Page 118 of You Fall First

I don’t realize until I’m in bed that we just shared our last ordinary evening together.

The next day, Dutton and Paige’s reunion at the airport is one big ball of tears. Dutton runs to his mama, plowing into her legs before I can slow him down, and she takes the impact like a hero. I jog over to heft him up so the two of them can wrap their arms around each other. Dutton buries his face in her neck, and I hug Paige too. Tight. It’s a big old Stadler sandwich. Through the laughter and sniffles and various noses wiped on T-shirts, something flickers in me.

A spark of wanting this for myself.

And by this, I mean my own family.

Believe me, my love for Paige and Dutton runs deep. Deep enough that I’ve worked this whole past year to bring us together again. To be their strength, their rock, I’ll sacrifice almost everything. But I’m not Dutton’s father. He’s not my son.

And Paige is my sister, not my partner.

For now, though, she’s exhausted, and we’ve got to get her settled. So I push aside those feelings and get down to the business of bringing her home.

On the drive to my place—our place—Paige sits in the back with Dutton, who talks nonstop about Jo. He reports, in detail, every moment they spent together over the past two weeks. This, despite the fact that Paige has gotten daily updates all along.

To her credit, Paige responds to these repeat stories with fresh questions and excitement. She’s always been an incredible woman. Strong and generous to a fault. She doesn’t sweat the small stuff or get bogged down in pettiness or jealousy.

She’s also deeply grateful to Jo for being the glue that held us together while she couldn’t.

But she must’ve figured out within five minutes of us picking her up that Dutton is obsessed with Jo.

And not just because he made Paige hug Bugs three times in the airport.

Full disclosure, I’m pretty wrapped up in Jo Michaels too. But hopefully, I’m doing a better job of keeping that emotion under wraps than Dutton is.

“So does Bugs sleep with you every night?” Paige asks, trying to keep up with Dutton’s backseat monologue.

“Uh-huh. Rex too. Until he took a toilet bath.” Dutton launches into a longer soliloquy on the dinosaur he got from Amici’s Pizza, followed by a thorough description of the lake and the gazebo downtown.

Finally, he replays the bee sting he got while he was feeding the ducks with Jo.

“Here!” Dutton lifts his hand. “This finger!”

“Aww. I’m sorry.” Paige kisses the spot he’s sticking in her face, then his other four fingers, one at a time. “Does that make it better?”

“Miss Jo gave me ice,” he says. “Because I had swells.”

“Swelling?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll bet the ice helped a lot,” Paige says.

“It did!”

“And I’ll bet that bee was very hungry for a sweet little boy like you.”

“Miss Jo says the bee was just scared, but he didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“Yes, that’s probably more true.” Paige presses out a chuckle. “Miss Jo sounds like a smart lady.”

“She makes waffles,” Dutton chirps. “With brown sugars and white sugars.”

“Wow,” Paige says. “That sounds like a delicious breakfast.”

“I do the strawberries,” he adds. “You can help us tomorrow.”

“Miss Jo won’t be at breakfast tomorrow,” I remind Dutton, so Paige doesn’t have to. I glance in the rearview and catch Dutton tipping his chin.