That’s how I know today is different, because my body has always known things before my mind catches up, and right now, at six in the morning with pale light seeping through the curtains, every nerve ending is already firing.
It’s patch day.
The thought sits in my chest, something warm, restless, and too big to contain. I lie here for a moment with my eyes on the ceiling, breathing, letting the weight of it settle over me before I swing my legs over the side of the sofa and pull myself upright.
The house is calm, but not in the way that means everybody’s still asleep.
I can smell coffee.
I can smell butter, something sweet, and something that pulls me across the room before I’ve even had time to think about moving.
Millie is at the stove when I reach the kitchen doorway, still in her pajamas, the soft blue ones with the tiny white flowers that she probably doesn’t realize I’ve memorized. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, dark, thick, and falling forward as she tilts over the skillet, and there’s a small furrow between her brows as she concentrates, the way she always concentrates when she’s cooking, like she’s putting something of herself into it.
Jonas sits at the kitchen table with his mug, his folded newspaper, and that expression he’s had every morning since I arrived. The look of carefully stored memories, boxed up, labeled, stacked, and kept for later. When I step into thedoorway, he looks up at me, and there’s something in his eyes that immediately puts me on edge. The look a man gets after he’s already made up his mind about something and accepted whatever fallout comes with it.
He nods once.
I nod back.
He grabs his mug, tucks the newspaper under his arm, and heads out of the kitchen without any rush at all, moving with the kind of deliberate timing that tells me this exit is absolutely intentional. The screen door creaks open, then shuts behind him, leaving me alone with the sound of the skillet, Millie moving around the kitchen, and this strange pressure in my chest that feels way too big for something as simple as an ordinary morning.
She turns and sees me standing there, and for a moment neither of us says a word.
I cross the kitchen to her, and she tips her face up to me, and I cup her jaw in both hands, feeling the warmth of her skin against my palms, her lashes dark against her cheeks as her eyes drop closed for just a second before she opens them again and looks straight into me.
“Hey,” she says softly.
“Hey,” I say back, and it means everything.
My hand slides from her jaw to her wrist, and she turns with me when I pull her the two steps into the butler’s pantry, this narrow room between the kitchen and the side hall, all wooden shelving and the smell of flour. The door swings most of the way shut behind us, and the world reduces to this, to her, to the way she’s already reaching for me before I’ve even started reaching for her.
I press her back against the countertop, and she grips the edge, fingers curled over the lip, her chin lifted, and her eyes dark and knowing. There’s a confidence in her now that wasn’tthere at the beginning of us, something that has settled into her posture, into the way she looks at me like she already knows what’s coming, and she wants every second of it.
“Dad is literally on the porch,” she whispers, and there’s laughter threaded into the words.
“Then you better be quiet, Brightside.”
She bites her lip as her fingers tighten on the countertop.
I drag the hem of her pajama pants down just enough to get my hands on the warm skin of her waist, her ribs, feeling the places I’ve already learned, the slight dip below her ribs, the way she shivers when I press my thumbs into the curve of her hips. I slide her pants all the way off, and they fall to the floor between us, but I don’t bother with her top. There isn’t time, and the urgency of that, the hot, compressed urgency of having her right here and not a single goddamn minute to waste, makes this feel different from the first time. It’s like we’ve moved past the part where we’re discovering each other and arrived at the part where we’re claiming each other.
Her panties come down easy, soft cotton, pale pink, and I tuck them into the front pocket of my jeans before she can say a word about it.
“Will.” Her voice is barely above a breath.
“Good luck charm,” I tell her, and the smile that breaks across her face is worth every single thing I’ve had to wait for.
My hands are on her thighs, urging her up onto the edge of the counter, and she goes easily, her legs wrapping around my hips as I rip my jeans open and shift between her knees. The first press of my cock against her pussy pulls a sound out of her chest that she catches behind her teeth, that soft, ruined little sound I’ve grown a little too attached to for my own good. Her forehead drops forward against mine, and she breathes me in.
“Look at me,” I tell her, low and rough. “Mills… look at me.”
She lifts her eyes and holds mine, and the trust in her face guts me every single time. Wide open, no armor, nothing held back. She’s the only person in my life who has ever looked at me like she already knows the worst parts and has decided that they don’t matter.
I thrust inside her slow and steady, feeling every inch of her body adjusting to me, watching the way her lips part on a silent exhale, and her thighs tighten around my hips, and her hands finally release the countertop to grab my shoulders instead. The countertop creaks, a faint groan of wood. We both freeze for half a second, listening, and then I hear Jonas still on the porch, and her whole face cracks into barely suppressed laughter at the exact same moment mine does.
“This is insane,” she breathes.
“You love it,” I tell her, and roll my hips, and her laugh disappears on a sharp, swallowed moan.
