Page 47 of At First Flight (Coral Bell Cove #1)

Something about the air after a breakthrough makes everything feel sharper. Cleaner. Like the sky has rinsed the world and left it raw and exposed.

That’s exactly how I feel this morning. Raw. Exposed. Scrubbed down to the bone.

The sheets are still tangled around my legs when I blink awake, the memory from two nights ago cling to my skin like heat. Dean’s hands, his mouth, the gravel in his voice when he told me to hold the headboard.

God. My whole body flushes.

I stretch beneath the sheets, sore in places I hadn’t used in a while, and very aware of the hollow space beside me. The bed smells like him, cedarwood and firelight and something undeterminable but warm. Like safety, if safety had a heartbeat and broad shoulders.

But he’s gone.

I prop myself up on one elbow, blinking against the pale sunlight slipping through the curtains.

The room is quiet. Too quiet. No cartoons, no cereal bowls clinking, no sound of Evelyn dragging every stuffed animal in existence down the stairs.

Just birdsongs and the soft ticking of the hallway clock.

Then I see it.

A note on the nightstand. His handwriting is steady, clean. Unfussy.

At the lawyer’s. Your mom offered to watch the kids. Didn’t want to wake you. Made coffee. – D

Coffee. Lawyer. Two words that snap me out of the dreamy haze and drop me right into the hard edge of reality.

The past few days weren’t just about stolen kisses and thunderstorms. It was about his father calling, slinging threats like they were commandments, threatening custody and undermining everything Dean had worked for. And for what? Power? Control?

I sip from the steaming mug waiting in the kitchen. The bitter heat grounds me like it’s trying to anchor my thoughts. But they still drift.

I didn’t intend to step into their conversation. But I did. Every word is branded into my skull.

“You think moving to some farm town makes you a father?

“This isn’t parenting. This is hiding. You're a disgrace to the family name.

“I’m going to make sure those kids end up with someone who understands responsibility.”

And Dean’s voice—calm at first, steady, and then shattered.

“You don’t get to dictate my life. You forfeited that right the first time you put money above your family.”

The silence that followed was louder than the thunder outside.

I press my hand to the cool surface of the countertop and take a breath. It hurts how much I feel for him. For the boy he was before the world hardened him. For the man he’s become. The one who tucks notes beside the bed and brews coffee just the way I like it.

The one who still thinks he has something to prove.

I walk through the house slowly, toes brushing the new floorboards freshly scratched from toys, letting the quiet wrap around me like a memory I’m not ready to let go of.

The hallway still smells like rain and maple syrup, leftover from this morning’s pancake chaos.

A puzzle sits unfinished on the dining room table, Evelyn’s butterfly puzzle, the one she insists on finishing all by herself, even though she demands my help every other piece.

A pair of Oliver’s mismatched socks lie abandoned halfway up the stairs, one inside out, the other crumpled in a way that tells me he took them off mid-chase.

I smile at the mess, at the lived-in feeling I used to avoid. This place isn’t just a temporary address anymore. It’s a heartbeat. A rhythm I’ve come to crave.

My phone buzzes in my hand. I glance down at the screen and freeze.

Dr. Rowley.

My thumb hesitates over the notification before I swipe to open the message.

Lila, we’d love to offer you the two-year research grant position. The lab at Chicago Biotech is thrilled at the possibility of working with you. Let us know soon and with any questions you may have.

My lungs don’t seem to know what to do with air. I sink onto the edge of the couch, blinking at the email, reading it again and again as if the words might shift, soften, or vanish.

It’s everything I said I wanted. Everything I spent years building toward. A prestigious lab, cutting-edge technology, a chance to make a name for myself in the field I’ve bled for.

But now…

I stare out the front window. The sun’s low, casting long golden shadows across the lawn. I can hear the wind chimes tinkling softly from the back deck.

And just like that, the lab offer feels… less urgent.

I trace the edge of my phone, heartbeat tapping out a rhythm I don’t recognize. This offer is a dream. But it’s a dream I had before I knew what it felt like to be here. To be needed. To be seen.

Dean makes it so easy to believe in myself again, and not because he fills me with empty flattery.

He sees the pieces of me I thought were too messy or too complicated to be loved and tells me I’m enough anyway.

More than all those parts Prescott gaslit me into thinking were too much. They’re enough for Dean.

He took the kids to the farm today, just so I could have a quiet house to write, apply for grants, and catch up on research. He left a cup of coffee beside my laptop, and a folder of possible opportunities to look into, each one annotated with little notes in his handwriting.

That’s who he is. He doesn’t just support me, he champions me. And that support? That attention? It makes me question everything I thought I knew. Because how do you walk away from a life that finally feels like it fits?

I don’t make any decisions. Not tonight. Maybe not for a few days. But I tuck the phone away and press my palm to my chest, right over the place where my heart keeps whispering, stay.

But wanting something and believing you deserve it are two different battles. And I’ve only just begun fighting mine.

The screen door creaks open around noon, and all that peace and stillness shatters like a dropped dish.

“LILA!” Evelyn yells, a streak of dark hair and sticky fingers flying into my legs. “Did you know goats can SCREAM?”

I crouch to hold her, her little arms wrapping tight around my neck. “That sounds terrifying.”

“Rowan said I’m part goat now!” she adds, like it’s an honor. “Because I climbed a fence and yelled a lot.”

I laugh, tears pricking unexpectedly at the edges of my eyes.

Oliver flops into the entryway behind her, shirt smudged with dirt, arms flung wide. “Rowan made me pull weeds. With my hands . Like an animal .”

“Tragic,” I say, ruffling his hair. “Shall I call Ms. Claire?” I ask referring to my mom.

He grunts already distracted by something else.

Dean appears behind them, holding a pie box and looking criminal in a wrinkled, light blue button-down shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows and those stupid perfect forearms. His smile is hesitant, like he’s waiting to see what version of me he’s walking into.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

That’s all. But it carries so much.

He steps close, not touching, but there’s gravity in the air between us. A silent pull.

His knuckles graze mine when he hands over the pie box. Not an accident. Not anymore.

He leans in then, his hand coming up to cup my cheek, his thumb brushing just under my eye. His touch is reverent, tender.

“I’ve wanted to kiss you every second since I met you,” he murmurs.

“So do it,” I breathe.

And he does.

Not like other nights where we’re hungry and aching and storm-driven. This kiss is slower. Still urgent, but deeper, sweeter. Like we’re writing a promise we’re not ready to say out loud yet.

When he pulls back, his forehead rests against mine.

“Your mom mentioned your replacement after the summer. I know you only signed up for the summer and despite every ounce of me wanting to force you to stay, I’m not going to ask. I know you have plans and dreams,” he whispers. “But I hope you do.”

My heart twists, splintering open a little more.

“I’m not going to promise I will,” I whisper back. “But I hope I can.”

Later that evening, the kids are full of post-farm energy and sugar, bouncing off the walls like two tiny tornadoes. I’ve just convinced Oliver to stop trying to catapult Evelyn off the couch when Dean reappears from the mudroom with a box in his hands.

“What’s that?” I ask as I help Evelyn into her pajamas.

Dean grins, eyes flicking down to Evelyn and then back to me. “Something I found by the barn earlier. Thought it might distract them for more than five minutes.”

He opens the box slowly. Inside, hanging from a stick, is a small, pale green chrysalis.

Evelyn gasps and reaches for it with sticky fingers.

“Gentle,” I warn automatically.

She peers in with wide eyes. “Is it another butterfly?”

“A caterpillar that’s turning into a butterfly,” I say. “It’s called metamorphosis.”

Oliver makes a face. “That’s a weird word.”

“It means change,” I say, kneeling next to them.

He eyes me suspiciously. “Like when you cry and then pretend you weren’t crying?”

I blink. “Something like that.”

Evelyn clutches the little box to her chest like it’s made of gold. “Can I name her?”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You’re assuming it’s a girl?”

“She’s sparkly ,” Evelyn insists. “Her name is Pancake.”

Oliver snorts and flops onto the rug. “Of course it is.”

I laugh, but it hits me somewhere deep. This little box, this quiet family moment, this man who thought to bring home another chrysalis adding to our already growing butterfly foster family, for the kids and the woman he kissed like she was a secret he’d waited years to tell…

this is the kind of life I didn’t think I’d ever get to want.

And now it’s here, unfolding in front of me like wings.

We set Pancake the Chrysalis on the windowsill in the dining room with the others, and the kids insist on saying good night to her before bed.

Dean watches me the whole time like he’s memorizing my smile because it might be the last time he sees it. And that look, so intense, quiet, full of unsaid things, lingers with me as I tuck Evelyn into bed and read Oliver another chapter from his latest space book.