“Oh,” he breathed. “Okay. Yeah. That’s—yeah.”
I smiled into his skin, warm and safe and entirely, impossibly here.
Hand-in-hand, we ended up in his big-enough-for-five multi-head shower, where we had a quick wash, then more kissing. No rush. No endgame. Just kissing.
After, dressed in borrowed clothes and still damp around the edges, we drifted back into the kitchen. The lasagna went into bowls, steam fogging the air, the normality of it all making my heart ache in a different way. We sat at the counter, knees bumping, eating like this was something we did all the time.
“What does our love look like?” I asked suddenly, the question slipping out before I could stop it.
Cole frowned, fork halfway to his mouth. “Huh?”
“I mean—” I gestured vaguely between us. “It’s meandGabbi. And I have… a lot to work through. And—” I swallowed. “I don’t even know what comes next for me.”
He was quiet for a beat, studying me in that steady way he had, like he didn’t scare easily. “Move in with me?” he said finally. “Both of you. If you think you’d want to. If it’s not too soon?”
My breath caught hard. “Cole, I don’t have a job. I don’t have anything except prospectuses for a degree I’m not even sure they’d want me for.”
He reached out, thumb brushing my knuckles, grounding me. “You have dreams,” he said simply. “And Gabbi. And time. We can figure the rest out.”
The warmth spread again, slow and certain, and for the first time in a long while, the future didn’t feel like something waiting to knock me flat.
“Tell me more about the degree,” he asked when I seemed content to sit in quiet.
“It’s nothing.” I dipped my head.
“I’d love to hear about it.”
I hesitated, then let out a breath. “I wanted to do something practical. Hands-on. Something where I actually build things. Fix things. Engineering, maybe. Or construction management. There’s a course at UC. I have the funding if I get it, I mean, that’s the whole reason I enlisted, the only way I could get an education, really.”
“That’s shit,” Cole muttered, anger in his voice.
“That’s life,” I said with a shrug. “Anyway, I applied, but I haven’t heard yet. So, who knows.”
Cole’s brow furrowed, not in doubt but in focus. “You like making things?”
“I like knowing how they work,” I said. “Taking something broken and figuring out how to make it… better. Useful. I don’t want theory forever. I want my hands dirty. I want to point at something and say,I built that.”
His mouth curved, slow and real. “That sounds exactly like you.”
I blinked. “It does?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You don’t disappear when things get hard. You dig in. You solve. That’s half of engineering right there.”
Something in my chest loosened at that. “I just don’t know if I have enough to do it. I mean, in myself.”
Cole squeezed my fingers. “Of course you do, and I’ll be in your corner for late-night studying, babysitting, foot rubs, and bringing you snacks.”
“You have your own career, you can’t?—”
“Teamwork makes the dream work, sweetheart,” he deadpanned and kissed me, which stopped me from any more protesting.
Moving in here with Cole.
Going to college.
Making a secure future for Gabbi.
Being in love?
