And it feels…
Fucking terrifying.
Unmistakably, like the beginning of something we won’t be able to walk back from.
I press my forehead against hers, and neither of us speaks. The kitchen is incredibly silent. Her hands have found the front of my shirt.
“I… I can’t do this right now,” I whisper, still completely breathless.
She pulls back slightly, not away, just enough to see my face, her brows furrowed. “W-what does that mean?”
“It means you deserve the whole thing.” I keep my hands on her jaw, my thumbs against her cheekbones. “Not half of me while I’m still a prospect. Not while your father’s arrangement with the club is the thing keeping the lights on for everyone. There’s too much tangled up in this right now, and you deserve better than me trying to navigate it halfway.” Her eyes close like she knew this was coming. “Give me a week,” I say. “Oneweek, and I’m fully patched, and I can stand in front of Sin and tell him what I want without it being a liability to anyone…” I let out a heavy breath, running my fingers through my hair. “Oneweek, Millie.”
She breathes out slowly and nods. “Oneweek,” she says, and it sounds like she’s agreeing to something difficult but necessary, which isexactlywhat it is.
I take a tentative step back. The loss of proximity is immediate and physical. “Oneweek, Mills. Then I’m done waiting.”
She looks at me for a moment with those eyes that see me clearer than most people bother to, then she nods, turns, and walks down the hall to her room.
Letting out a long, excessive exhale, I wipe my hands over my face in frustration, then move to the sofa. I pull the spare blanket over myself and stare at the ceiling of Jonas McClane’s living room. Twelve feet down the hall, behind a closed door, she’s doing the same, I know it the same way I know my own heartbeat.
Neither of us is going to be able to sleep tonight.
Chapter Ten
MILLIE
I have always loved this house in the morning.
The light comes through the kitchen window at just the right angle, turning everything golden and catching the dust motes so they look almost magical.
It has always felt safe.
This morning, it feels different.
Fuller, somehow.
When I pad out of my bedroom in my socks, hair loose and still warm from sleep, I stop in the kitchen doorway because the scene in front of me is not one I was prepared for.
Dad is already at the table, his reading glasses sitting low on his nose, the newspaper folded open to whatever section he starts with on Sundays. His coffee mug rests to his right, a faint ring of condensation marking the wood. He looks utterly at ease, the way he always does on his onerealday of rest. And across from him, on the other side of the table, sits Will. He holds his own mug in both hands, gaze angled toward the window in that peaceful, watchful way of his.
Neither of them is speaking. Not because anything’s wrong. But because it feels more like the two of them have already had the conversation without words somewhere along the line and decided exactly how this morning was going to go.
That there’s value in sitting somewhere familiar and letting silence do the work.
Dad turns a page.
The newspaper rustles, then settles.
Will takes a slow drink.
I press my shoulder into the doorframe and watch them for a moment longer than I should, because something about the image catches in my chest like a hook.
Will at my father’s table.
Will drinking from the green mug that has lived in the third cabinet from the left for as long as I can remember.
Will fitting into this space as though he’s always known where everything belongs.
