My heart filled with Nick’s smile, with the look of sheer adoration he gave me as he lugged the bucket. In the space of an instant, I felt it again—the crumbling of an old part of me, the growth of something new. The changing of my heart into a mother’s heart. It happened at the strangest times, in the most unexpected ways. Nick looked at me, and the love I felt for him was almost painful in its intensity. I’d never known I had it in me, the capacity to love this way. … But when Nick looked at me, my mind tumbled through nights and mornings, seasons and years in the future. … I saw a future like none I’d ever imagined. I wanted it, every minute of it.

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