The bedroom door stood slightly open. A thin line of darkness between the frame and the wood, and through it, I could see the shape of the room built around the thing Mitch had purchased with the confidence of a man who knew exactly how this was going to go.
The bed. The enormous bed. King-sized, dark wood, the kind of craftsmanship that didn’t apologize for taking up space. It filled the room the way Mitch filled rooms—completely, without debate, leaving no question about who was in charge.
A small lump in the center of it. Just a shape under the covers, barely visible in the dark.
I crossed the room. Sat on the edge of the mattress, which gave under my weight the way good mattresses give—firm, accommodating, expensive in a way I would never admit to appreciating. I pulled the covers down just enough to find his face.
Caleb. Bigger than three months ago. His cheeks had filled out, the angles softening into something rounder, and even in the dark I could see the swell of the twins pushing against the thin t-shirt he slept in.
His strawberry blond hair was mussed against the pillow, one arm curled under his head, and he looked like something that belonged in a house this warm.
I traced one hand down the side of his jaw. My thumb over his cheekbone, once, careful. He turned toward the touch in his sleep. Instinctive. Immediate. His body knew my hand before his brain caught up, and that fact landed somewhere behind my sternum and did not move.
His eyes opened. Hazel, soft with sleep, and then suddenly bright—wide, focused, the alertness of a man who had beenwaiting for something for a very long time and had just been handed exactly what he ordered.
“I’m home,” I said. Quiet. The kind of quiet that cost something and was worth the cost.
Caleb made a sound. Not a word. Something between a breath and a laugh and the noise a man makes when the thing he has wanted arrives and is simultaneously too much and exactly enough.
His hand came up, gripped my collar, and pulled me down.
I went. Willingly. Completely. Without a single argument left in me, which from me was approximately equivalent to anyone else writing poetry.
The kiss was warm and unhurried and tasted like coming back. Caleb’s hands in my hair, fingers threading through the short dark strands with a familiarity that suggested he’d been mapping the territory in his head for three months.
My arms went around him, one hand spanning the small of his back, the other careful against the curve of his belly where the twins lay quiet for now, and the contradiction of it—me, careful and certain at once—was something I filed under its own category.
The new house held us. Dark. Quiet. Smelling like beeswax and fresh lumber and whatever Caleb had baked earlier—something with cinnamon that clung to the sheets and the walls and the warmth of a man who had decided that baking was the smell of home.
Caleb pulled back just enough to look at my face. His eyes moved across it the way they always did—careful, patient, the particular attention of a man who had learned not to take things at face value because face value was rarely the whole story.
“You’re really here,” he said.
“I’m really here.”
“Not for a debrief. Not for a layover.”
“No.”
“You’re done.”
“I’m done.”
He read me for one more beat. His thumb traced the edge of my jaw, and I watched his face do the thing it does when something too large arrives all at once—the warmth breaking through, open and a little wrecked, his mouth doing that small tremble he tries to hide and fails at completely.
“Okay,” he said. And pulled me back down.
I heard the door creak. I didn’t look up. I didn’t need to. The weight of Mitch’s presence had its own gravitational signature, and right now it was leaning against the door frame in the dark, watching with the warm, slightly undone expression he usually kept just under the humor.
“I answered the door,” Mitch said. “That deserves acknowledgment.”
“Noted,” Caleb murmured without opening his eyes.
“Sterling. Note it.”
“Noted,” I said.
Mitch’s silhouette shifted against the doorway. “The bed. Big enough for three. My idea. I’d like that noted too.”
