Her hand stills on my chest. “Will,” she says eventually, her voice small and muffled against my skin.
“Mm…”
“I’ve been half in love with you since the day I met you.”
Something in my chest cracks wide open in the best possible way. The words land softly and then spread, filling all the space I didn’t realize I’d been keeping carefully empty. I don’t say anything for a second, and she lifts her head just enough for her eyes to lock onto mine, checking me automatically the way she always does when she thinks she might have let too much of herself slip out.
I hold her gaze. “Half?”
The laugh that comes out of her is pure and delighted. She drops her face back into my collarbone, and I feel her smile pressing warm against my skin. I wrap my arm around her more securely, press my lips to the top of her head, and stare back up at the ceiling.
“For the record…” I say into her hair.
She lifts her head again, waiting.
“Not half,” I tell her, subtly letting her know I love her without actually saying the words.
Her breath catches, she holds my gaze for a long moment, and I watch something settle in her eyes, something that looks a lot like the kind of peace that comes when it all finally makes sense.
The laugh that comes from her is pure and delighted, and she drops her face back into my collarbone, and I feel her smile against my skin.
Two days.
Twomore days as a prospect.
This woman, warm, real, and finally in my arms.
Her father has a clock nobody is supposed to be counting except the two of them and me, but I know I should tell Sin. And that fact is hanging heavy on my conscience. But I don’t let myself feel all of it at once. I’ve learned that discipline, while wanting something, I was supposed to be patient about. You take the one thing that matters most right now, you hold onto that, and you let the rest wait its turn.
Right now, the thing that matters most is this.
“Millie.” She hums, the sound low and content against my chest. “Whatever’s coming…” I pause, making sure the words come out right and she can hear that I mean them completely. “We figure it out together.”
She goes still for a second, and I feel her let out a slow breath against me, tension finally easing out of her body piece by piece. “Okay,” she says.
“Okay,” I echo.
Outside, the neighborhood feels abandoned at this hour, empty streets stretching under the glow of porch lights and distant streetlamps.
Down the hall, Jonas’ fan spins.
And I hold Millie in the dark, and let myself have this one night of not carrying anything at all.
Two days.
Chapter Fifteen
MILLIE
The Next Day
There is flour in my hair. I know this because Will told me, not with words but with that look he gets, the one where his mouth does something that isn’t quite a smile but is too warm to be anything else. I reach up instinctively and find a small white cloud of it dusted along my temple. I make a faint noise of indignation and go back to my batter, because the cake needs my full attention, and Will doesnotneed any more encouragement.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table with his coffee, both hands wrapped around the mug, and at some point, that expectation that he’d leave stopped existing. He’s just here now, occupying my dad’s kitchen the way he occupies most spaces he walks into, completely and without any apparent awareness of how thoroughly he fills them.
But I don’t mind.
That’s the thing I’ve had to accept, somewhere between last month and now.
