We didn’t pretend the night hadn’t wrecked us.
We held each other instead. We cried, we breathed, and we touched like people who needed reassurance more than pleasure. Like two souls clinging to the same lifeline, whispering truths we’d been holding in for years.
“I love you.”
“I’ve always loved you.”
“I need you.”
It wasn’t said lightly and it wasn’t said out of habit or obligation.
Last night the world as we knew it had cracked open and somehow we were still standing.
Together.
I swipe at my cheeks and sit up, pulling Harrison’s shirt tighter around me. It still smells like him.
Clean.
Warm.
Safe.
I close my eyes, remembering how it felt when Harrison’s body pressed against mine under the spray of the shower. How the water cascaded between us, turning every touch slick and desperate. My skin still tingles at the memory of his hands—strong and certain—sliding over my body like he was rememorizing every curve, every hollow, every place that he knew would make me gasp. Last night’s shower may not have been our first time being together in our adulthood, but it felt more emotional, more personal, and more intimate than anything we’ve ever done.
God, how I needed him last night. Not just physically, but completely. The way he looked at me with such raw vulnerability, his eyes dark with desire but also shining with something deeper, something that spoke of ten years of absence and longing. I felt it too and I was desperate for that connection, that security in the middle of our emotional chaos.
The fullness of him, the way he stretched me, claimed me, it was like coming home after being lost for so long. Each thrust was both passionate and reverent, like he was trying to erase the decade between us and simultaneously honor every second of it.
A couple hours later, laughter echoes down the hallway.
Real laughter.
I freeze, my heart leaping into my throat as the front door opens.
Connor comes in first, cheeks flushed, hair a mess, talking a mile a minute.
“And then he totally missed it—like, completely whiffed—and I told him that means he has to retire?—”
“Hate to break it to you, buddy,” Harrison says behind him, voice lighter than I’ve ever heard it, “but that meansyouretire too. I taught you that move I also taught it to Roche.”
Connor snorts. “Yeah, but I’m eleven. You guys are old.”
“Rude.”
They both stop when they see me.
Connor grins. A real one. Unforced.
“Morning, Mom.”
Harrison’s eyes meet mine over his head.
Everything unspoken passes between us.
We’re not healed.
But we’re trying.
