There were seven pages on the table.
Printed. Highlighted. Dog-eared and already coffee-stained, even though they'd only been printed that morning.
Application for Emergency Kinship Guardianship.
Juniper Vale.
Lennox stared at them like they were written in another language.
Not legalese.
Just… future.
"You already signed half of it," Isla said gently, nudging a mug of tea toward him. "That's commitment in my book."
He looked up at her. "I sign things I don't understand all the time. I once agreed to let a gallery 'digitally reinterpret' my work and they turned it into a cake."
Isla blinked. "A cake?"
"A lemon one, ironically."
She smiled—small, but it reached her eyes. "Then it's fate."
They were sitting in Isla's kitchen. The one with the crooked drawer and the cabinet that creaked every time you opened it too fast. Lennox had insisted on coming over instead of meeting in the studio.
"I wanted to be somewhere that doesn't smell like paint thinner and existential dread," he'd said.
Jasper lay stretched beneath the table, belly-up and shameless, as if he'd adopted Lennox without asking Isla's permission.
Lennox took another sip of tea. "What if she hates me?"
"She wrote you a letter with a fox sticker," Isla said, reaching for a blueberry muffin. "That's basically a toddler's way of proposing."
"I don't even know what five-year-olds eat."
"Mac and cheese. Banana slices. Dinosaur-shaped things. Crushed hope."
Lennox choked on his tea.
"You'll be fine," she added, softer now. "You're already more of a father than most who never try."
The words hung in the air.
He didn't deflect them. Not this time.
Instead, he said, "Would you… come with me? When I turn in the forms?"
Isla looked up from the folder. "To the office?"
He nodded. "You don't have to say anything. Just... be there."
She hesitated.
Not because she didn't want to.
But because that wasn't a small ask.
It was a prologue.
And still—
"Yes," she said. "Of course I will."
---
After they filled out the last of the paperwork, they made pasta.
Isla's kitchen wasn't made for two people, but they tried anyway. Lennox stood by the stove while she stirred the sauce, elbowing him every time he snuck another olive from the bowl.
"You're a menace," she said, laughing as he caught another one between his fingers like a magician.
"I'm fueling up for fatherhood."
"You're going to be the type who makes pancake faces, aren't you?"
"Only if I get to use chocolate chips for eyebrows."
She grinned, tossing a dishtowel at him. He dodged. Jasper barked once—unimpressed.
The noodles overcooked.
The garlic bread slightly burned.
But they ate it all anyway.
And when Lennox reached for a spoon and found the one with the bent handle, Isla didn't explain it.
But he didn't ask.
He just used it—gently.
Like maybe everything broken didn't need fixing to be useful.
---
Later that night, Lennox stood at her front door. Not quite leaving. Not quite staying.
"I think I'll get a plant," he said.
Isla leaned against the doorframe. "You, willingly buying something green? Is this my influence?"
"No. This is me panicking about being a guardian and buying things that look like responsibility."
She laughed. Then grew quiet.
And in the hush, she said something she hadn't meant to say yet:
"You're going to be good at this, Lennox."
He looked at her like he wasn't sure if he believed her.
But her eyes didn't flinch.
And that was enough.