Unmatched Wife: Not His To Claim Anymore novel Chapter 177

Chapter 177

MATTHEW

He was quiet for a moment, running his finger along the strap of his sleepover bag. “I feel like it’s okay to be excited about things again,” he said. “Like, before, when something was good, I felt bad about it being good. Because Mama wasn’t there for it.” He paused, finding the words with the careful effort he always brought to hard things. “But I talked to Dr. Fisher about it and she said that Mama would want me to have good things. That the good things aren’t-” He paused again. “She said the good things aren’t happening instead of Mama. They’re happening alongside missing her.”

I looked at my son.

“Does that make sense?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “That makes complete sense.”

“So I let myself be excited.” He looked at his bag. “I think Mama would think Biscuit sounds like a good dog.”

“I think she would too,” I said.

“She liked dogs,” he said. “She told me once, when we walked past a big one on the street, that she’d always wanted one but they’d never had one.” He looked at me. “How come we never had a dog?”

Because I hadn’t been paying enough attention to know she wanted one.

“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “We should have.”

Theo nodded, accepting this answer with the straightforwardness he brought to most things. “Maybe we could get one,” he said. “Sometime. Not now because we have a lot of things happening. But sometime.”

“Sometime,” I said.

He picked up his wolf and stood. “I’m going to read for a bit and then sleep. I want to be not tired for Biscuit.”

“Sound preparation,” I said.

He went upstairs.

She’d said: you’re not trying to get to the other side of it. You’re learning to walk with it beside you without it taking all your attention.

Outside his door, I could hear him reading to himself in the low murmur he used when the book was particularly good and he couldn’t quite stay silent about it. Not words I could make out. Just the sound of my son, alive and reading and happy about a dog.

I stood in the hallway and listened for a moment before going to my own room.

The petition was withdrawn. The pack was watching and deciding. Sandra Harker’s mother had noticed that I noticed. Adam was going to keep watching to see if what I’d said proved true.

And Theo had packed his sleepover bag.

I was going to keep working. Keep showing up. Keep saying the true thing even when it was harder than saying the comfortable thing. Keep being the father that Theo needed rather than the father I’d been when I’d had too much of my attention pointed in the wrong direction.

It wasn’t everything. It wasn’t a restoration of what I’d broken.

But it was a beginning. I’d learned to hold those without demanding they be more. That was enough for tonight.