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I don’t give her long to recover.

I come up her body, kissing my way up her stomach, her chest, her throat, and by the time I reach her mouth she’s still trembling, still catching her breath, and she reaches down between us to wrap her hand around my cock, stroking once, twice, guiding me to her entrance.

“Now,” she breathes. “I need you now.”

I push into her slow, one long stroke, and the sound she makes — the specific broken gasp of her taking all of me — goes straight through my chest every single time. She’s tight and wet and perfect around me, and I still for a second, forehead against hers, just feeling her.

“Fuck,” I breathe. “Margo.”

“I know.” Her legs wrap around my hips, pulling me deeper. “Move. Please.”

I start slow. Long, deliberate strokes, savoring the drag of her pussy around my cock, and she matches me, her hips rising to meet every thrust. Her nails drag down my back, hard enough to leave marks I won’t mind finding tomorrow, and the slow builds into something else — her breath coming faster, her hips getting more insistent, both of us chasing the same thing now.

“Harder,” she gasps. “Theo, please, I need —”

I give her what she’s asking for. I brace one hand against the headboard, hook her leg around my waist, and drive into her harder, deeper, the bed frame knocking softly against the wall with every thrust, and she’s not quiet about it anymore, small broken sounds falling out of her with every stroke, my name mixed in with them.

“That’s it,” I growl, against her throat. “Let me hear you.”

She does. Loud enough that I’m grateful the house is empty tonight, her hands scrabbling at my shoulders, my back, anywhere she can hold on, and when she comes the second time it takes me with her — her pussy clenching tight around my cock, milking me through it, and I bury myself as deep as I can go and empty into her with her name torn out of my throat.

For a long time after, neither of us moves. Her head on my chest. My arm around her. The room quiet except for both of us catching our breath, the exhaustion of the day finally, fully spent.

“I love you,” she says, into my skin.

“Love you too.”

We lie there a while longer, tangled in my sheets, the lamp throwing low gold light across the ceiling. I feel the specific quiet that comes after — the one where the wall’s all the way down and there’s nothing left to manage or perform. Just the two of us and the dark and whatever’s actually true.

It’s the right kind of quiet to ask her.

“I want you to meet my mom,” I say.

She goes still against my chest. Lifts her head to look at me. “Theo.”

“I mean it.” I hold her eyes. “Boston. This week, if you can. I want you to actually meet her. Not hear about her. Meet her.”

She’s quiet for a second, searching my face, and I let her look as long as she needs to, because I know what I’m asking and I want her to understand the size of it before she answers.

“Yes.” No hesitation. Immediate, certain, her hand finding mine on the sheets between us. “Absolutely, yes. When?”

Something in my chest loosens in a way I wasn’t expecting it to loosen.

“This week. Only free day I’ve got is Thursday. It’s an hour drive — we can be there and back the same day.”

“Thursday works.” She’s already thinking it through, I can tell — the specific quality of her mind working a problem, laying out the pieces. “I’ll figure out cover. Extra practice. I’ll tell the girls Nationals stress has me doing extra reps.”

“I’ll tell the guys I’m going alone. Visiting my mom.”

“Perfect.” She settles back against my chest, quiet for a moment, and then: “Theo. Thank you for asking me.”

I hold her a little tighter. Something about the specific gratitude in it — not performed, not the version of thanks she hands out to smooth over a room, just plain and quiet and clearly meant — sits with me longer than almost anything else she’s said tonight.

“Of course,” I tell her. “Couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone else.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, just presses closer, her breathing slowing toward sleep against my chest. I lie there a while longer, watching the ceiling, feeling the specific quiet weight of having asked for something I’ve never asked for before and gotten a yes so fast it barely registered as a question in the first place.

I think about what she’s going to see. Not the house’s size — she grew up in a place with a piazza and a name for the wing where guests stay, she’s not going to be shocked by small. What I keep circling is whether she’ll see it the way I need her to see it. Not a place I’m apologizing for. A place that made me. My mom’s specific brand of love, generous and exhausted and completely unconditional, poured into a small two-bedroom house on Birch Street because that was what there was.