Lily perks up instantly.
“Strawberries or bananas today?”
“Ooh,” Lily claps again, bouncing slightly on her stool. “Both? Pretty please?”
Titan shakes his head like he’s long-suffering, but the corner of his mouth lifts as he reaches for the fruit.
Bethany leans toward me, lowering her voice. “See? Absolute domestic chaos. You’ll get used to it.”
I smile into my mug.
Because for the first time in longer than I can remember, the chaos doesn’t scare me.
It feels like belonging.
And as the sound of batter hitting hot metal fills the kitchen, I allow myself—just for this moment—to believe that this might be the beginning of something steady. Something good that I don’t have to fight for.
It turnsout there’s no need for Bethany’s emergency pastry run after all.
The food is… good. Really good. Golden waffles stacked high, pancakes soft and warm, fruit cut with care instead of dumped on a plate as an afterthought. Everyone eats. Everyone goes quiet in that way people do when they’re content and a little surprised by it.
I hadn’t realized how much I needed this—simple fullness, shared space, no sharp edges.
Justin comes back into the kitchen partway through, and I notice it immediately. The way his mouth is pressed into a thin line. The way his shoulders hold tension he didn’t have ten minutes ago.
Whatever that phone call was, it mattered.
But then his eyes meet Titan’s.
And something shifts.
It’s subtle—so subtle I might’ve missed it if I hadn’t been watching him so closely. A look passes between them. Titan’s steady calm seems to bleed into Justin, grounding him, reminding him of something unspoken but understood.
Justin exhales. The tightness leaves his jaw. He steps back into the kitchen like he never left, picks up the spatula, flips a pancake with practiced ease.
Like everything is under control.
“We good?” Titan asks quietly, his tone casual, almost lazy, as if he’s asking about the weather. The girls—Bethany and Lily—are busy laughing over something to notice the shift between the men, but I’m all ears.
“Silas is on his way over,” Justin replies.
It’s a name I’ve heard before, though I’ve never met the man.
Titan nods once, accepting the information without reaction.
“Then let’s eat,” he says, setting two more plates on the counter. “Shall we?”
Titan slides his plate toward Lily.
She looks up at him, genuinely surprised, and delighted, with a second stack of pancakes. Then her whole face softens, lighting up in a way that feels almost private.
She looks at him like he is everything. Like the world begins and ends wherever he’s standing. Sun, moon, gravity—every fixed point she’s ever needed.
“Eat, baby,” he says softly.
I feel like I’ve accidentally wandered into something sacred.
The space between them hums. They don’t touch, but they don’t need to, because their eyes do all the talking. Their hands seem to know exactly where the other is, even when they’re not reaching.
