I’m not sure why I’m here. It’s been thirty-two hours since I last saw Ella, and when I left for the damn station, her eyes were still red and swollen from crying. I was prepared to call in and tell them I had caught the flu that had me picking up extra shifts the week before this hell storm began falling. But Ella was insistent that I go, promising nothing would happen. I spent my shift texting and calling her and ignoring nearly everyone because I didn’t want to discuss why I’d punched Patrick, or why I was dating Ella, or anything else. The only one who worked to seek me out was Drake who was working with our team again because Probie was out sick.

“He deserved a lot worse. We’ve got your back,” he had told me. When I looked up from my phone, he nodded. “I’ve met Ella a few times through school stuff. My daughter’s the same age as her son, and she’s always been really nice. I don’t know how she’s managed to get the short stick so many times, but she’s lucky to have you.”

Work was bad enough, being here at my parents’ is harder because they want to know everything that’s been going on since my call to Sofia asking for a legal reference since she’s in the field.

“You punched someone?” Mom’s eyes grow wide with horror after my brother asks who I decked.

“Multiple times, from what Justin said,” Arianna says.

“I did not raise an animal!” Mom cries.

“Have you seen him eat?” Joey asks.

“What happened?” Mia asks.

“He punched someone!” Mom repeats, her voice louder.

“I know that, Ma, but why?” Mia looks to me, silencing the family for a second.

I spin my fork around my pasta and shake my head. I don’t know how I’m going to explain this. Any part of it. They don’t even know about Ella, and there’s no way they’re going to understand why I would be willing to risk my career for her.

“It’s because of a woman, isn’t it?” Sofia asks.

“What woman?” Mom demands. “He’s not dating anyone.”

I scrub both hands over my face, my eyes dry from exhaustion. “I am dating someone, and yes, I punched a guy, but it wasn’t for her.” I pause and shift in my seat. “Not exactly.”

“You’re dating someone?” Mom sounds even angrier.

“Focus, Ma!” Joey says. “He hit somebody over a woman. This is like Jerry Springer shit, right here.”

Mom swats the back of his head for swearing at the dinner table, but doesn’t bother to argue, because she wants to know too.

“We’re not talking about this,” I tell them. “This is my business.”

“Your business?” Mom asks, dropping her chin. “Your business?” she says it again louder. “We’re a family. We share what’s happening in our lives!”

“It’s done!” I say.

“What’s done? Did she break up with you?” Sofia asks.

“No!” I scoot back from the table. “You guys aren’t going to understand.”

“Coen Mario DeLuca, if you dare to walk out of this kitchen, you are disrespecting me and the rest of this family. Why are you acting like this? Why are you keeping secrets from us?”

“We all keep secrets from you, Ma! Because you don’t know how to let things go!”

She looks around at my siblings, and then shakes her head. “You are the only one who keeps things from me. I know all of their issues. They talk to me. They call me. You’re the only one who refuses to ask for my help.”

Her words are a slap across the face, one that wakes me up while planting guilt deep in my gut. “I hit the father of her son,” I explain.

“You’re dating your neighbor?” Mia asks, her jaw dropping. “You said she was just a friend.”

“This,” I say, pointing to my sister. “This is why I don’t talk to you guys. I tell you one thing and you attack like a pack of hyenas.”

Mom glares at Mia, pointing a single finger to silence her before my sister can argue with me.

“Junior, sit down,” Dad says from his seat at the end of the table. “Tell us what in the hell is going on.”

My dad usually ignores everyone and eats or tells everyone to shut up so that he can eat. On the rare occasions that he barks out an order, I still listen, so I slump into my chair.

“But it is that chick you were telling us about, isn’t it? The neighbor?” Joey asks.

I close my eyes and turn my head to face my brother, showing how annoyed I am by his know-it-all tone. “Her name’s Ella, and yes. And I punched her ex because we responded to a call for a kid who had stopped breathing due to a peanut allergy. It was Hayden, Ella’s son.” I take a deep breath. “He told me to get out of his house after I got done saving his son’s life because he wasn’t there to do it himself. Because he wasn’t a father enough to make sure the fucking cake he gave to his kid didn’t have the single ingredient that’s capable of killing him. And now he’s threatening to take Hayden away if Ella doesn’t stop seeing me, and that whole stupid town has been saying horrible things about her for years, and the captain is pissed off at me.” I lick my lips and tick off the points again before looking across at my family. “I think those are the highlights.”

Everyone begins talking at once, questions, opinions, outrage. It’s a web of anger that forms when any one of us is under attack.

Dad places two fingers in his mouth and whistles, ending the chaos in a second. He sticks his finger in the air and turns it in a full circle. “Everybody out.”

“We can help!” Sofia cries.

Dad shakes his head. The rest of my siblings don’t question him. We know this drill, and they file out with their plates of food in hand. Mom and Dad sit at each end of the table. “You move back home,” dad says matter-of-factly.

“I’m not moving home.”

“Bring Ella and Hayden. We take care of our own.” He nods once, and then picks up his fork and digs into his noodles and Bolognese sauce.

My exhaustion triples. “Pops, it doesn’t work that way. There are laws to stop people from taking kids away from parents.”

“He’s not being a parent!”

I can’t argue with that point.

“What about that position Joey mentioned to you? The captain spot that opened up in Haven Point?” Mom asks.

“I beat the shit out of a well-liked, well-decorated fireman in his own house, Ma. The fact that I haven’t been fired is a miracle all in itself. There’s no way I’m going to be made captain anywhere. You know how politics work.”

“You need to get the town’s influence,” Mia says from the doorway.

I drop my head back. I’d known they’d all be listening, so I shouldn’t be shocked they’re already back and wanting to join in.

“He won’t have to do that,” Joey says, taking a long swallow of his drink. “I told you, McNally owes me. If you want this position, it’s yours. Just don’t pop somebody else in the face, and if you do, don’t do it with a fucking crowd.”

Mom stands and smacks the back of his head again.

“Coen’s dropped the F-bomb at least ten times. Why aren’t you slapping him upside the head?”

“He has enough problems,” Mom says.

“I don’t want to be in somebody’s pocket,” I tell my brother.

Joey shakes his head. “I helped stop a drug ring that was encroaching on the town. Once you’re in, it will be a clean slate and you won’t have to do anything for anyone. But, it’s a small town. You won’t have many advancement opportunities, and it will be a drive from your woman.”

My elbows drop to the table. The information overload makes my head feel like it could explode.

Traffic getting out of DC is a nightmare but it gives me time to think. I never used to want to leave the city. The action, the excitement, the palpable energy at all hours were hard to leave behind. For a while, I felt stir crazy in Silverdale. There was nothing to do, and too many people had never left, but now even it feels too big for me. In Haven Point, I could find a house with some acreage, surrounded by trees, and build a big pond. Shakespeare would have miles to run and explore. And Hayden and I could build a tree fort and camp in the backyard, and hike through the woods. And I would build Ella a bedroom ceiling made out of only glass so she would catch every falling star in the sky.

As the stoplight in front of me turns from red to green my foot pushes against the gas pedal, and I realize I’m already making plans with them in it, and I have no idea if I were to go if they would come. We haven’t been together that long, and if she’s stayed in Silverdale for all these years, what is to say she’ll leave now? How much influence does Patrick have? And is she truly over him? I’ve been asking myself the last question every single day since I saw that stupid box she kept. A part of me understands her attachment to him—I can still remember my first bad breakup when I was eighteen, and my heart still burns when I think about it. But I’ve realized that burn is simply a part of life. It shows that I’m not invincible, that I can learn, that I want to get better, that I need to love and be loved, and that I am merely a man. I don’t feel ashamed to remember that time in my life or regret what went wrong because it led me here to this town where I have learned to be a better fireman, rekindle old friendships, play harder and work smarter, and I found Hayden and Ella who make me want to be better at everything. A better person.

Miles of memories lead me to Ella’s house and when I get out of the truck, I feel no more prepared to ask her this question than I did hours ago.

Hayden answers the door with a goofy grin. “Can we go to your house?” he asks.

“Where’s your mom?”

Hayden looks at the ceiling and after a few seconds, I stare too.

There’s a thud, followed by several more. “Which room is she moving around?”

“My bedroom.”

I nod and head for the stairs.

“She can’t be stopped!” he calls after me.

I find Ella in Hayden’s room. Her hair’s tied back, but several strands have fallen out, and she’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt once again making her look too young to have a nine-year-old son.

“Want some help?”

She looks up and stops clearing things out of Hayden’s closet. “Hey.” Her hands go to her hair in an effort to fix it and I step closer to stop her. “I didn’t realize how late it’d gotten.”

I kiss her forehead before dipping my face so I can kiss her on the lips. “Do you want some help?” I repeat.

Ella laughs. “My OCD tendencies can’t accept your help. I haven’t been able to bring myself to move things around in the living room because you’re who put them there. Though they do provide me with a good laugh when I look at them.”

I pretend hurt as I ask why.

“Your single rule of organization was to put things on the shelves.”

That night my intent had only been to put things back away because I knew something much larger than the way things were arranged was bothering her.

“You okay?” Ella asks, her smile slipping.

I brush a hand over my hair and try to make my smile look assuring. “Yeah, yeah.” I take her hand and lead her over to Hayden’s bed and sit on the edge. She follows me, revealing a level of shared comfort that’s taken weeks to build, and I have the potential to destroy with a few wrongly chosen words, possibly even thoughts.

“There’s a captain’s position opening up at a firehouse a little north of here in Haven Point, Virginia,” I tell her.

Ella stares at me, her eyes glazing with that wall of defense I’d feared.

“So … you’re moving?” Ella pulls back.

“It might make things easier. I mean, this way I can come down on my days off and you guys can come stay there, and we won’t have to worry about what fuckface is doing, or who’s watching us, or all these ridiculous rumors.”

“You’ll be hours away.”

“You could come with me.”

“I can’t come with you. This is my home. Hayden’s home. I thought this town was your home too.”

“Ella, I hate this place. I don’t want to be able to look into my neighbor’s house while I’m taking a shower, and I don’t want to hear someone’s dog barking when I wake up, and I’m so damn sick and tired of hearing what these people say to you.”

“So leaving is going to make that better? Out of sight out of mind?”

I growl with frustration. “I could make captain, and we could start over. I don’t have many other options here.”

“Yes, you do. You’ve just already made up your mind so you’re not seeing them,” she says.

“I bought my house here, wanting to make it my home. A place I would live forever, and I wanted that so badly, but I knew all along this wasn’t the right place. This town has never felt like home, and I know you’ve said you felt the same. This place has never offered you a single ounce of kindness, either.” Ella flinches with my reminder. “Move with me,” I say.

“How?” she cries. “Coen, I have a job. I have Hayden.”

“So you’re going to let a paycheck keep you here?”

“Hayden’s school is here.”

“There are schools everywhere, Ella.”

“But he has friends here.”

“Do you really not see the way other parents and kids look at him? They know he’s the product of an affair. This whole fucking town knows it, and it’s not just you living here that reminds them of that.”

“So I’m supposed to just run away with my tail tucked between my legs?”

“Hell, no. We aren’t going to run from this place. We’re going to get out of here and do what’s best for us. Stop living in this town with a bunch of judgmental assholes. We can get a house together, and if Patrick wants to take us to court, let him. Let him try and fight us.”

“Coen, I…” Ella’s mouth falls shut and she shakes her head. “This isn’t at all what I was expecting to hear. I don’t know what to say. I need some time to process it all because right now all I see are obstacles like Patrick, and selling my house, and getting a new job, and tearing Hayden from the only home and town he’s ever known.”

I nod. “Before you decide, I’d like you to come with me. Come see it. Look at the town, meet some people, see if you could see yourself living there.”

Ella’s eyes fill with tears. “It sounds like you’ve already made your decision.”

I hadn’t realized it until now, but I have. “It won’t change anything,” I tell her. “We’ll make this work.”

She nods, but doesn’t say anything.

Driving here, all I saw was Ella and Hayden with me. The realization that there’s a very real chance they won’t be is both sobering and paralyzing.

“Ella, we can do this,” I insist.