I smile. “Are you gonna cry?”
He exhales hard. “No.”
I walk up to him and wrap my arms around his waist. His chin drops to the top of my head as he pulls me in tight, much tighter than I expected. When I try to pull back after a few seconds, his arms clamp around me like steel.
“Not yet,” he breathes, voice low and rumbly against my hair.
So, I don’t.
Patrick
I stretch, yawning so wide my jaw cracks. My arm shifts and-
“Ow,” Lore mumbles. “My hair.”
“Shit, sorry.” I untangle my fingers from her curls, gently rubbing the spot I must’ve tugged. “Sorry, baby.”
She doesn’t answer, just burrows deeper under the covers and presses her face against my chest like she’s trying to fuse into me.
“It’s 6:30,” I say, voice still thick with sleep. Just to be sure, I squint at the clock. “Yup. Six-thirty.”
Lore groans like she wants me to shut up. “I don’t have work till twelve.”
I slide my hand along her bare forearm, tracing lazy circles. “Milo has school. How do you wanna handle it?”
Usually, she’d take him to school and drop Agnes with my dad after feeding her, just to see the kids when it’s not her week.
She makes a sound somewhere between a growl and a dying animal. “Do they come in here?” she mutters.
“No,” I say. “Why would they?”
“Well,” she mumbles into the pillow, “how about I just hide in here until you leave?”
The pillow shifts as she pushes it up enough to peek at me with one sleep-puffed eye.
“That is… unless you’renotokay with leaving me alone in your apartment.”
I brush her hair out of her face, letting my fingers linger.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
She gives me a wicked, hushed little whisper: “I’ll snoop.”
I laugh under my breath, lean in, and kiss her quickly.
“Snoop away.”
Right on that, the bedroom door creaks open.
I jerk back. Lore ducks under the covers so fast she makes an air bubble.
Milo stands in the doorway, hair sticking up in every direction, rubbing his eyes with a fist.
“I’m hungry,” he mumbles.
My heart thuds as I deflate the comforter. Picking up the baby monitor, I can see that Agnes is still asleep. Thank God. Milo must’ve slipped out without a peep.
I swing my legs off the bed, standing quickly and blocking Milo’s view of the suspicious Lore-shaped lump under the blanket.
