Chapter 10 - The Architecture of Us
Ten years later, the old house on Maple Street still smelled faintly of sawdust, coffee, and fresh-cut grass.
In the sunlit backyard, a little girl with bright brown curls and a scraped knee sat crying on the grass near the patio, staring mournfully at the plastic wheel that had snapped off her pink tricycle.
From the kitchen doorway, a thirty-something man with broad shoulders and a familiar shock of thick dark hair stepped out onto the porch. He didn't panic. He didn't hesitate. He walked calmly down the steps, crouching beside the little girl with a reassuring smile.
"Hey there, buddy," Cole said gently, pulling a small, well-worn multi-tool from his back pocket. "Looks like we've got a broken axle. Let me see if I can fix it."
From the kitchen window, Iris stood washing a mug, watching her husband with a warm, knowing smile playing on her lips. She looked over her shoulder as footsteps approached behind her, and a pair of familiar arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her back against a comforting chest.
"He's definitely your son," Iris murmured, leaning back into Cole's embrace as he walked up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder. "Handing out tools before he even knows what to say."
"He gets it from his mother," Cole whispered, kissing the side of her neck. "The stubborn insistence on fixing everything that's broken."
Iris turned in his arms, wrapping her hands around his neck, looking up into the eyes of the man who had shaved his head in a bathroom mirror a decade ago, terrified of losing her, only to learn that true love isn't about carrying someone's burdens in secret—it's about building a life together, brick by brick, tool by tool, through every storm and every sunrise.
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"We built a pretty good life, didn't we?" Iris whispered.
Cole smiled, tightening his arms around her as the afternoon sunlight washed over the garden, golden and warm and endless. "The best kind of engineering project," he said softly. "One that's built to last forever."
