of the island, soft and steady in the kind of tone she only used when someone needed mothering in the gentlest way. A tone I rarely got from her.
“I’m trying,” Gavin said, voice low and raw. “I really am. But it’s not good enough. Teagan hates me. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m not cut out for this.”
There was silence. Heavy. A silence with edges.
Then my mom answered, calm and even. “Teens are hard. Even the ones with two parents. You’re not failing, Gavin. You’re just tired.”
“She looks at me like I ruined her life,” he sighed. “And maybe I did. I don’t know how to be both parents.”
“You’re doing your best,” my dad said, his voice warm and unshaken. “That counts for something.”
And then Gavin said it.
“I see Rosie and she’s so … perfect. Kind. Polite. A good kid. You two hit the jackpot.”
I remember how my breath caught. How my fingers curled around the railing.
My mom gave a soft laugh. “We are lucky. But Teagan lost someone, Gavin. Her mom was her world. She’s not trying to get in trouble. She’s just … lost.”
They kept talking, voices dipping into a kind of quiet understanding that wrapped around the room like a blanket.
But I couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. Couldn’t breathe.
I’d never seen Gavin like that. Never imagined that someone so solid, so sure, could bend under the weight like that. That their heart could bleed like that.
That night changed something in me.
It was the first time I realized grown men weren’t invincible. That they could carry grief like bricks in their chest and still show up the next day.
Still cook dinner.
Still fold the laundry.
Still try to be someone for someone else.
Trying to parent. Trying to love. Trying not to drown.
And now—years later—standing beside him in the dark, the scent of Thai food curling through the air and far too many feelings crashing in at once, I realized something else.
That night, he saw me as perfect. The well-behaved girl with polite manners and a quiet mouth.
Safe.
Untouchable.
