She sat alone, a cigarette in hand, mascara smudged but composed. Something about her calm cut through his static. He walked over, and they talked like they’d known each other for years. In a city that never stopped spinning, Lucy became his center. His pause. His calm in the storm.
Lucy was magnetic—messy and driven, funny and intense. She could turn a grocery bag into a bouquet and make their studio apartment feel like a scene from a movie. Justin had never been ambitious, but suddenly, being hers felt like enough. She made life feel full.
Justin had never seen himself as the settling type. Traditions were for people with happier childhoods, not boys raised on fear and slammed doors. But something about Lucy—the way she dreamed out loud, the way she believed in more—made him start to imagine what a different future might look like.
He found himself craving what he once mocked: family dinners, bedtime stories, tiny shoes by the door. He didn’t want to become his father; he wanted to undo him. And the clearest way to do that, he thought, was by raising a boy—his boy—with patience, love, and pride.