“Do you actually live here?”
“Yes. Well… sort of.”
She opens a few more cabinets, revealing appliances still in boxes, and glances over her shoulder with one brow arched. “Is this one of those fake, staged homes?”
I shift my weight, suddenly self-conscious. “No, I just don’t cook. Do you?”
She gazes out the window over the sink. “Sort of,” she echoes, giving my words back to me. “But this place makes me want to learn.”
The sudden image of her in an apron—flour on her cheek, hair tied back—makes me chuckle low in my throat. I follow as she drifts into the great room, turning slowly, drinking it all in.
“This is nothing like I expected,” she says. “Not a single black leather sofa or shiny chrome coffee table in sight.”
I flip her the middle finger. She laughs and returns the gesture before smoothing a hand over the back of the giant U-shaped sectional that faces the towering two-story stone fireplace.
“Anything you want to change, feel free,” I tell her. “I didn’t change a thing when I bought it. A decorator picked out the furniture and all the stuff in the cabinets.”
Sera’s fingers linger on the soft fabric. “Other than maybe a few personal pictures, I wouldn’t change anything.”
“I’m not here much,” I admit.
It’s a family home—something I never imagined I’d own. Now, picturing us curled together on that sofa, me making hercoffee in the morning while she pads around in one of my shirts, my heart swells in a way that feels almost foreign.
I hadn’t understood when Alex changed after meeting Madison. One day he was clubs and different women. The next he was rushing through business to get home to his wife and kids. It had seemed so alien. But now, with Sera standing in my living room, sunlight haloing her, I can’t imagine ever wanting to stay out late again.
I vow right now to never tell Alex. He’ll never let me live it down.
We married so fast we skipped most of the conversations normal couples have in those first months of dating. I push the thought aside.
I already know the important things: how messy she is (sharing a hotel room gave me plenty of evidence), how she snuffles softly in her sleep, what she looks like rumpled and sleepy first thing in the morning, and how she leaves wet towels on the floor and never replaces the cap on her toothpaste. But I also know how strong she is, how resilient—even when she doesn’t see it herself. She’s a survivor, a fighter. Funny, open, sweet. My favorite person on the planet. The rest? Just details. We have a lifetime to learn them.
A cold breeze pulls me back. She’s opened the French doors to the two-story deck. I join her at the cedar railing, where she’s gazing down at the pool still covered for winter, the outdoor fireplace ringed with chairs. Beyond that, grass rolls flat for fifty yards before the tree line begins with thick pines and oaks that shield the property from the world.
“This is insane.”
I stand beside her, hands in my pockets, chest expanding with something like pride. It’s dumb—I didn’t design the house or the landscaping—but the look on her face, a mix ofdumbfoundedness and joy, makes it feel like mine in a way it never has before.
I clear my throat. “We’re on five acres so all that,” I say, gesturing at the lawn and forest behind the house, “is all ours. There’s a creek farther back, and Alex’s is a few homes up the road.”
She nods, but her eyes have gone distant, glazed. “It’s got plenty of room for a swing set… or a trampoline,” she whispers, almost as if the words slip out before she can catch them.
Her cheeks flush pink.
I take her elbows gently and turn her to face me. Tipping her chin up with my fingers, I ask, “Do you want kids?”
“Yeah.” She licks her lip, nervous. “Do you?”
The question is simple, but it cracks something wide open in my chest. I see it so clearly—her standing right here, belly round with my child, hand resting protectively on the swell. A boy or girl chasing a ball across the grass, yelling for us to watch. Laughter echoing through the trees.
Warmth floods me, spreading from my sternum out to my fingertips.
My heart beats harder, as if it might burst through my ribs. My cock hardens fast, pressing painfully against my jeans.
Jesus Christ, you caveman. She says kids, and you’re ready to put one in her right now. Get control of yourself.
“Yeah,” I manage, voice rough. “I want kids.”
Her face softens, relief washing over her features. “How many?”
