Cleo Ashcroft

[Midnights]

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[Cleo Ashcroft]

The apartment was quiet when they came in. Not empty—just settled. The kind of quiet that belonged to a place that knew its owner well enough not to perform when someone new crossed the threshold.

Cleo kicked the door shut with her heel and dropped her keys into the ceramic bowl by the entry, the familiar clink grounding her. The lights were low already—one lamp on in the living room, warm and amber, casting soft shadows across canvases leaning against the walls. Paintings in various states of completion were everywhere: some stacked carefully, others abandoned mid-thought, colors still raw and unapologetic.

She shrugged out of her jacket and hung it up, movements automatic, like her body knew this space by heart. It was different from her childhood room—less history, more intention—but it carried the same quiet honesty. Nothing here was curated for anyone else.

She glanced back once, catching the way he took it all in without touching anything yet. Without assuming. That mattered more than she could explain.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said lightly, even though there was no apology in her tone. Just context. “I paint better when I don’t clean as I go.”

She padded into the living room, barefoot now, toes brushing paint flecks she never quite managed to scrub away. She set her phone on the coffee table, then leaned back against the counter that separated the kitchen from the rest of the space, arms folding loosely as if to say: this is it. This is me.

“You can sit wherever,” she added, softer. “Nothing’s precious.”

She turned toward the sink, filled two glasses with water, letting the sound run a little longer than necessary. When she handed one over, her fingers brushed his—brief, grounding. She didn’t pull away.

Cleo dropped onto the couch and tucked one leg beneath her, the other dangling loose. He sat beside her a moment later, close but careful, their shoulders touching naturally like distance had already been negotiated. The contact made something in her chest loosen—not rush, not ache. Just settle.

For a while, neither of them spoke.

The city hummed faintly through the windows. A siren far off. A car passing. Inside, the air felt held, like the room itself was breathing slower.

Cleo stared ahead, then exhaled, long and unguarded.

“This is usually when my brain starts trying to narrate everything,” she admitted quietly. “So I’m trying not to let it.”

She shifted slightly, her hand resting on the cushion between them, close enough that their knuckles brushed. This time, she let it stay there. Open. Unclaimed.

She leaned back, head resting against the couch, eyes drifting half-closed. Being here—with him—didn’t feel like pretending. It didn’t feel like deciding. It just felt real in the way quiet truths always did.

“Okay,” she murmured to herself, more breath than word.

And they stayed like that—no rush, no expectations. Just two people in a lived-in room, letting the night unfold without forcing it into shape.

Cleo stayed quiet for another beat, letting the stillness stretch until it felt less fragile and more earned. The hum of the city outside softened into background noise, and the apartment settled fully around them, like it had decided he wasn’t an interruption.

She shifted on the couch, uncurling slightly, then glanced at him from the corner of her eye. Not searching. Not tentative. Just checking in.

“I can show you around,” she offered, casual but real. “If you want.”

She didn’t make it sound like a tour. No presentation. No pressure. Just an open door.

“It’s small,” she added, a hint of amusement threading through her voice. “But it’s… me.”

She pushed herself up from the couch and held out a hand—not tugging, not assuming he’d take it. Just there. An invitation.

“Living room you’ve already met,” she continued lightly, gesturing around at the canvases and paint-streaked corners. “Kitchen’s mostly functional chaos. Studio situation is… technically the dining nook, but we don’t have to call it that.”

She smiled, soft and unguarded now, the kind that only showed up when she felt at ease.

“And my room’s down the hall,” she finished, not loaded, not coy. Just honest. “If you want to see where I actually sleep instead of where I pretend to be productive.”

She waited—still, open—letting the choice be his, the way she always did when something mattered.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben followed her in slow.

There was no rush to his steps, no wide-eyed tourist awe, but she caught the way his gaze moved through the space—quiet, observant, tuned in the way only someone who really paid attention could be. He wasn’t scanning it like a stranger looking for context. He was reading it. Like he already understood that this wasn’t a space meant to impress, only to be known.

And he wanted to know it.

The canvases, the paint smudges, the coffee table half-swallowed by sketchbooks and books with cracked spines—it all felt like her. Not a version of her softened for guests. Her, unfiltered. A place she could breathe and sprawl and disappear when the world asked too much.

Ben didn’t say anything about it. Didn’t compliment the art. Didn’t joke about the state of the floor or ask about the books. He just let his eyes settle on it all for a beat longer than most people would, then looked back at her like that was the part he actually gave a shit about.

When she handed him the water, his fingers closed around hers for a beat too long. Not demanding—reassuring. A subtle, steady squeeze, like a yeah, I’m here. Then he followed her into the living room, sitting down beside her with the kind of closeness that wasn’t performative. It was like he didn’t even think about it.

Their shoulders touched.

And something in him settled.

The space felt good. Lived in. Honest. No staging. No cameras. No pressure to say something clever or lean into charm. Just warm light, late-night stillness, and her next to him.

When she said this is usually when my brain starts trying to narrate everything, a quiet, knowing grin pulled at the corner of his mouth. Not mocking. Just fond. Of course she did. Of course her mind didn’t let the moment just be—not until she fought it into stillness with the same hands that painted chaos onto canvas.

He wanted to say something. Something small. Gentle. Maybe even funny. But the moment didn’t need his voice.

So he stayed quiet too.

Their knuckles brushed. She didn’t move hers. Neither did he.

When she finally moved, rising from the couch and offering him a hand—not pulling, just inviting—his heart did that stupid thing it always did around her. That internal shift where everything stopped feeling temporary.

She didn’t ask for anything.

She just offered.

And so he took her hand.

Not dramatically. Not like it was the first time. Just a quiet gesture that said: I’m still here.

As she led him through the apartment, Ben kept his gaze soft, his grip steady. He listened to her narration, the way she talked about each room without dressing it up. Her words were light, but the meaning underneath was weighty, and he felt it. Felt her easing into him in increments, giving him pieces of her space the way she gave pieces of her heart—when she chose to, not when someone asked.

When she reached the hallway, he hesitated—not because he didn’t want to go, but because he knew what this meant. Knew she wasn’t dangling a possibility in front of him. She was inviting him into her life again. Not forever. Not defined. But present. Real.

She said my room’s down the hall, and something in his chest pulled tight and full all at once.

He looked at her then. Really looked.

Barefoot. Paint-smudged apartment. Unapologetically herself. And more his than any place he'd ever stayed longer than a tour stop.

His hand squeezed hers once. Then again.

And then, soft—no smirk, no sarcasm—just him:

“Yeah,” he said. “I want to see it.”

Not just her bedroom.
Her.

Where she slept.
Where she unraveled.
Where she didn’t have to explain the difference between being alone and being herself.

He stepped forward with her, still holding her hand, and followed her down the hallway like someone who knew exactly what he was walking into.

Not a hookup.
Not a fix.
Not a solution.

Just her.

And tonight, that was everything.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo led him into her room with that same quiet certainty she carried everywhere else, but the moment the door opened, something in her shifted.

This space felt different.

More exposed.

Her bed sat slightly unmade, the quilt rumpled in a way that meant she actually slept there, not the polite kind of mess you could explain away. Morning light paintings leaned against the wall. Half-dried brushes in a jar on the dresser. And—too late—right there on the bed, the thick portfolio she’d meant to move before he ever saw it.

Her stomach dropped.

“Oh—shit,” she muttered, crossing the room too fast to look casual.

She scooped for it, arms clumsy, trying to gather the whole thing at once like she could will it into cooperation. But the strap slipped. The folder bent. And pages slid free, fanning out across the bed and onto the floor like they’d been waiting for air.

Loose sketches.
Studies.
Half-finished ideas.
Old charcoal.
New paint tests.

And some of them—

Her.

Him.

Not staged. Not idealized. Just moments. A shoulder. A profile. Hands she knew by muscle memory.

Her breath caught.

“God—sorry—” she said quickly, already dropping to her knees, heat rushing up her neck as she reached for the pages. “I didn’t mean—this thing is—”

She stopped talking because her words weren’t finding each other anymore.

Her brain felt like it had flipped sideways.

She gathered the nearest sheet, fingers trembling just enough to give her away, then another. She didn’t look up right away. Couldn’t. She could feel him close though—could feel the shift of him lowering down too, quiet and instinctive, helping without comment.

That somehow made it worse.

And better.

Her throat tightened as she reached for one page in particular, cheeks burning. She swallowed hard, pressing it back into the stack like that might undo the fact that it existed at all.

“I—” She tried again, then huffed a breath, shaking her head. “Sorry. My brain just… completely left the room.”

She risked a glance up then, just briefly. Not to explain. Not to justify. Just to check that he was still there.

He was.

Kneeling on her bedroom floor.
Holding one of her drawings like it wasn’t fragile, but like it mattered.

That nearly undid her.

She collected the last of the pages, tucking them back into the portfolio with more care now, slower, like she was acknowledging what she’d accidentally revealed instead of trying to erase it.

Her hands stilled.

She exhaled, long and shaky, sitting back on her heels.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben didn’t say anything at first.

Not because he didn’t have words—he always had words. But because this wasn’t a moment for them. This was a moment for seeing.

And he saw her.

Not just the blush on her cheeks or the tremble in her fingers. Not just the panic in her voice or the way she tried to fold the moment back into something manageable. He saw the why beneath it. The part of her that had quietly, painstakingly made space for him in the margins of her world—without ever intending to show it.

He looked down at the drawing still in his hand. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t meant to be. It was better. It was real.

His shoulder. Her memory of it. The way the lines bent not for symmetry, but for truth.

And something in his chest cracked a little.

Because this wasn’t fan art.
This was muscle memory.
This was care.

Still kneeling, he glanced over at her—really looked. She was sitting back on her heels, trying to collect herself in the quiet aftermath of exposure, and there was a vulnerability in her posture that made his throat tighten. Not because she looked breakable, but because she looked brave.

So he shifted closer, slow and unhurried, until his knee bumped gently against hers.

And when he spoke, his voice was low—not reverent, but honest.

“Cleo.”

Just her name. Steady. Sure.

He held out the drawing he still hadn’t put down—not to return it like something borrowed, but to offer it back like it was part of something shared.

His eyes didn’t waver.

“This isn’t something you have to apologize for.”

A beat.

“It’s something you get to feel proud of.”

Another beat. Softer now, but unwavering:

“And I’m honored as hell to be in it.”

He wasn’t smiling, exactly. But there was something in his expression—open, unguarded, full—that made it clear he didn’t see this as a misstep. He saw it as her. Another room she hadn’t meant to open, but had.

And now he was standing in it.
Still choosing to stay.

He let the drawing rest between them, the page crinkled just slightly from where her hands had gripped it.

Then, quieter:

“I don’t care if it’s unfinished. I don’t care if I look like I haven’t slept in a week. I love that you saw something in me worth remembering.”

His voice caught slightly, just enough to make it real.

“I always see it in you.”

And this time, when he reached for her hand—ink-smudged fingers and all—it wasn’t to anchor her.

It was just to be there.

No fixing. No performance. Just presence.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo’s breath stuttered when he said her name.

Not sharply. Not like a break. Just enough to give her away.

She let his words land without interrupting them, the way she always did when something mattered—letting them move through her instead of bouncing off. Proud of. Honored. Those weren’t words she’d ever expected to hear attached to something she’d done quietly, almost privately, like a habit she’d never meant to explain.

Her fingers curled around the edge of the drawing when he held it out, but instead of taking just that page, she pulled the whole portfolio back toward her. Not abruptly. Just decisively. The folder slid between them, settling into both their laps because of how close he was sitting now—knee to knee, shoulder nearly touching. There was no room for distance anymore, and she didn’t try to create any.

She rested her palms on the cover for a second, grounding herself in its weight.

“I don’t usually mean to keep them,” she said finally, voice quiet but steady. “The drawings, I mean. Sometimes they’re just… a way through something.”

She swallowed, eyes dropping to the worn corner of the portfolio before lifting back to him.

“There are days when the memories get loud,” she went on, more honest than careful now. “Not in a sad way. Just—persistent. Like my brain doesn’t know where to put them, so they keep circling.”

Her thumb traced an absent line along the edge of the folder, muscle memory more than thought.

“And sketching slows it down,” she said. “It gives my hands something to do while my head catches up.”

She didn’t look away this time.

“You’re… always there,” she admitted, softer. “Not front and center. Just—background noise that never really fades out.”

A small, rueful breath escaped her.

“I draw you because my brain won’t let me forget you,” she said simply. Not dramatic. Not apologetic. Just true. “And sometimes that’s the only way I can make it quiet enough to breathe.”

She shifted closer without realizing it, the portfolio tilting slightly as their legs pressed together. The intimacy of it hit her a second later, but she didn’t pull back.

“I’m not trying to hold onto a version of you that doesn’t exist,” she added, almost like she needed him to know that part. “I’m just… letting the memories go somewhere safe.”

Her gaze softened then, something open and unguarded in it.

“And if that means you end up on paper sometimes,” she finished, “it’s because you were real to me. You still are.”

She rested her hand lightly over his on the portfolio, ink-smudged fingers brushing his skin.

Cleo’s hand stayed where it was—light over his, the contact steadying her more than she expected. She didn’t rush the next part. She never did when it mattered this much. She let the quiet stretch just long enough to make sure she wasn’t saying it out of reflex, or nostalgia, or fear of losing the moment.

Then she looked at him. Really looked. Not searching his face for reassurance—just meeting him there.

“If you ever doubted it,” she said quietly, voice firm in a way that surprised even her, “if you ever wondered whether I thought about you—about us—”

She paused, breath catching, then pushed through it.

“That year we spent together meant more to me than I could ever put into words.”

Her throat tightened, but she didn’t stop.

“It wasn’t just time,” she continued. “It wasn’t just memories or places or versions of ourselves we don’t get back. It changed how I move through the world. How I love. How I know when something is real.”

She glanced down at the portfolio between them, then back up.

“I measure things against it without meaning to,” she admitted. “Not because I’m stuck there. But because it showed me what connection can feel like when it’s honest. When it’s gentle. When it doesn’t ask you to disappear to survive it.”

Her fingers curled slightly against his hand, grounding herself again.

“I’ve had other moments since,” she said. “Good ones. Real ones. But that year?” A small, shaky breath. “It set the bar. For how deeply I’m willing to feel. For what I won’t pretend is enough.”

She leaned in just a fraction, voice lowering.

“So no,” she finished softly. “You were never just someone I used to know. And that time was never just something I remember.”

Her eyes held his, clear and unwavering now.

“It’s part of me. It always will be.”

She didn’t say it to bind him to anything.
She didn’t say it to reopen wounds.

She said it because it was true—and because she trusted him enough to hear it without needing to fix it.

And then she went quiet again, staying close, letting the weight of what she’d finally said exist between them without taking anything back.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben hadn’t moved.
Not when the portfolio shifted. Not when her knee bumped his. Not even when the weight of what she’d just said landed like something sacred between them.

He stayed exactly where he was—shoulder nearly touching hers, hands still open, eyes fixed on her face like he didn’t want to miss a single flicker of what passed through her.

And it wasn’t just the words.
It was the way she said them.

Like truth was something alive between her ribs, finally brave enough to step into the light.

He could feel the echo of it in his chest. That year. That version of them. Not perfect, not clean. But real. The kind of real that builds foundations under your skin before you even know you’re building anything.

And now—here—on her bedroom floor, with charcoal dust between their palms and the space between them gone, he realized he hadn’t let it go either. Not really.

He tilted his head slightly, brow furrowing—not in confusion, but in quiet reverence. His voice, when it came, was low and a little hoarse, the way it always got when he meant something down to the bone.

“I used to think I imagined it.”

His eyes didn’t drop.
Didn’t shy.

“I’d replay certain nights—dumb ones, random ones—and think, there’s no way it felt that big to her too. Not like it did to me.”

He gave a quiet, almost self-deprecating breath of a laugh, glancing down at the edge of the portfolio between them, thumb brushing against hers like a tether.

“I thought maybe I just built it up in my head. Like I made it mean more than it did.”

He looked back up, gaze catching hers again.

“But I didn’t.”

A beat. His voice gentled further.

“You just said it better than I ever could.”

He reached up then—not rushed, not dramatic, just intentional—and tucked a loose piece of hair behind her ear, the back of his fingers brushing her cheek like a grounding wire.

“You were it for me,” he said simply. “And not in a pedestal way. Not in a fairytale way. Just… in the way where, for the first time in my life, I felt known.”

A pause. His throat moved with the weight of it.

“And I’ve met other people. Good ones. Honest ones. But it’s like you said—” He exhaled, shaking his head a little. “That year? It set the bar. For everything.”

He smiled then—not bright or cocky, but soft and steady and Ben. Like he wasn’t afraid of how much this moment meant.

“I still measure by you, Cleo.”

Her name sat warm in his mouth, familiar and full of years that hadn’t dulled its weight.

He didn’t lean in yet. He didn’t crowd her.

He just held her hand a little tighter. Stayed right where he was.

And then, quieter:

“You let me live in your pages.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, more felt than shown.
“Well… you’ve lived in mine too.”

He reached for his phone, pulling it from his pocket—not to break the moment, but to hand it to her.

The screen was already open.

Photos.
Folders.

And one at the top labeled simply: Cleo.

Inside—
Pictures he’d taken without ever planning to show them.
A blurry sidewalk photo of her boots mid-step.
The light catching her wrist when she reached for something in a café.
Her name half-written in a notebook next to a lyric idea he never finished.
A voice memo from the night they stayed up until 3 a.m. talking about nothing and everything, the background quiet but unmistakably her.

He let her look.
Didn’t narrate.
Didn’t explain.

Just let the truth breathe.

“You were never just a season,” he said, softer now. “You were a blueprint.”

And finally, finally, he leaned in.
Not to claim anything.
Just to let his forehead rest against hers the way it used to when the words felt too big.

He stayed there, still and sure, eyes closed.

“Whatever this is now,” he whispered, “whatever it becomes… I don’t want to hold it like I’m scared to break it.”

He pulled back enough to look at her again—really look.

“I want to hold it like it’s real.”

And then, without pressure or presumption, his hand stayed over hers, steady and warm, letting her decide what came next.

Because she’d let him into the truth.

And now he was letting her lead the way forward.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo didn’t rush to fill the space after he finished.

She stayed where she was, forehead still near his, fingers curled loosely under his hand like she was grounding herself in the simplest truth available: he was here, and he was real, and nothing about what he’d just shown her felt imagined.

Seeing her name on his phone did something quiet and devastating to her. Not in a breaking way—more like a deep exhale she hadn’t known she was holding. Proof, not of obsession or longing, but of continuity. Of care that hadn’t needed an audience.

She swallowed once, steadying herself, then lifted her eyes to his.

“I know,” she said softly. Not defensive. Not embarrassed. Just honest. “I know what that year was.”

Her voice didn’t shake, but it carried weight—the kind that came from having held something precious with both hands and learned exactly how heavy it was.

“And if this was just about us,” she went on, fingers tightening just slightly in his, “if it was just you and me and the way we fit when everything else goes quiet… I would do anything to be with you again.”

She let that land. Didn’t soften it. Didn’t dress it up.

“But your world scares me,” she admitted, and there it was—the truth she’d circled for years without naming. “Not you. Never you.”

Her free hand lifted, resting briefly against his chest, right over his heart, like she needed him to understand the distinction.

“It’s everything around you,” she said. “The noise. The access. The way people think loving your work means they get a piece of you.”

A pause. Her brows knit, not in anger, but in something closer to grief.

“And when I was with you… some of them thought that meant they had access to me too. Like proximity was permission.”

She looked down for a moment, gathering herself, then back up—eyes clear, unwavering.

“Not everyone,” she said quickly, fairly. “Most people were kind. Normal. Human.” A breath. “But enough weren’t. Enough felt entitled. To my time. My body. My reactions. My silence.”

Her thumb brushed once over his knuckles, grounding herself again.

“I don’t want to live braced all the time,” she said. “I don’t want to measure every room for exits or wonder if being seen next to you means being swallowed whole.”

She met his gaze fully now, vulnerability open but not fragile.

“I love you,” she said plainly. “I don’t think that ever stopped being true. And part of loving you is knowing that your life is louder than mine, and asking myself—honestly—if I can live inside that without disappearing.”

She leaned in just slightly, enough that their foreheads touched again, breath warm and shared.

“I’m not saying no,” she murmured. “I never was.”

A small, sad smile touched her mouth.

“I’m saying I’m scared. And I don’t want to pretend I’m braver than I am just to prove something.”

She stayed there, close, present, hand still in his.

“I needed you to know that wanting you has never been the problem,” she finished quietly. “It’s figuring out your world while not having a panic attack.”

She didn’t pull away.

She let the truth sit between them—tender, complicated, and real—trusting that if anyone could hold it without breaking, it was him.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben didn’t move right away.

Didn’t pull back.
Didn’t fill the quiet with apologies or promises he knew he couldn’t keep.

He just let the weight of what she said settle. Let it sit there between them, real and heavy and earned.

Their foreheads still touched, breath shared. But something inside him shifted—something that wasn’t about fixing her fear, or undoing the past, or trying to make the noise of his life smaller than it was.

It was about understanding.
Respect.
Love that wasn’t performative or possessive.

When he finally spoke, his voice was low, careful.

“I don’t want you to be brave for me.”

His hand turned under hers, fingers lacing through like muscle memory.

“I don’t want you breaking just to stay close.”

He drew in a breath, thumb brushing the inside of her wrist as if to remind himself she was really there.

“You were never a condition of my life,” he said quietly. “You were the constant. You still are. But my world…” He exhaled. “It is loud. And messy. And selfish in ways I can’t always control.”

He pulled back just far enough to see her face, eyes dark with something tender and sure.

“And I love it,” he admitted, voice steady but soft. “I love what I do. The chaos of it. The work. The parts that keep me up at night and make me feel like I’m chasing something that matters. I can’t pretend I want to give that up, even for something as good—as right—as you.”

It hurt to say.
But not as much as it would’ve hurt to lie.

His jaw flexed for a second, not with tension, but with restraint.

“But I hate that it hurt you,” he said, finally letting it crack. “That being next to me made you feel small, or hunted, or used. I hate that the worst parts of what I love ever touched you.”

His fingers tightened slightly in hers.

“I would never ask you to come back into that noise if it means disappearing. Not ever.”

A beat.

“But if what we had—have—only gets to exist once in a while…”

He swallowed, eyes searching hers like they held more years than he could ever say aloud.

“I’ll still take it.”

No bitterness.
No guilt.

Just truth.

“If all I get are moments,” he continued, “quiet ones, hidden ones, ones where you let me in just long enough to breathe again—then I’ll show up every time. No conditions. No expectations.”

He glanced down at the portfolio still balanced between them, then back at her.

“And if the only place I get to live in your life is in the lines you draw when the memories get too loud…” A small smile ghosted across his face, tender and wrecked. “Then damn, Cleo. That’s still more than most people get.”

His free hand rose to her face, brushing gently along her cheek, reverent.

“I love you,” he said. Quietly. Fiercely. Without hesitation.

“I don’t need a spotlight on it. I don’t need to post it, prove it, or parade it.”

His thumb rested at the edge of her jaw.

“I just need this. You. Here. Letting me love you however you’ll let me.”

And then, with all the softness he could give, he pressed his forehead to hers again, holding her there—not to anchor her, but to be anchored by her.

No demands.
No pressure.

Just him.
Still hers.
Even now.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo felt the words land one by one, not like blows, but like stones set carefully into place. A foundation. Something solid enough to stand on without asking her to contort herself to fit it.

Her head dipped again when he said he loved the chaos, the work, the life he’d chosen. She nodded—not because she was conceding, but because this was the truth she’d always carried with her. The one she’d learned how to hold without trying to change its shape.

“I know,” she said softly. “I always knew.”

Her voice didn’t break, but it thinned—like she was walking a careful line between honesty and self-preservation.

“I never wanted to be the reason you dimmed anything,” she continued. “Not your work. Not the noise. Not the parts of you that feel alive.” A breath, slow and steady. “I just needed to know I wasn’t imagining how hard it was to stand next to it sometimes.”

She leaned into his touch when his hand brushed her cheek, eyes closing briefly—not to escape, but to let herself feel the steadiness of it. Him. The way he loved without asking her to perform or prove or stay louder than she was built to be.

“I don’t feel small with you,” she said quietly. “I felt small with everything else that came with it. And I didn’t know how to say that without it sounding like I was asking you to choose.”

Her fingers tightened around his, grounding herself in the present—ink smudges, paper, the quiet hum of her apartment.

“And I won’t disappear,” she added. “Not for you. Not for anyone. But I can stay… like this.” She gestured subtly between them, the space that was somehow both narrow and infinite. “Honest. Intentional. Real.”

She opened her eyes then, meeting his gaze fully.

“I love you too,” she said, without hesitation, without ceremony. “And I don’t need it to be loud or visible or understood by anyone else.”

A small, tender smile surfaced—sad and hopeful at once.

“If this is what it looks like,” she continued, “moments we choose, quiet ones we protect, a love that knows when to step back so it doesn’t break us…”

She nodded, once, certain.

“Then I can do that. I want to do that.”

She rested her forehead against his again, breath syncing, the world narrowing to the space they shared.

“Just don’t ever think you’re a burden to me,” she whispered. “Or that loving you was a mistake.”

She stayed there with him, not asking for more than he was offering—but not shrinking what she felt either.

Cleo didn’t give herself time to think it through.

Thinking had always been the thing that slowed her down, the thing that built walls where there didn’t need to be any. Right now, all she felt was the steadiness of him in front of her—the way his presence filled the quiet without overwhelming it, the way his honesty had made room instead of closing doors.

So she moved.

Not abruptly. Not desperately. Just with intention.

She leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of his eye first, the kind of touch that felt more like care than want. Then another to the bridge of his nose, lingering there for a beat, breathing him in like she needed the reminder that this was real and not something she’d imagined herself back into.

Her hands lifted then, slow, sliding around his neck. Her fingers threaded into his hair without urgency, just familiarity—muscle memory taking over where fear usually lived.

When she kissed his mouth, it was gentle at first. Unrushed. The kind of kiss that carried everything they hadn’t said without trying to consume it. She stayed there, close, foreheads brushing again when she pulled back just enough to breathe.

Her voice was quiet when she spoke, half-murmured against his lips, the words almost a smile.

“Well,” she said softly, thumb brushing at the nape of his neck, “you’re here.”

A small exhale, warm and honest.

“We might as well not waste it.”

And she kissed him again—not to escape the truth, not to pretend the world outside didn’t exist, but because this moment did. Because they did.

And for now, that was enough to choose.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben didn’t move at first.

Didn’t speak.

Didn’t breathe.

He let her kiss him like a confession—soft at his temple, gentle at the bridge of his nose—each one a slow unraveling of everything he’d tried to keep stitched tight.

But when her mouth met his…

Something broke.

Something gave.

She kissed him like she meant it. Like they hadn’t wasted all that time pretending they could survive without this. Without them.

And the second she murmured you’re here like it was reason enough to set the world on fire—

That was it.

His restraint snapped without fanfare.

His hand slid under the back of her shirt in one smooth movement, all palm and heat and possession, like he was reclaiming space he’d never stopped craving. His touch was steady, but the pressure was unmistakable—stay right here.

The other hand found her hip, fingers flexing hard enough to leave the idea of a bruise, if not the mark itself. He didn’t push, didn’t drag—but held. Anchored. Claimed.

And when she said we might as well not waste it, her mouth brushing his?

He didn’t even hesitate.

He kissed her like she was oxygen. Like he’d been starved of it since the last time he had her pressed to him like this, all heat and memory and need.

It was messier now. Rougher. His mouth opened over hers, deep and slow and filthy with want—like he was trying to memorize the shape of her from the inside.

His thumb brushed her jaw, tilting her chin just enough to take more. Tongue sliding against hers in a kiss that didn’t ask permission because he already knew she wanted it.

A low sound broke from his throat when her body leaned in, her thighs brushing his knees, and his grip tightened in response—like if he didn’t hold her right now, she might disappear again.

When he finally pulled back, it was barely an inch, both of them breathless, his lips wet and parted like he was already thinking about going back for more.

He looked at her.

Really looked.

Hair tousled from his hands. Lips flushed and kiss-drunk. Eyes wide with that slow, beautiful unraveling he remembered better than sleep.

His voice was rough when he finally spoke.

“Come here.”

Not loud.

Not forceful.

Just low.

Ragged.

Certain.

And when she moved—when she climbed into his lap like she’d never really left it—he didn’t waste a second.

His mouth was on her again before her knees had even settled. His hands—under her shirt now, completely—swept up her back, greedy for every inch of skin, every sound she made, every shiver she didn’t try to hide.

And if this was all he got?

A stolen hour in a quiet apartment, her thighs on either side of him, her breath caught on his name?

He’d ruin himself for it again.
Every time.

No cameras.
No noise.
No promises.

Just this.

Her.
Him.
The fire in between.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo didn’t stop him.

She couldn’t have if she tried.

Her hands slid into his hair, fingers curling tight at the roots, gripping the way she’d wanted to all night—the way she’d been holding herself back from for years. Not delicate. Not careful. Just there, anchoring herself to him the same way he was anchoring her.

She moved closer, instinctively, knees settling on either side of him, bodies fitting together with that familiar inevitability that made her chest ache. It wasn’t choreography. It was memory. Muscle memory. Two people who had learned each other once and never fully unlearned.

Her breath hitched when she felt how solid he was beneath her, how real this was—his hands, his heat, the quiet urgency in the way he held her like he was afraid she might vanish again if he loosened his grip. She rocked forward without thinking, drawn by need and relief and the sheer disbelief of finally being back here, back with him.

Messy. Unguarded. Honest.

Her mouth found his again, open and insistent now, kissing him like she was making up for lost time. Like she was pouring every unsent text, every almost-call, every night she’d lain awake missing him into the space between their lips.

She broke the kiss just long enough to press her forehead to his, breath uneven, hands still tangled in his hair.

A laugh slipped out of her—soft, wrecked, almost disbelieving.

“This is… us,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. Like saying it out loud might finally make it real. “It always was.”

She kissed him again, slower this time, deeper—not rushing, not holding back either. Just two people finally letting themselves collide after years of being careful, afraid, convinced that wanting each other didn’t mean they were allowed to have it.

Her hands stayed in his hair. His stayed at her waist.

And in that moment—no noise, no world pressing in—Cleo let herself feel it fully.

She pulled back, her chest heaving, the sudden lack of his mouth leaving her cold and aching for more.

The cotton of her shirt felt suffocating. It felt like static. Like one last barrier she didn’t have the patience for anymore.

Her hands dropped from his hair, finding the hem of her top. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t make it slow or seductive or careful.

She just wanted it gone.

She crossed her arms, gripped the fabric, and pulled it up and over her head in one fluid, desperate motion, tossing it blindly onto the floor.

The cool air of the apartment hit her skin, raising goosebumps along her arms, but she didn’t cover herself. She didn't shrink away. She just sat there, straddling him, chest rising and falling rapidly, completely exposed.

She looked him right in the eye, baring it all—the scars, the skin, the truth.

"I’m done waiting," she whispered, her voice trembling just a little. "I want you to see me. All of me."

[Benjamin Wilder]

The air left the room. Or maybe it just left his lungs.

He sat there, hands gripping the denim of his own jeans to keep from reaching for her too fast, and just looked.

For months, his life had been a blur of strobe lights, scream-singing into microphones until his throat tasted like copper, and faces—thousands of them—that blurred into a singular, demanding mass. Everything out there was loud. Everything was fast. Everything was for consumption.
But this? This was quiet. This was sacred.

Cleo sat straddling his lap, her chest rising and falling with that jagged, beautiful breath, and Ben felt like he was finally seeing color again after living in grayscale.

The shirt lay in a heap on the floor. She wasn’t hiding. She wasn’t angling her body for a camera or sucking in her stomach the way people in his world did instinctively. She was just there. The soft curve of her waist, the pale stretch of her throat, the small, faint paint splatter on her collarbone that she probably hadn't noticed.

And the scars. The map of her history. The things that made her Cleo.
"I want you to see me," she’d whispered.

God, if she only knew. He hadn’t looked at anyone else in years. Not really.

He let out a shaky breath, the sound rough in the silent room. He didn’t say a word. He couldn’t. Words felt cheap right now, flimsy things that would just clutter the air.

Slowly, treating the moment like it might shatter if he moved too sharply, he lifted his hands from his lap.
His palms found the bare skin of her waist.

He felt a tremor run through her, and it nearly undid him. His thumbs brushed over her ribs, feeling the heat of her skin, the frantic beat of her heart beneath the surface. It was a rhythm he wanted to memorize.
He leaned forward, his dark hair falling into his eyes, but he didn’t brush it away. He kept his gaze locked on hers, intense and dark, letting her see exactly how hungry he was. Not just for her body—though he was definitely that—but for the peace she radiated. For the reality of her.

"I see you, Cleo," he murmured, his voice a low grit, deeper than usual. "I see every part of you."
He didn’t kiss her lips. Not yet.

Instead, he lowered his head, pressing his mouth to the hollow of her throat. He felt her pulse jump against his lips. He kissed the spot, open-mouthed and reverent, breathing her in—paint thinner, vanilla, and skin.

He moved lower, his hands sliding up her back to pull her closer, eliminating the last few inches of space between them. He kissed the slope of her breast, then the small scar on her ribcage, lingering there. He worshiped it with the tip of his tongue, a silent promise that he accepted the damage, the fear, the past.
He felt her hands tighten in his hair again, heard the sharp intake of her breath, and it fueled him.

He looked up at her then, his eyes blown wide, his hands spanning her ribcage as if he were holding something priceless.

"You are the only real thing in my entire life," he said, the admission raw, torn out of him. "Do you understand that? The rest of it is just noise. This... this is the music."

He didn’t wait for an answer. He slid his hands up to cup her face, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones, and pulled her down to him, crashing his mouth against hers with a possessive, desperate heat that promised he wasn't going anywhere.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The kiss was a collision. It wasn't gentle, and thank God for that. She didn't want gentle right now. She wanted the desperation she felt vibrating in her own bones matched by his.

His words were still ringing in her ears, louder than the blood rushing in her head. The only real thing. It made her chest ache, a good, sharp ache that cracked open the last of the protective armor she’d wrapped around herself for months. If she was real to him, then he had to be real to her. All of him.

She needed more. The barrier of his t-shirt against her bare skin was suddenly unbearable; it was too much cotton between their heartbeats.

She broke the kiss, gasping, needing air, but mostly just needing access. Before he could question the break in contact, her hands bunched the fabric at his waist. With a surge of adrenaline and pure impatience, she yanked it upward, over his head in one swift, decisive motion.

It landed somewhere in the shadows near her own discarded heap. She didn't care where. Her hands immediately sought the reality of him beneath.

Her palms flattened against his chest, the heat radiating through her fingertips like a furnace. God, she had missed this landscape. She dragged her nails lightly—just lightly enough to graze—through the dusting of hair there, feeling the hard plane of muscle beneath and the rapid thud-thud-thud of his heart matching her own frenzied rhythm.

She missed the texture of him. She missed the scent of road-weary cedar and just Ben that clung to his skin. She missed the rough grit of his voice saying her name like it was a secret prayer, something only meant for this tiny, dim room.

Being on his lap wasn't enough anymore. She needed to be grounded, and she needed the weight of him to keep her there.

"Ben," she breathed, the word half a demand, half a sigh.
She shifted, sliding off his legs and onto the woven rug beneath them. Her sudden movement scattered the papers surrounding them like dry leaves in wind—charcoal sketches of his jawline in shadow, half-finished studies of their hands clasped, memories she had tried to capture on paper fluttered away.

She didn't bother trying to save them. A few drawings remained trapped beneath her shoulders as she laid back against the hard floor, the rug scratchy against her bare skin, but she barely registered the discomfort. She only saw him.

She reached up, gripping his shoulders, her eyes locking with his dark, blown-out gaze. She pulled him down, urging him to cover her, wanting to be crushed under the beautiful, heavy reality of the man who saw her scars and called them music.

[Benjamin Wilder]

He went where she pulled him. He would have followed her off the edge of the earth, so the floor was an easy concession.

He caught his weight on his forearms just before he crushed her, his body hovering over hers, caging her in. The sound of paper crinkling beneath them was sharp in the quiet room—sketches of his own face, the curve of his guitar, his hands—now being pressed into the woven rug by the weight of her shoulders.

It was heady. Knowing she’d spent hours alone in this room, translating him onto paper, obsessing over him the same way he’d obsessed over her in hotel rooms across the Atlantic.

"Ben," she’d breathed, and it sounded like permission. It sounded like a dare.

He crashed his mouth down on hers, swallowing her moan. He kissed her deep and wet, his tongue sweeping into her mouth with a heavy, rhythmic pulse. He let his hips grind down, just once, hard against her pelvis, letting her feel exactly how hard he was through the denim of his jeans.

He didn’t stay at her lips. He needed to taste everything.

He dragged his mouth down her jawline, feeling her pulse hammering against his lips. He moved lower, over the arch of her throat, leaving a trail of heat until he reached the swell of her breast. She arched up into him, a silent plea, and he answered it.

He took one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, swirling his tongue against the sensitive peak until she cried out, her fingers digging bruising crescents into his shoulders. He worked her with the same focus he gave a melody, teasing, biting lightly, then soothing it with his tongue, savoring the way she writhed beneath him.

"You’re beautiful," he groaned against her skin, the vibration of his voice humming through her chest. "Fuck, Cleo."

He pulled back, breathless, his hair falling messily over his forehead. He sat back on his heels, his chest heaving, looking down at her. She was half-naked, flushed, her lips swollen and her eyes dazed.
But it wasn’t enough.

"Lift up," he commanded. His voice was rough, leaving no room for argument.

She obeyed instantly, lifting her hips off the rug. His hands went to the button of her jeans. He didn't fumble. He was efficient, driven by a singular need. He unbuttoned the denim, dragged the zipper down, and hooked his fingers into the waistband of her pants and her panties at the same time.
He pulled them down, sliding the fabric over her hips, down her thighs, off her ankles, tossing them aside to join the pile of discarded clothes.

Then, he paused.

He stayed back on his heels, just looking at her.

The image hit him like a physical blow. Cleo, completely bare, sprawled out on the rug. Her skin was pale and luminous in the dim light, a stark contrast to the charcoal smudges on the papers fanned out around her like a halo. She was lying on top of a hundred versions of him, but she was the masterpiece. She was the only thing in the room that mattered.

"Look at you," he whispered, a smirk touching the corner of his mouth—confident, possessive. "Surrounded by all this art... and you put it all to shame."

She tried to cover herself with a hand, a reflex of shyness, but he reached out and caught her wrist, gently pinning it to the floor above her head.

"Don't hide," he said, his eyes darkening. "I told you. I want to see all of you."

He moved then, shifting his body between her legs. He hooked her knees over his shoulders, spreading her wide, opening her completely to him. The scent of her hit him—musk and arousal—and his mouth watered.

He didn't wait. He lowered his head and pressed his face right against her heat, inhaling deeply, letting his breath ghost over her wetness. She shuddered, her thighs trembling against his ears.

He smirked against her skin. Then he licked her.

One long, broad stroke from bottom to top.

She bucked, a strangled noise leaving her throat, but he held her hips firm with his large hands, anchoring her. He dove in, his tongue flat and relentless, tasting her sweetness, lapping at her with a steady, maddening rhythm. He felt her unraveling against his mouth, her taste coating his tongue, and he groaned, the sound vibrating against her clitoris as he increased the pressure, determined to wreck her just as thoroughly as she had wrecked him.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The sensation shattered her. It wasn't just the physical shock of his mouth—though that alone was enough to make her vision blur—it was the sheer, unadulterated reverence in his actions.

She had spent weeks pouring her longing into graphite and charcoal, capturing the sharp line of his jaw and the brooding depth of his eyes, never imagining that the real thing would be here, between her legs, worshiping her with a devotion that made her art look pale in comparison.

Her head fell back against the rug, the paper crinkling loudly under her shifting weight. She could feel the charcoal smudging against the bare skin of her back, the sketches of his face blurring into her sweat, but she didn’t care. She would ruin every single drawing for five more seconds of this.

"Ben," she gasped, the name tearing out of her throat as a ragged plea.

He didn't stop. If anything, her voice seemed to spur him on. His grip on her hips tightened, his thumbs pressing into her soft flesh as he anchored her down, refusing to let her escape the pleasure he was forcing on her. He was relentless, a master of rhythm, playing her body with the same intuitive, devastating skill he used on his guitar.

Her hands flailed blindly, needing to touch him, needing a lifeline. Her fingers found the thick waves of his hair, tangling tight, gripping him. She wasn’t sure if she was trying to pull him closer or push him away because it was too much—it was too sharp, too sweet, too intense.

Every stroke of his tongue felt like he was stripping her bare, peeling back layers of shyness and hesitation until only raw nerve endings remained. The friction of his stubble against her inner thighs was a rough, maddening counterpoint to the softness of his mouth, and she arched her back, her hips snapping upward in an involuntary rhythm.

"Please," she sobbed, the word losing all meaning, becoming just a sound of desperate need. "I can’t—Ben, I can’t—"

She was falling. The room, the sketches, the floor—it all dissolved. There was only the heat of his breath, the wet slick of his tongue, and the terrifying, beautiful realization that he was right. She wasn't hiding anymore. He had found her, completely.

The ache wasn't just between her legs; it was a fever in her blood that demanded to be touched everywhere. The memory of his mouth on her breast was still a phantom burn, and the emptiness there now was unbearable. She needed to bridge the gap; she needed to feel more.

Her fingers slipped from the thick tangles of his hair, her arms feeling heavy and languid as they drifted down.

With a broken whimper, she cupped her own breasts, the heels of her hands pressing firmly into the soft flesh. They felt swollen, heavy with heat. She squeezed them, her fingers digging in, trying to replicate the bruising pressure he’d used earlier. It felt decadent, almost forbidden, to touch herself while he was down there completely unraveling her, but she couldn't stop.

She grazed her thumbs over her nipples, finding them hard and incredibly sensitive. She pinched them, twisting sharply, and the jolt of sensation shot straight down her spine, connecting with the wet, hot rhythm of his tongue.
"God," she choked out, her head thrashing against the floor.

The combined stimulation—her own hands working her nipples, his mouth relentless against her clitoris—was a sensory overload that made her toes curl. She arched her chest up, offering herself to her own touch, creating a friction that fed the fire he was stoking below. She was caught in a loop of pure sensation, her body a live wire, and she knew she wasn't going to last much longer.

[Benjamin Wilder]

He felt the shift in her before he heard it. The way her hips stuttered against his hold, the frantic, shallow gasps that sounded like she was drowning. She was close. She was right there on the precipice, trembling like a struck chord.

Then he looked up, just a fraction, and the sight nearly ended him.

Her hands were clutching her own breasts, fingers digging into the pale flesh, squeezing, desperate. The visual was visceral—artistic and pornographic all at once. Cleo, his quiet, grounded Cleo, completely unraveling in his hands, touching herself because he had driven her out of her mind.

A surge of possessiveness roared through him, darker and heavier than before.

He wanted her to come. God, he wanted to drink it down. But not yet. Not this fast. He had waited years for this; he wasn't going to let it be over in minutes. He wanted to live in this space—this chaotic, messy, high-frequency space where she was completely at his mercy—for as long as possible.
With a sheer force of will, he pulled back.

He felt her buck against him, a silent protest of the loss of friction, but he didn’t stop. He pressed a firm, damp kiss to the very top of her thigh, right near the crease, ignoring the way she tried to chase his mouth.

"Not yet," he murmured against her skin, the vibration of his voice buzzing against her sensitive nerves. "I'm not done with you."

He began a slow, torturous ascent.

He didn’t rush. He treated her body like a landscape he had to memorize in the dark. He pressed open-mouthed, wet kisses to her hip bone, tasting the salt on her skin. He moved inward, burying his face in the soft dip of her stomach, exhaling hot air against her navel, feeling the way her abdominal muscles violently contracted beneath his lips.

Every inch he covered was a claim. Mine. Mine. Mine.

He moved higher, over the ladder of her ribs. He saw the smudge of charcoal on her side—a fingerprint of her work—and he kissed right over it, blending the art with the reality of her skin.

When he reached her chest, her hands were still there, gripping her breasts as if holding herself together.
Ben didn't pull them away forcefully. He was gentler now. He kissed her wrists, first one, then the other, feeling the erratic, hummingbird flutter of her pulse beneath the thin skin. He nudged her hands aside with his nose, the stubble on his chin grazing her knuckles, silently demanding she yield the territory to him.
As her hands fell away, limp and heavy to the floor, he took their place.

He kissed the slope of her breast, laving the skin with slow, broad strokes, cooling the heat he had ignited. He wasn't teasing her toward a peak anymore; he was bringing her down, grounding her back into her body, forcing her to feel the weight of his attention everywhere, not just between her legs.

He rested his chin on her sternum, looking up at her face. She was wrecked—eyes glazed, mouth slack, chest heaving.

He smirked, a dangerous, satisfied thing.

"Breathe, Cleo," he whispered, leaning in to brush his lips softly against the hollow of her throat. "We've got all night."

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Her chest rose and fell in jagged, broken rhythms, her body still humming with the ghost of the friction he’d just taken away. It was a torture of the sweetest kind—to be brought to the very edge of the cliff and then held there, suspended in the dizzying height of it.

She watched him through heavy-lidded eyes as he moved up her body. The dim light caught the sharp angle of his cheekbone, the messy fall of his dark hair, the focused intensity in his gaze.

He was here.

For so long, he had been a memory she couldn’t shake, a face she tried to exorcise by drawing it over and over again until her fingers were stained black and the floor was covered in paper. But paper couldn’t breathe. Paper didn’t have heat. Paper didn't look at her with that devastating mix of hunger and adoration.

Her hands lifted, trembling slightly, and slid back into his hair.

This time, she wasn't gripping for leverage; she was touching him just to prove she could. Her fingers threaded through the thick, dark waves, feeling the warmth of his scalp, the solid reality of him. It was a texture she hadn’t been able to capture with charcoal—the softness, the life.

"Ben," she whispered, the name vibrating in her throat.

When he replaced her hands with his own, brushing his lips against the swell of her breast, a high, helpless whimper escaped her lips. Her skin felt too tight, too sensitive, every nerve ending exposed and raw. The sensation of his stubble grazing her tender skin sent a fresh shockwave through her, making her toes curl into the rug.

She looked up at him, her heart hammering against her ribs where his chin rested, and the truth of it spilled out of her, raw and unguarded.

"I never want this to end," she admitted, her voice cracking on the final word. "Please... don't let it end."

Her other hand drifted up, moving with a dreamlike slowness, until her palm found the side of his face.

Her fingers curled under the sharp ridge of his cheekbone—that precise angle she’d spent hours trying to get right with charcoal, shading the hollows to capture exactly how the shadows hit him. She had memorized the geometry of his face in his absence, obsessing over the lines, but the paper had always been cold. Flat.

This was warm.

His skin burned against her palm, solid and undeniable. She traced the line of the bone with her thumb, feeling the slight resistance of his stubble, the way a muscle in his jaw ticked under her touch as he watched her. It was a tactile map she was finally allowed to explore, no longer limited to memory or imagination.

She let her hand cup his jaw, holding him there, anchoring his gaze to hers. She needed to feel the weight of his head in her hand to believe he wasn't going to vanish like smoke the moment she blinked.

"You're real," she breathed, the words barely audible, more for herself than for him. Her thumb brushed over the corner of his mouth, catching the edge of that smirk. "You're actually here."

[Benjamin Wilder]

He leaned into her touch, closing his eyes for a brief second as her palm cupped his jaw.

He could smell the faint, metallic scent of graphite on her skin, mixed with the vanilla she always wore. It was the scent of her world, and having it pressed against his face felt like an induction. Like he was finally being allowed inside the studio of her mind.

He turned his head, pressing a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the center of her palm, tasting the salt and the charcoal, worshiping the hand that had spent years drawing him from memory.

"I’m here," he rasped against her skin. "And I’m not going anywhere. I’m not a sketch, Cleo. You can’t erase me."

He opened his eyes, the dark irises blown wide with intent.

He didn't just want her to see him. He needed her to feel him. Everywhere.

He took her hand—the one that had been tracing his cheekbone—and slowly, deliberately, dragged it down. He pulled her hand over the corded muscle of his neck, down the hard plane of his chest, over the ridges of his stomach, until he reached the waistband of nothing.

He wrapped her fingers around him.

A guttural groan tore out of his chest, vibrating through his entire frame as her cool fingers closed over his hardness. She felt velvety and small in his grip, and the contrast of her delicate artist’s hand against his rigid desire nearly ended him right there.

"Feel that?" he gritted out, his hips bucking involuntarily into her hold. "That’s real. That’s for you. Only you."
He let go of her hand, surrendering control, letting her take the weight of him.

She squeezed, tentatively at first, testing the drag of her skin against his. But then she pulled back, her hand lifting away from him for a split second.

He watched, his breath caught in his throat, as she brought her hand to her mouth.

She didn't break eye contact. Her gaze was dark, heavy with intent, as she opened her mouth and licked into the cup of her palm—a long, wet stroke of her tongue, gathering moisture. It was a raw, instinctive move, messy and practical and completely devastating.

She reached back down, and when she wrapped her fingers around him this time, the sensation nearly buckled his knees.

The cool slickness of her saliva mixed with the heat of her palm created a glide that was almost too good. She stroked him, learning the texture of him just like she’d learned the lines of his face, sliding from the base to the tip in a slow, wet rhythm.

"Fuck," he breathed, the word punching out of him.

He watched her hand moving on him, the charcoal smudges on her knuckles stark against his skin, the faint glistening of her spit catching the dim light. It was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. She wasn’t just touching him; she was memorizing him.

She tightened her grip, finding a rhythm that matched the frantic beat of his heart, her thumb dragging over the sensitive head of his cock, slick and relentless.

His hips snapped forward, chasing her hand, unable to help himself. The pleasure was sharp, blinding, and immediate. He was starved for her, and having her hand on him, owning him like this, was pushing him dangerously close to the edge.

He endured it for as long as he could, his breath sawing in and out of his lungs, sweat beading on his forehead. Every wet stroke chipped away at his restraint until the need to be inside her, to be surrounded by her completely, eclipsed everything else.

"Cleo, stop," he choked out, his voice wrecked. "Stop, or I’m going to finish right now."

He reached down, his hand trembling as he covered hers, halting her movement. He held her there for a second, just pulsating in her grip, letting the sensation burn into his brain, before he gently pulled her hand away and pinned it to the floor beside her head.

He moved, shifting his weight until he was settled between her spread thighs again. The friction of his skin against hers was electric—heat on heat.

​He braced one hand on the floor next to her head, the other reaching down to guide himself. He paused at her entrance, the tip of him brushing against her slick, swollen heat, teasing the opening that was already damp and ready for him.

​She let out a shaky breath, her hips lifting instinctively, trying to bridge the gap, but he held back.

​The impulse to just shove forward, to bury himself in the familiar heat he’d been craving for weeks, was a roar in his ears. But he stopped. He forced his eyes to focus on hers, his chest heaving as he hovered there, agonizingly close.

​"Wait," he breathed, the word barely audible over the blood rushing in his ears. He swallowed hard, needing to know, needing to be sure. "Do you want me to grab a condom?"

[Cleo Ashcroft]

She had been lost in the texture of him. The reality of having him in her hand had been overwhelming—he was heavier, harder, and hotter than any memory she had tried to preserve. She had been fascinated by the visual of it, too; the dark smudges of charcoal on her fingers stark against his skin, the glisten of her own saliva making her movements slick and fluid. She had wanted to map the vein that ran the length of him, to feel the exact pressure required to make his hips snap forward, revelling in the power of wrecking him just as he had wrecked her.

When he stopped her, gripping her hand to halt the motion, she felt the tremor vibrating through his fingers. It was a testament to how close he was, and the knowledge sent a fresh spike of heat through her belly.

As he pinned her hand to the floor and shifted his weight, she didn't lay still. Her body was magnetic to his; she couldn't help but follow his movements.

As he settled between her spread thighs, hovering just at the entrance, her free hand—the one not pinned above her head—reached out instinctively. She couldn't touch him there anymore, so she needed to touch him everywhere else.

Her fingers curled around his bicep, nails digging into the flexed muscle as he held his weight up. She traced the tension there, feeling the rock-hard solidity of his arm, the way it trembled with the sheer effort of holding back. She dragged her fingertips down to his forearm, tracing the roadmap of veins that stood out against his skin, feeling the dampness of his sweat. She wanted to pull him down. She wanted to wrap her legs around him and force the issue, to eliminate the agonizing inch of space between them.

The tip of him brushed against her wetness, a tease that made her entire body arch off the floor, a broken sound tearing from her throat. She was ready. She was aching for it.

Then he spoke.

The question cut through the haze of lust like a sharp intake of breath.

Condom.

For a split second, her brain refused to process it. The biological drive to just feel him, to have him fill the empty ache inside her, was so loud it drowned out everything else. She stared up at him, her eyes wide and dazed, her chest heaving against his. The responsible part of her brain kicked in a second later, warring with the desperate, reckless need.

She swallowed hard, her throat dry, her pulse hammering a frantic rhythm against her collarbone.

She gave a jerky, breathless nod, her head rubbing against the texture of the rug.

"Yeah," she whispered, the word trembling as it left her lips. She tightened her grip on his forearm, terrified that if he moved away, the spell would break. "Yeah. Do you... do you have one?"

The air felt suddenly cold where his body left hers, a sharp, physical loss that made her breath hitch. She watched him shift, his weight lifting off the floor as he twisted toward the chaotic pile of laundry they’d created—her shorts, his shirt, the mess of papers.

His hand dove into the back pocket of his discarded jeans, the denim crumpled on top of a charcoal sketch of his profile. The mundane sound of him wrestling the wallet out of the tight pocket seemed deafening in the quiet room.

She lay there, her chest rising and falling rapidly, feeling exposed and achingly empty, her eyes tracing the line of his spine, the tension in his shoulders. There was a frantic quality to his movements now—he wasn't being smooth; he was hurrying. He flipped the worn leather open, his fingers digging into a hidden slot, and for a terrifying second, she thought maybe he was empty, maybe they’d have to stop.

But then she saw the glint of silver foil.

Relief crashed through her, hot and dizzying. He had one.

He tossed the wallet aside—it landed with a soft thud on the rug—and turned back to her. He didn’t waste time with his hands; he brought the packet to his mouth, tearing the foil open with his teeth. The sound was sharp, feral, and incredibly loud.

It did something to her, seeing him like that—shoving the wrapper aside, rolling the protection on with quick, trembling hands. It was the final barrier coming down. The confirmation that this was happening, right now, on her floor.

She reached for him before he was even fully settled, her hands grabbing at his forearms, desperate to pull his weight back down onto her.

"Hurry," she whispered, the word barely more than a gasp. “Benjamin, please."

When his weight settled back over her, it felt like the roof of the world coming down—heavy, grounding, and absolutely necessary. The air rushed out of her lungs in a relieved whoosh as his heat engulfed her again, chasing away the brief, biting cold of the room.

Her hands didn't wait. They flew to his shoulders, her palms slapping against the damp skin, her fingers digging in to pull him down, down, down. She needed to close the distance until there wasn't a single molecule of air left between them.

He nudged her knees wider, his hips settling into the cradle of hers, and the sensation of his tip pressing against her opening again made her entire body string tight.

Then, he pushed.

It wasn’t a gentle slide. It was a reclaiming.

Her head fell back against the rug, a jagged, broken sound tearing from her throat as he filled her. It was a stark, invading pressure—thick and stretching and overwhelming—and it felt like coming home. Every inch he took was a memory slotting back into place. The emptiness that had been gnawing at her for months, the hollow space she’d tried to fill with work and noise and sketching, vanished in a single, devastating stroke.

Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes—not from pain, but from the sheer, crushing relief of it. He was deep. He was here. He was buried inside her, anchored to her, a solid, heavy knot in the center of her universe.

She locked her ankles around the small of his back instantly, trapping him there, terrified he might pull away even an inch. She looked up at him, her vision swimming, seeing the strain in his neck, the blown-out darkness of his eyes.

The rhythm he set wasn’t gentle. It was a collision.

He pulled back almost completely, leaving her aching and empty for a split second, before slamming back into her with a force that knocked the breath from her lungs. The impact of his hips against hers was a dull, heavy thud that reverberated through her entire skeleton, a shockwave traveling straight up her spine.

She felt completely boneless, rag-dolled by the sheer power of him. With every hard, driving thrust, her body was jarred upward, and she felt the heavy sway of her breasts moving in time with his violence. They trembled with the force of it, shaking and quivering against the cool air, a stark visual of just how hard he was taking her.

It felt primitive and exposing. She could feel the weight of them shifting, the soft flesh moving uncontrollably as he wrecked her from the inside out. There was no hiding this, no way to be poised or pretty. She was just raw reaction, her body echoing the brutal, desperate cadence he was pounding into her.

"Baby," she gasped, the word punched out of her as he bottomed out again, the force making her chest heave.

She looked down at herself—at the pale curve of her breasts swaying with the rhythm, the flush spreading across her chest—and then up at him. He was watching it too. His eyes were dark, tracking the movement of her body, the way she shook with every stroke, and seeing the hunger in his gaze made her core clench tight around him, milking him, begging for it to be even harder.

[Benjamin Wilder]

The sound she made when he bottomed out—that broken, breathless gasp—was the best sound he had heard in years. Better than a crowd screaming, better than a perfect chord progression. It was the sound of Cleo coming undone, and he was the one unspooling her.

He felt her ankles lock behind his back, her heels digging into his kidneys, trapping him inside. Good. He didn't want to leave.

The friction was different with the latex, slicker and less raw, but the pressure? The pressure was insane. Every time he slammed into her, he felt her tight, wet heat clamping around him, milking him through the barrier, dragging a groan out of his own throat that sounded dangerously close to a roar.
He gritted his teeth, his jaw working as he tried to keep his pace steady, but the sight of her was destroying his control.

He looked down, sweat stinging his eyes.

She was right. There was no hiding this.

With every heavy, punishing thrust he drove into her, her body jolted upward. He watched, mesmerizing, as her breasts swayed with the violence of his rhythm—soft, pale flesh trembling, moving in a chaotic, beautiful counterpoint to the rigid line of his hips. The flush spreading across her chest was like watercolor bleeding onto canvas, deepening with every second.

It was hypnotic. It was raw. It was the most honest thing he’d ever seen.
He couldn't just watch. He needed to own the movement.

"Fuck, look at you," he growled, the words vibrating against her ear as he leaned down.

He released his hold on the floor and grabbed her. His large hands engulfed her breasts, his fingers digging into the soft yielding flesh, holding the weight of her. He squeezed hard, matching the brutality of his hips, kneading her as he fucked her.

He loved the way she filled his hands. He loved the way her nipples hardened against his palms, sensitive and peaked.

"You’re so responsive," he murmured, biting at the sensitive cord of her neck. "You feel everything I do to you, don’t you?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He pulled back slightly, just enough to get leverage, and then snapped his hips forward again, harder this time.

He saw her eyes roll back, saw her mouth fall open in a silent scream, and it fueled him.
He felt the papers shifting beneath them—the sketches of his face, the memories she’d tried to capture—tearing under the friction of her back sliding against the rug. He didn't care. Let them tear. Let the past get ruined.

He was rewriting it right now.

He moved his hands from her breasts to her waist, gripping her hips to anchor her, to keep her from sliding away from the force of him. He drove into her with a rhythmic, pounding cadence—thud, thud, thud—a bass line that vibrated through the floorboards.

"I’m not a drawing, Cleo," he panted, the words harsh and low. He wanted to drive the point home. He wanted to be the only thing in her head. "I’m right here. Feel me? I’m right fucking here."

He adjusted his angle, grinding down as he thrust, hitting that deep, sweet spot inside her that he knew by heart. He felt her inner muscles spasm around him, felt the way her breath hitched into a high, keening whine.

She was close again. He could feel the tension ratcheting up in her body, the way she was straining against him, seeking the release.

And this time, he wasn't going to stop her.

"Come on," he demanded, his voice dropping to a dark, guttural command. He sped up, his hips a blur of motion, sweating and desperate and completely focused on her. "Fall apart for me, baby. Do it."

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The roughness was exactly what she needed. She didn't want gentle; gentle was for memories, for the careful shading of a pencil. She wanted this—the bruising grip of his hands on her hips, anchoring her to the floor, the relentless, punishing rhythm that was jarring her teeth and stealing her breath.

She was crying out, a continuous, broken litany of his name mixed with shapeless, high-pitched whimpers. Her head thrashed against the rug, her hair fanning out over the torn sketches, the sound of the paper ripping beneath her lost under the wet, heavy slap of his skin against hers.

"I feel you," she sobbed, her hands scrambling over his sweat-slicked shoulders. Her nails dug in, dragging down the muscles of his back, needing to mark him, needing to make sure he felt this as intensely as she did. She clawed at him, desperate and feral. "Ben—Ben—"

He was hitting that spot deep inside her, over and over, winding the tension in her belly so tight it felt like a physical pain. She was right on the edge, teetering, her whole body trembling like a fever.

Then he said it.

Baby.

That single word, rasped in that dark, possessive growl, shattered the last of her defenses. It was a claim she hadn't heard in so long, a word that belonged to a past she thought she’d lost. Hearing it now, while he was buried to the hilt inside her, broke her.

"Oh my God!"

The scream tore from her throat as she let go completely.

Her hips arched violently upward, seeking him, grinding hard against his pelvis as the orgasm crashed through her. It was blinding, a white-hot explosion that started in her core and radiated out to her fingertips.

Her hands flew blindly from his shoulders to his head, fingers tangling deep into his hair, gripping the dark strands like a lifeline. She pulled him down to her, holding on for dear life as the waves of pleasure convulsed through her, milking him, her inner muscles clamping down on him in wildly fluttering spasms. She was sobbing through it, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of the feeling, her body bowing off the floor as she unraveled beneath him.

The aftershocks were still rolling through her, little tremors that made her thighs quake against his hips. She felt boneless, utterly drained in the best possible way, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs that she was sure he could feel.

She didn't let go of his hair. She couldn't. It was the only thing keeping her tethered to the floor as the room slowly stopped spinning.

She felt him pause for a second, riding out her climax with her, and the sensation of him staying deep inside her while she pulsed around him was almost too intimate to bear. But then he moved again—a short, sharp thrust that reminded her he wasn't done.

Her eyes fluttered open, unfocused and wet. She pulled his head down, seeking his mouth blindly.

"Ben," she whispered, her voice wrecked, a jagged exhale against his lips. She kissed him—messy, grateful, tasting her own salt on his skin. She shifted her hips, tilting up to take him deeper, wanting to give back everything he’d just given her. "You... please... don't stop. I want you with me."

She dragged her nails down the back of his neck, her legs squeezing tight around his waist, locking him against her. She ground her pelvis upward, using the lingering sensitivity to push him over the edge.

"Finish," she breathed into his mouth, desperate to feel him break the way she just had.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Her release was the trigger, but her voice was the bullet.

Finish.

The word, breathless and wrecked against his mouth, snapped the final thread of his control.

He had been holding on by sheer will, gritting his teeth through the pleasure of feeling her clamp down on him, waiting until he was sure she had taken everything she needed. But now, feeling her nails dragging down his neck, feeling her hips snapping up to meet him with that frantic, greedy rhythm, he was done.
"I’m with you," he groaned, the sound tearing out of his chest like a growl. "I’m right there, Cleo."
He abandoned all finesse. He stopped trying to pace himself.

He buried his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling the scent of her sweat and the salt on her skin, and he drove into her. Hard. Fast. Desperate.

He wasn't fucking her anymore; he was pouring himself into her.

His hands gripped her waist so hard he knew he’d leave bruises, holding her in place as he hammered into her, chasing the friction. Every thrust was a plea, a promise, a way to silence the noise in his head that had been deafening him for months. Here, inside her, there was no noise. There was only this—the wet slide of latex, the heat of her body, the sound of her breath hitching with every impact.

He felt the pressure building at the base of his spine, a tight, coiling heat that demanded release.
"Cleo," he choked out, his hips blurring with speed.

She squeezed him again—one last, involuntary spasm of her aftershocks—and his vision white-out.
He stiffened, his head flinging back, the cords of his neck straining as he bottomed out one final time and held it there.

A ragged shout left his throat, muffled against the damp hair at her temple. He emptied himself, shuddering violently, every muscle in his body seizing as the orgasm ripped through him. It went on and on, a complete and total evacuation of stress and longing and fear, leaving him light-headed and trembling.

He stayed there for a long moment, pinned deep inside her, his chest heaving against hers, trying to remember how to breathe.

Slowly, gravity took over.

His arms gave out. He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his elbows at the last second to keep from crushing her, but laying his heavy frame over hers like a blanket. His forehead dropped to the rug next to her ear, the rough weave scratching his skin.

The room was silent, save for the harsh, synchronized sound of their breathing.

He cracked one eye open. Beneath his hand, crushed against the floor, was a charcoal sketch of his own hand holding a microphone. It was smeared now, ruined by the sweat on his palm and the violence of their movement.

He didn't care.

He turned his head, pressing a kiss to the damp hair sticking to Cleo’s cheek.

"Real," he whispered, the word exhausted and slurred, echoing what she’d said earlier.

He closed his eyes, his heart rate finally slowing, feeling the rise and fall of her chest beneath his. For the first time in years, the world stopped spinning. He was just Ben. And he was home.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

She lay there for a long minute, just feeling the rise and fall of his breathing against her own, absorbing the heavy, wonderful weight of him. Her hands drifted over his back, tracing the damp dip of his spine, the hard muscles of his shoulders that were finally, finally relaxing.

She pressed a soft, lingering kiss to his temple, tasting the salt of his sweat. With a gentle hand, she brushed the dark, matted hair off his forehead, just needing to see his face—unobscured, peaceful, and hers.

"I’ve got you," she whispered into the quiet room. "I’ve got you."

Reluctantly, she nudged his shoulder, signaling she needed to move. He groaned a low, protesting sound but shifted just enough to let her slide out from under him. The air felt cool against her skin instantly, and she reached for the nearest source of warmth.
His shirt.

She grabbed the fabric from the floor, shaking off a few flecks of eraser shavings, and slipped it on. It swallowed her whole, the hem hitting mid-thigh, the sleeves hanging past her hands. It smelled like him—cedar, sweat, and the faint, stale scent of tour bus air conditioning. It was perfect.

She crawled across the rug to the side of her bed, reaching underneath the frame. Her fingers brushed against canvas stretchers and old sketchbooks before finding the smooth surface of the small wooden box. She slid it out, popping the latch.

Inside was her sanctuary kit: a baggie of pre-ground herb that smelled like lemon and pine, a fresh package of blunt wraps, and her lighter.

She moved back to him. Ben hadn’t moved an inch. He was still lying on his stomach, face turned toward her, resting on his crossed arms like a pillow. His eyes were heavy, half-lidded, watching her with a lazy, satisfied affection that made her chest ache.

She sat cross-legged near his head, the box in her lap. She cracked the blunt wrap open with practiced thumbnails, splitting the leaf down the middle. She went to dump the tobacco guts, but realized the rug was already a disaster zone.

She reached out and grabbed the nearest piece of paper from the floor.

It was a sketch of his eyes—brooding, shadowed, intense. She didn't hesitate. She set the paper on her knee and dumped the cheap tobacco right onto the charcoal drawing of his face. It felt poetic, somehow. The idol was gone; the man was here. She didn't need the drawing anymore.

Working quickly, she sprinkled the green into the leaf, her fingers nimble and sure. She rolled it, tucked it, and ran her tongue along the edge to seal it, all while feeling the weight of his gaze on her.

She flicked the lighter. The flame flared, illuminating the dark space between them. She brought the blunt to her lips, inhaling deeply, getting it cherry-red. The thick, sweet smoke filled her lungs, instantly softening the edges of the adrenaline that was still humming in her blood. She exhaled a long, thin stream toward the ceiling.

Then, she leaned down. "Open," she murmured softy.

She held the blunt to his lips so he didn't even have to lift his head. He parted his lips, and she steadied it for him, letting him take a long, slow drag.

As he inhaled, she brought her other hand to his head. She scratched her nails gently against his scalp, massaging the tension there, then trailed her hand down to the nape of his neck, rubbing the spot where his hair met his skin.

"Good?" she asked softly, watching the smoke drift from his lips, her hand moving to stroke down his back in long, soothing sweeps. This was it. The quiet after the storm. The best part.

[Benjamin Wilder]

He felt like he’d been dismantled. Taken apart, piece by piece, and put back together in an arrangement that finally made sense.

He lay heavy on the rug, his limbs feeling like they were filled with lead, but his mind was floaty. Light. For the first time in months, the static in his head—that constant, low-level buzz of tour dates, interviews, and the crushing expectation of strangers—was gone. Silence. Finally.

He watched her through half-lidded eyes as she pulled his shirt on. It swamped her, the hem hitting her thighs, the sleeves dangling past her fingertips. Seeing her in his clothes did something to his chest that the sex hadn't even touched. It was a claim. A flag planted. It said she belonged to him just as much as he belonged to her.

He watched her deft fingers working over the wooden box, splitting the leaf.

He’d been celibate for months, and not for lack of options. God, the options were there. Girls backstage with laminate passes and wide, hungry eyes; women at after-parties who looked at him like he was a meal ticket or a trophy. He’d been tempted, sure—he was a guy, and the loneliness on the road was a physical weight—but every time he got close, the nausea would hit.

It was the realization that he could fuck them, but they wouldn't see him. They wanted the poster. They wanted the guy on the album cover.

Cleo just dumped gut tobacco onto a sketch of his face without blinking.

A lazy, tired smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth as he watched her. She didn't give a damn about the icon. She just wanted the man on her floor. That was the difference. That was why no one else had stood a chance.

He smelled the strike of the lighter, the sharp tang of sulfur followed immediately by the sweet, piney scent of the weed.

When she leaned down, murmuring for him to open, he felt a rush of affection so strong it almost hurt. This. This was what he’d been starving for. Not just the friction of sex, but the care. The way she anticipated his need to just... not be in charge for five minutes.

He parted his lips, letting her bring the blunt to him. He took a drag, his eyes fluttering shut as the smoke filled his lungs, coating his throat. He held it, letting the THC soak into his bloodstream, softening the last of his edges.

He exhaled slowly, watching the smoke drift up to mingle with her hair.

Then he felt her nails on his scalp.

A low, vibrating groan rumbled in his chest. He leaned into her hand instinctively, like a cat, the sensation of her scratching gently at the roots of his hair sending shivers down his spine that rivaled the orgasm he’d just had.

"Good?" she asked.

"Better than good," he rasped, his voice fried. "You’re ruining me, Cleo. I’m never gonna be able to leave this room."

He reached out, his hand heavy and slow, and wrapped his fingers around her ankle where she sat crossed-legged next to his head. He squeezed gently, grounding himself.

"Pass it here again," he murmured, his eyes tracking the cherry of the blunt. "Get me right."

He took another hit from her hand, his gaze locking onto hers, dark and promising. The exhaustion was there, heavy and sweet, but beneath it, the battery was recharging.

"Give me twenty minutes," he whispered, smoke curling from his lips as he smirked at her. "Maybe thirty. Just let me catch my breath."

He brushed his thumb over the bone of her ankle, his grin widening, boyish and wicked.

"Then I’m coming for you again. And I promise... next time, I’m gonna last a hell of a lot longer."

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo huffed out a soft laugh, the sound warm and unguarded, and shifted a little closer to him. She kept one hand in his hair, slow and deliberate, fingertips scratching lightly at his scalp the way she knew grounded him. The other hand stayed easy on his ankle, thumb tracing absent-minded circles like she had nowhere else to be.

She looked down at him when he said twenty minutes, one brow lifting immediately—pure instinct, pure her.

“Twenty minutes?” she echoed, teasing, disbelief threaded through the smile tugging at her mouth. “Twice in one night?”

She tilted her head, studying him with mock seriousness, eyes bright despite the softness settling over her.

“Wow,” she added, dragging the word out just a little. “I must be super special, huh?”

The grin that followed was gentle, not challenging. Fond. Like she was amused but also… touched. Like the joke carried something quieter underneath it.

She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his hairline, lingering there for a second longer than necessary, breathing him in.

“Take your time,” she murmured again, softer now. “I like you like this. All slowed down. No armor.”

Her thumb brushed once over his ankle in reassurance, then she shifted so she could sit more comfortably beside him, still close, still clearly not going anywhere.

“I’ll keep you right,” she added lightly, the humor back in her voice. “You just… stay put and let me.”

And with that, she settled in—content to take care of him, to let the moment stretch instead of rushing it, smiling to herself like this was exactly where she wanted to be.

Cleo let the moment stretch first.

She stroked his hair a few more times—slow, unhurried passes, fingertips gliding from his crown to the nape of his neck until his breathing evened out again. She liked the weight of him like this. Grounded. Quiet. Still enough that she could feel every small shift of his body under her hand.

Only when she felt him fully settle did she start to move.

Carefully, she slipped her hand free and leaned forward, gathering the papers scattered across the floor. She didn’t rush. Each page felt like something fragile, something earned. Charcoal smudges marked the edges, fingerprints darkened where she’d held them too tightly, and more than a few were wrinkled or creased from being dropped in a hurry.

She stacked them slowly, pausing every so often when a drawing caught her breath.

His profile, half-finished but unmistakable.
His hands—always his hands—sketched over and over, from different angles, veins and knuckles memorized.
A quick study of his shoulders from behind.
Another of his face, softer this time, eyes tired but gentle.

She swallowed and kept going.

Every version of him she’d ever carried showed up somewhere in those pages. Some careful. Some rushed. Some barely more than lines chasing a feeling before it disappeared. She didn’t judge any of them. She never did. Drawing him had never been about perfection—it was about getting the ache out of her chest when it threatened to crowd everything else.

She slid the papers into a neater pile beside the bed, smoothing the top page with her palm like she was tucking something in.

Then she gathered the rest—random sketches, smudged studies, loose sheets she’d used when the memories came on too fast. Arms. Jawlines. The curve of a neck she knew by heart. If there was space on a page, she’d filled it. If there wasn’t, she’d found another.

When she was done, she sat back beside him again, folding one leg under herself, careful not to disturb him. Her hand found his hair once more, gentler now, thumb brushing just above his temple.

“You’re everywhere,” she murmured quietly—not to accuse, not to explain. Just stating a fact she’d long since made peace with.

She leaned down and kissed his temple, then rested her cheek lightly against his head, eyes drifting closed for a second.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben didn’t move at first.

Didn’t open his eyes, didn’t shift his weight, didn’t try to fill the silence.

He just breathed.

Slow and steady, cheek pressed to the floor, the scent of paper and charcoal and her skin wrapping around him like gravity. Her words—you’re everywhere—settled in his chest like the last note of a song he hadn’t realized he was still holding. Something in him unknotted.

A slow, lopsided smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, visible only in profile.

Then, without lifting his head, voice low and hoarse from the night they'd just had:

“Should I be insulted,” he murmured, “or flattered that I’m not naked in a single one?”

His hand shifted from her ankle to the floor, fingers splaying out like he was grounding himself against the moment—or maybe just trying to keep from rolling over and pulling her on top of him again.

“You know,” he went on, a little raspier now, a little more mischievous, “if you need a model for future reference…”

He finally turned his head, slow and deliberate, just enough to catch her in the corner of his eye—her, cross-legged in his shirt, swimming in it, sleeves too long, collar loose enough to slip off one shoulder. She looked unfairly soft for someone who’d just wrecked him.

“…I am already lying here like one of your French girls.”

He lifted an eyebrow with a crooked sort of boyish charm that had absolutely no right to be as effective as it was. But there was something else in it too. Beneath the teasing. Beneath the heat still lingering in the space between them.

Something reverent.

Like she’d undone him, and he was grateful.

Not just for the sex—though damn—but for the way she saw him.

Still.

Even now.

Maybe especially now.

He shifted, rolling onto his side finally, propping himself up on one elbow with the lazy sprawl of a man who had no shame left to give and no intention of hiding from her. His free hand reached for the edge of her shirt—his shirt—tugging lightly at the hem like he couldn’t help himself.

“Not gonna lie,” he said, eyes skimming her legs, then flicking back up to her face, slower this time. “I’ve fantasized about you in this shirt for… too long to admit out loud.”

He paused, his thumb brushing against the inside of her knee before settling on her thigh.

“But I never imagined this part.”

He gestured vaguely toward the scattered drawings, now stacked neatly, the echo of her touch still clinging to the pages. His gaze lingered there for a second, something quieter overtaking his expression.

Then he looked back at her.

Softer now.

“Didn’t know you were carrying all that,” he said, voice dipping into something rougher. “All those versions of me.”

He reached for her hand, lacing their fingers together without asking. His touch wasn’t possessive. It was grateful. Anchoring. Like she’d given him back pieces of himself he hadn’t realized had gone missing.

“You ever wanna disappear again,” he said, brushing the back of her hand with his thumb, “you don’t have to go far.”

His smile softened at the edges.

“You can do it right here. I’ll keep the noise out.”

A beat.

Then—

“You might have to draw me more, though,” he added, grinning again. “For science. For balance. Definitely for posterity.”

He leaned forward then, slow and unhurried, pressing a kiss to her shoulder where the collar had slipped down. Not rushed. Not trying to start anything.

Just because he could.

Just because he meant it.

Then, still close, voice half against her skin—

“You’re everywhere in me too, Cleo.”

And somehow, it didn’t sound like a burden.

It sounded like home.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-shudder as his lips moved against her skin. It was unfair, really, how easily he could toggle between making her laugh and making her melt.

She reached out, her fingers tangling in the hair at the nape of his neck, scratching lightly.

“You have a very high opinion of your aesthetic appeal, don’t you?” she teased, though the softness in her eyes betrayed her. She glanced down at the papers scattered around them—some crinkled, some pushed haphazardly aside in their earlier urgency.

“For the record,” she said, her voice dry but fond, “you were never supposed to find those. Not a single one. And we sure as hell were never supposed to…” She waved a hand vaguely at the floor, then at their entangled limbs. “…make love on top of them. I’m pretty sure that counts as defacing fine art, Benjamin.”

She poked him in the ribs, just hard enough to make him twitch, before her expression turned a little more contemplative. She traced the line of his jaw with her thumb.

“And if you really want… I suppose I could draw you like one of my French girls. Though I suspect you’d wiggle too much.” She offered him a small, crooked smile, but then she shook her head, her voice dropping to a whisper. “But these… they weren't sexual. Not really. They weren’t fantasies.”

She looked past him for a second, at a charcoal sketch of his hands holding a microphone.

“They were just… triage,” she admitted honestly. “It was just my brain trying to process the ache. Trying to get the ghost of you onto paper so I didn't have to carry the weight of missing you in my chest every single second. It wasn't about wanting you here—well, it was—but mostly, it was just trying to survive the silence.”

The mention of the silence made her smile falter. His promise—I’ll keep the noise out—hung in the air, sweet and heavy.

She shifted, pulling his shirt tighter around her frame, suddenly feeling the need for the extra layer.

“That’s the part that scares me, though,” she confessed, her eyes finding his again, wide and open. “Not this. Not us. But… when the bubble pops. When the bus engine starts up and you have to go back on the road.”

She hurried to clarify, seeing the look on his face. “And no, don’t give me that look. I trust you. I trust us. It’s not about wondering where you are or who you’re talking to. I know you.” She pressed a hand to his chest, over his heart. “It’s just… the physical act of being apart. The drop. Going from having you everywhere, to having you nowhere but on a screen.”

She bit her lip, hesitating, then pushed the thought forward before she could lose her nerve.

“The cabin,” she said suddenly. “You said you had days off coming up. A gap in the schedule.”

She looked at him, a hopeful, slightly shy question in her gaze.

“Take me with you? We go up there. We turn off the phones.” She traced the line of his collarbone. “You can bring your guitar, lock yourself in a room, and wrestle with melodies until your fingers bleed if you have to. And I…” She smiled, a genuine, warm thing. “I’ll just be outside. On the porch. Painting the trees instead of you for once. Just… existing in the same space. What do you think?”

"I know, I know," she murmured quickly, catching herself before he could even answer. She dropped her gaze to their joined hands, her thumb tracing the knuckles she’d memorized a thousand times over. "I shouldn't get my hopes up. I shouldn't be mentally packing a bag and planning road trip playlists five minutes after..."

She gestured helplessly to the messy floor, a faint, self-deprecating flush rising on her cheeks.

"...after that."

She took a breath, the humor fading into something more fragile. She looked up at him, her expression open, stripped of the defenses she’d spent so long building up.

"But... what if?" she asked, her voice quiet. "What if we were to try again? Properly? Only this time..."

She paused, chewing on her lip, searching for the way to articulate the compromise she’d been terrified to voice before.

"This time, I just don’t come around the scary parts."

She squeezed his hand, an earnest, almost desperate emphasis.

"The machine. The noise. The parts that chewed me up last time." She offered a small, tentative shrug. "You go be the rockstar. You do the interviews and the red carpets and the arenas where the bass shakes your teeth. I won't ask you to shrink that for me. But I won't try to stand in the middle of the fire with you, either."

She moved her hand up to cup his cheek, her touch feather-light.

"I’ll just be the quiet. I’ll be the place where the noise stops. I'll stay on the porch painting the trees while you work. I'll be the exhale." Her eyes searched his, terrified and hopeful all at once. "Is that... would that be enough?"

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben didn’t answer right away.

He couldn’t.

There was something about the way she said it—the exhale—that landed in his chest like a chord so perfect it hurt. It didn’t just echo, it resonated. Like her voice had threaded itself through his ribcage and was holding him together from the inside out.

His fingers curled reflexively around hers, grounding himself in the contact as his breath caught. Not because he didn’t know what to say. But because he felt too much of it all at once.

And hell, wasn’t that always the problem with her? With them?

Every version of her knocked him sideways in a different way. The fierce one. The funny one. The girl in the oversized t-shirt sitting cross-legged on the floor like a living ache. The one who used to haunt his dreams and now haunted his artwork. The one who could hand him silence and make it feel like a gift.

He turned into her touch, eyes closed for half a second, like her palm could anchor the mess inside his head.

Then he opened them again. And smiled.

“Babe,” he said, voice low and warm, thumb brushing the inside of her wrist, “I would follow you to a cabin in the woods right now if you said the word. Pants optional. Guitar definitely included.”

He saw her trying not to smile at that—caught the way her lips twitched—and leaned in to nuzzle lightly at her jaw, letting the scrape of his stubble prove he was still here. Still real. Still hers.

“I like the idea of you painting trees,” he murmured, softer now. “But I’m warning you—if you wear this shirt on the porch, I’m gonna get zero songwriting done. I’ll be out there every ten minutes pretending I need ‘creative inspiration’ just to stare at you.”

He tilted his head, eyes flicking up toward hers with boyish mischief.

“And if I do end up posing nude on a bearskin rug by the fireplace… just know that’s on you.”

But the teasing melted just as fast as it came.

Because then he really looked at her again.

At the fear she hadn’t masked, at the hope she was holding out like a lit match in the wind.

And damn, if he didn’t feel it too.

The drop.

The ache.

The weight of trying to make something sacred stay solid when the world around them was made of spotlights and static.

He reached up, catching her hand where it rested on his cheek, and pressed a kiss into her palm—slow and deliberate.

“You know something?” he said, voice quieter now. “I never wanted you in the fire. I just didn’t know how to keep you out of it back then. I didn’t know how to split myself in two.”

He traced her fingers with his lips, one by one.

“But this?” he nodded toward the mess of drawings and limbs and truths spilled between them. “This is you being the exhale. This is you letting me come home.”

A breath.

“I want the cabin,” he said. “I want the porch. I want you painting something that isn’t my stupid jawline for once.”

His thumb brushed her cheek, affectionate and reverent.

“I want a life where I get to be loud out there and quiet in here,” he added, tapping gently at the space between them. “With you. Always with you.”

He leaned in and kissed her—not urgent, not possessive. Just tender and full of knowing. A thank-you. A promise. A yes.

Then he pulled back slightly, eyes still on hers, mischief curling at the corners of his mouth again.

“Also, for the record,” he added, voice dropping to a whisper, “if defacing fine art feels like that… I’m gonna need to do it more often.”

He grinned, kissed her again, and let the floor hold them.

Not just for now.

But maybe for what if.

Maybe for always.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo stayed close, forehead still brushing his, letting the quiet stretch. His words sank in slowly, not like a rush, but like something warm settling under her ribs. Cabin. Porch. Guitar. Quiet. It all sounded impossibly simple in a way that almost hurt.

She smiled, small and soft, when he teased about following her anywhere. Not because it was funny—though it was—but because she believed him. He’d always been like that with her. All-in. Big feelings. Big promises. Even when the world around him got loud and glittering and crowded with strangers who thought they knew him.

She remembered the first time she’d watched him on stage after they were together. The way the lights swallowed him, the way thousands of people screamed his name like it belonged to them. She’d stood in the back, half-proud, half-terrified. Because she loved that version of him—the one who came alive with a guitar in his hands—but she also knew how easily the world tried to claim him. How fans blurred lines. How people felt entitled to him. And somehow… to her, too.

Being with a rockstar hadn’t been glamorous. It was long nights alone. It was scrolling past photos of him on stage while she sat in sweatpants with paint under her nails. It was loving someone who belonged to everyone and trying not to disappear inside that.

So when he talked about keeping her out of the fire, she understood. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He just hadn’t known how to protect her from a world that didn’t respect soft things.

Cleo shifted, brushing her thumb across his jaw, grounding herself in the very real man in front of her—not the poster, not the stage version. Just Ben. Warm. Breathing. Human.

She thought about that year they’d spent together. How it hadn’t been perfect. How it had been messy and beautiful and full of moments that still lived inside her bones. Late-night drives. Takeout on the floor. Him writing lyrics while she sketched his hands. Loving him hadn’t been quiet. But it had been real.

And now… this felt like a compromise between their worlds.

She didn’t need to be on his arm at every event. Didn’t need to stand in the wings while fans screamed. She didn’t want to fight the noise anymore.

What she wanted was this.

A place where he could be loud out there—chasing the thing that made his soul burn bright—and quiet in here, where he didn’t have to perform. Where she didn’t have to be brave. Where they could exist without explanation.

Cleo swallowed, emotion pressing up into her throat.

She rested her forehead against his again, eyes closed, breathing him in.

“I don’t need the spotlight,” she murmured. “I just need you like this.”

Her smile turned wistful.

“You go be everything out there,” she said softly. “I’ll be right here. Painting. Waiting. Loving you from a distance that doesn’t hurt.”

It wasn’t resignation. It was choice.

She pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek, then his temple—slow, deliberate. Not urgent. Just affection.

Because this was the deal they were making without saying it out loud:

They could love each other
without losing themselves.
They could meet in the quiet.
They could stay real.

And somehow, that felt stronger than standing beside him under the lights ever had.

Cleo stayed there with him, hands warm in his hair, heart steady.

This wasn’t less.

It was just… theirs.

The silence that followed was heavy, but good. It was the kind of silence that usually came after a storm broke, leaving the air clear and sharp.

Her eyes drifted down to his hand, resting loosely near his knee. The blunt she’d lit earlier—or maybe a lifetime ago—had burned itself out completely. A long, curved finger of gray ash was hanging precariously off the end, cold and forgotten between his knuckles.

It was almost funny. It was proof of how completely the world had narrowed down to just the two of them. They hadn’t even smoked it. The conversation, the confession, the sheer relief of being honest had been enough to eclipse everything else.

With a small, affectionate shake of her head, Cleo reached out and plucked the dead roach from his fingers.

He didn’t protest, his hand just flexing empty in the air for a second as she leaned over to drop the remnants into the glass ashtray on the low table. She dusted a speck of gray ash from her fingertips, the motion finalizing the moment. The heavy, emotional part was done. They had their plan. They had their compromise.

But as she shifted her weight, she felt the bite of the hardwood floor against her knees and the faint sting of friction on her skin. The floor had been urgent, necessary, and exactly what they’d needed in the heat of the moment—but she wasn’t interested in more rug burn.

She stood up, the oversized hem of his t-shirt slipping down her thighs, covering and uncovering her as she moved. She didn't say a word, just turned and walked the few steps to the bed. It was a tangle of unmade sheets.

She crawled onto the mattress, the springs creaking softly under her weight, a stark contrast to the unforgiving floor. She didn’t pull the covers up. She didn't try to hide. She just lay back against the pillows, sinking into the softness, and watched him from across the room.

Slowly, deliberately, she bent her knees, letting her legs fall open. The shirt rode up, leaving her exposed, a silent, undeniable invitation that cut right through the sentimental atmosphere.

A playful, challenging light sparked in her eyes. She tilted her head, checking the invisible watch on her wrist before letting her gaze drop back to him, heavy and wanting.

"By my count," she said, her voice a low, smoky tease, "it’s been about twenty minutes."

She arched a brow, her lips curving into a wicked little smile.

"Clock’s ticking, rockstar. And this mattress is a hell of a lot softer than the floor."

[Benjamin Wilder]

She was a liar. A beautiful, wicked liar.

It hadn’t been twenty minutes. It had been fifteen, maybe twelve. His heart rate had barely returned to double digits, and his body was still humming with the aftershocks of wrecking her on the floor.

But looking at her now—sprawled out on the messy sheets, wearing nothing but his tour shirt, her legs falling open with that casual, devastating confidence—he wasn't about to check a watch.

He sat up, the movement slow and deliberate. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing the damp curls off his forehead, and let his gaze travel over her. The distance between the floor and the bed felt like a magnetic field he had to cross.

He was still semi-soft, his body needing a minute to catch up to the sudden spike in his blood pressure, but the visual of her was working fast. She looked like the morning after a rock show. She looked like trouble.

"You’re impatient," he murmured, the words rough with a lingering exhaustion that was rapidly turning into something else.

He stood up. He didn’t cover himself. He didn’t rush. He walked toward the bed with a lazy, predatory stride, letting her look at him, letting her see exactly what she was waking up.

When he reached the mattress, he didn’t climb over her. He moved to the foot of the bed.
He gripped her ankles, his large hands circling the delicate bones, and gave a gentle tug, pulling her down the mattress until her feet were dangling off the edge, right where he stood.

"Keep them open," he commanded softly.

He stepped in between her knees.

The view was obscene. The hem of his black t-shirt was bunched up around her waist, providing a stark frame for her pale skin and the flushed, damp center of her. She was still slick from him. The sight of his own fluids on her, the evidence of what they’d just done, sent a jolt of possessive heat straight to his groin.

He wasn't ready to be inside her yet—not deep, not the way she needed—but he knew exactly how to get there.

He dropped to his knees.

The mattress dipped under his weight. He rested his hands on her thighs, thumbs brushing against the soft inner skin, feeling the muscles twitch under his touch.

"Soft mattress," he agreed, his voice a low rumble against her skin. "Means I can keep you here for hours."
He leaned forward, but he didn’t kiss her center. Not yet.

He pressed a hot, open-mouthed kiss to the inside of her knee. Then another, higher up. He moved with agonizing slowness, treating her thighs like a pilgrimage. He licked a stripe up the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, savoring the shudder that ran through her frame.

He could smell her—musk, vanilla, and the sharp, metallic tang of sex. It was intoxicating. It was the only air he wanted to breathe.

He reached up, his hands sliding under the t-shirt to grip her waist, thumbs digging in to hold her steady. He buried his face in the soft juncture where her thigh met her hip, inhaling deeply, letting his breath ghost over her wetness without touching it.

He felt her hips buck slightly, an instinctive demand for contact.

He smirked against her skin.

"Clock’s stopped, Cleo," he whispered, the vibration humming through her pelvis.

He finally moved inward. He didn't use his tongue yet. He just used his lips, soft and maddeningly gentle, brushing against her swollen folds. He kissed her there, a chaste, reverence-filled kiss that was completely at odds with the dirty, spread-eagle position she was in.

Then, he blew on her.

The cool air hitting her sensitized, wet skin made her gasp, her thighs clamping vaguely against his ears.
He chuckled darkly, the sound muffled by her body. He felt himself thickening, the blood rushing south, fueled by the power of having her completely at his mercy. He pulled back just an inch, looking up the length of her body, locking eyes with her over the landscape of her own desire.

"I’m gonna take my time," he promised, his eyes dark and heavy. "I’m gonna taste every single second of this until you’re begging."

He lowered his head again, and this time, he extended his tongue—flat, broad, and slow—and dragged it from the very bottom to the very top, tasting his own claim on her.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The shock of his tongue—broad, wet, and relentlessly slow—tore a gasp from her throat that sounded too much like a sob. Her hips lifted off the mattress instinctively, seeking more friction, but his hands on her waist were iron, pinning her down, forcing her to endure the slow-burn torture he was inflicting.

She threw her head back into the pillows, her eyes rolling back as the sensation arced through her nervous system like a live wire. He was right; she was impatient. She was greedy. The first round on the floor had only sharpened her appetite, stripping away the nerves and leaving only this raw, exposed nerve ending that only he knew how to soothe.

Her hands found his hair again. It was automatic. She needed to anchor herself, and he was the only solid thing in a spinning room. She curled her fingers into the thick, dark strands, tugging just enough to let him know she was with him, that she felt every inch of what he was doing.

But when his words filtered through the haze—Clock’s stopped, Cleo—something in her spiked. It wasn’t anger, but a fierce, possessive need to blur the lines even further.

"Benjamin," she breathed, the name falling from her lips like a prayer and a claim all at once.

She didn't use the name the marquee lights used. To the thousands of screaming girls in stadiums, to the interviewers, to the world that wanted to consume him, he was Ben Wilder. He was the rockstar. He was the icon. But here, on his knees, serving her with a devotion that bordered on worship? He wasn't Ben. He was Benjamin. Her Benjamin. The boy who wrote songs in notebooks and held her like she was made of glass.

Using his full name was her way of stripping the stage persona away, reminding him that he wasn't performing right now. He was just a man. Her man.

She tightened her grip in his hair, tugging his head back slightly—not to stop him, never to stop him—but to make him look at her, or at least to break his rhythm for a heartbeat so she could speak.

"And don't call me Cleo," she managed to get out, her voice trembling but laced with a delicious, heavy authority. She looked down at him through lowered lashes, her chest heaving. "

She guided his head back down, her thumbs pressing into his scalp, urging him closer, deeper.

"Babe," she corrected him, the word a ragged whisper. "Or baby. That's it. Especially when your head is between my thighs. You know the rules, Benjamin."

She let her legs fall wider, surrendering to the "soft mattress" he had promised, her body softening, opening, demanding.

"Now stop talking," she whined, a desperate, needy sound. "And finish what you started."

[Benjamin Wilder]

Benjamin.

The name hit him like a physical blow, stripping the air from his lungs. It wasn't the name on the tickets. It wasn't the name screamed by the crowd. It was the name his mother used. The name she used when they were lying in the dark at 3 AM, talking about fears that had nothing to do with record sales.

Hearing her claim it now—claiming him—while her fingers tightened in his hair made his vision blur.

"You know the rules," she’d said.

Fuck.

He didn't answer. She told him to stop talking, so he obeyed.

He grabbed her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh so hard he knew he was leaving marks, and buried his face in her.

He didn't tease her this time. He wasn't gentle. He ate her like a man who hadn't seen food in a decade.

He clamped his mouth over her clitoris, sucking hard, using the strong suction to pull a cry from her throat. He loved the taste of her—salt and sweet and heavy musk. He loved the way she tasted like him. He lapped at her with a frantic, messy rhythm, his tongue broad and flat, slapping against her wetness.
He wanted to be covered in her. He wanted to drown in this.

He slid two fingers inside her, curling them immediately, pumping into her with a rough, insistent rhythm that matched the assault of his tongue. She was so tight, so wet, clamping down on his fingers in little spasms that nearly drove him insane.

He worked her, slurping loudly, not caring about the noise. In fact, the wet, sloppy sounds of his mouth feasting on her only made him harder. He spread her wider with his thumbs, opening her up so he could get deeper, pressing his nose right into her entrance, inhaling the scent of her arousal until it coated his lungs.

He felt her bucking against his face, her thighs trembling violently against his ears. She was close. He could tell. She was unraveling, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, her fingers tightening painfully in his hair.

He pulled back, just for a second, gasping for air. His face was wet, his chin slick with her juices. He looked up at her, his eyes wild and blown out, seeing the way she was writhing on the bed, ruined and beautiful.

He needed to be inside her. God, he needed to shove his cock into that wet heat and pound into her until neither of them could move.

He started to rise, his hips snapping forward, his cock throbbing painfully against his stomach.
Then he remembered.

The wallet. The foil wrapper on the floor. The empty slot.

He froze.

"Fuck," he hissed, the realization landing like a bucket of ice water.

He looked up at her, his chest heaving, his voice rough and guttural.

"Don't kill me, baby," he rasped, seeing her eyes flutter open, confused by the pause. "But I only brought one."

He saw the realization hit her face—the disappointment warring with the need.

"I’m out," he admitted, his voice dropping to a low, apologetic growl. "I can't fuck you. Not safe. Not yet."
He saw her hips jerk, a silent protest, a body craving to be filled.

"I know," he groaned, running his thumb over her wet, swollen pearl, making her hiss. "I know. I want inside you so bad I can barely see straight."

He leaned back in, his eyes dark with a new, filthy resolve. If he couldn't use his cock, he was going to use everything else. He was going to destroy her with his mouth until she forgot his name, her name, and the damn cabin.

"Spread your legs wider," he commanded, his voice thick. "I’m gonna make you come on my face. I’m gonna drink every drop of you."

He didn't wait for her to comply. He hooked her knees over his shoulders, locking her open, exposing her completely. He dove back in, his tongue swirling, stabbing, devouring her with a punishing intensity, determined to make up for his lack of preparation by giving her the hardest orgasm of her life.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The disappointment of the missing condom was a sharp, fleeting pang, barely registering before it was obliterated by the sheer, unyielding force of his mouth.

He wasn’t asking anymore. He wasn’t teasing. He was devouring her, and the sudden shift from the heavy weight of his body to the wet, hot suction between her legs made her gasp, her back arching off the mattress as if pulled by a wire.

"Baby," she choked out, the name tasting like a prayer on her lips.

He had hooked her legs over his shoulders, spreading her so wide she felt completely exposed, vulnerable in the most delicious way possible. But there was no shame, only heat. The friction of his stubble against her inner thighs was a rough contrast to the slick, relentless work of his tongue. He was drinking her in, humming against her sensitive skin, the vibration traveling straight to her spine.

It was too much, and it wasn’t enough.

Her hands found his hair again, fingers tangling in the dark strands, but instead of pulling him up, she shoved him down. She needed more pressure. She needed to feel him everywhere. She pushed his face harder against her, a silent, desperate demand for him not to leave a single inch of her untouched.

"Yes," she hissed, her head tossing back against the pillows, her vision swimming with bursts of light. "Right there. God, right there."

He groaned in response, a guttural sound that vibrated against her clit, and the sensation sent a jolt of electricity through her veins that nearly shattered her. The coil in her belly tightened, winding tighter and tighter until the tension was unbearable.

She was close. She was falling.

"Benjamin—please—"

He didn't let up. If anything, he sped up, his tongue flat and punishing, sucking the climax right out of her.

When it hit, it wasn’t a wave; it was a crash.

Her hips bucked violently, grinding against his face as the pleasure ripped through her. She cried out, a broken, high-pitched sound that was swallowed by the room as she came apart, her release soaking his chin, her body convulsing in delicious, terrifying spasms. Her toes curled so hard they cramped, her thighs trembling as she rode out the aftershocks, totally and completely at his mercy.

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was her ragged breathing and the wet, slick sounds of him licking up the last of her release.

Slowly, the world stopped spinning. Her heartbeat hammered against her ribs, but the frantic urgency began to bleed away, replaced by a heavy, liquid warmth.

She felt the mattress shift as Ben finally pulled back, crawling up the length of her body. He hovered over her for a second, his face wet and glistening, his lips swollen, his eyes dark with satisfaction. He looked like a man who had just won a war.

She didn't care about the condom. She didn't care about the sex they didn't have. She just wanted this.

She reached up, her hand cupping his jaw, thumb brushing over the wetness on his chin.

"Come here," she whispered, tugging him down.

He collapsed beside her, heavy and warm, instantly wrapping an arm around her waist to pull her backward until her back was pressed flush against his chest. It was the only place in the world that made sense.

She felt him bury his face in the crook of her neck, his breathing slowly syncing with hers. The darkness of the room felt protective now, a cocoon woven just for them. She entangled her legs with his, seeking his warmth, seeking the solid, grounding weight of him.

She wasn't ready to sleep. She didn't want to close her eyes and lose this feeling, this reality where he was just Benjamin and she was just Cleo. She just wanted to lay there, awake and alive in the quiet, listening to his heart beat against her back, safe in the knowledge that he wasn't going anywhere.

[Benjamin Wilder]

He tasted like her.

He licked his lips, catching the lingering salt and sweetness of her release, and the flavor went straight to his head faster than the weed or the whiskey ever had.

He stayed between her legs for a long moment, just breathing against the damp skin of her inner thigh, feeling the tremors slowly fading from her muscles. His jaw ached—a dull, thrumming tension from how hard he’d worked her, from how wide he’d opened his mouth to consume her—and he loved it. It was a trophy. A physical reminder that he had taken her apart.

When her hand tugged at him, he moved.

He crawled up the mattress, his limbs heavy and loose, feeling like he was moving through water. He didn't bother wiping his face. He wanted the scent of her on him. He wanted to wake up smelling like her.
He collapsed beside her, the mattress groaning under his weight, and immediately hauled her back against him.

He wrapped his arm around her waist, his hand splaying flat over her stomach, pulling her flush against his chest. She fit. She always had. Like a puzzle piece he’d been carrying around in his pocket for years, finally snapping back into place.

He buried his face in the curve of her neck, inhaling sharply. Her skin was hot, damp with sweat, and smelled like vanilla and the raw, earthy scent of sex.

Benjamin.

The name echoed in his head, louder than the ringing in his ears after a show. She hadn't called him that in a long time. It felt like she’d reached into his chest and grabbed his heart with her bare hands. It stripped away the leather jacket, the sunglasses, the persona he wore like armor.

Here, in the dark, he wasn't the guy on the billboard. He was just the guy who knew exactly how she liked to be touched.

He pressed a kiss to the nape of her neck, his lips brushing the fine hairs there.

He was still hard—a dull, throbbing ache pressed against her lower back—but he didn't push it. He didn't grind against her. The disappointment of the missing condom had faded into a satisfied hum. Watching her come undone on his face, hearing that broken, high-pitched cry... that was enough.
For now.

He thought about the cabin. Two weeks. No service. No cameras.

He pictured it: waking up next to her without an alarm. drinking coffee on the porch while she painted. Pulling her into the bedroom whenever he wanted, with a bedside drawer full of condoms so he wouldn't have to stop.

He tightened his arm around her, possessive and grounding.

He let his eyes drift shut, the darkness of the room feeling less like a void and more like a blanket. The silence wasn't lonely anymore. It was heavy with her. It was full.

He breathed in, his chest expanding against her back, and for the first time in months, he truly exhaled.
"Hey," he whispered into the dark, his voice rough with sleep and vibrating against her spine.
He felt her hum a soft, sleepy response against the pillow.

"Keep calling me that," he murmured, pressing his mouth to the shell of her ear. "Benjamin. I missed hearing it. I missed him."

He squeezed her waist, anchoring her to him.

"And the cabin?" he added, his tone dipping lower, heavy with a promise. "I'm holding you to it. Two weeks. Just us."

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The vibration of his voice against her spine sent a fresh wave of warmth through her, a different kind of heat than the one that had just consumed her. It was softer, deeper—it settled in her bones.

Benjamin.

Hearing him admit how much he missed the name, how much he missed the man he was underneath the fame, cracked her chest wide open. She didn't want the rock star right now either. She wanted this. The man who needed to be held just as much as he needed to possess.

Slowly, fighting the heaviness in her own limbs, Cleo shifted. She turned in the circle of his arms, the friction of skin on skin electric and grounding, until she was lying flat on her back. She didn't let him pull away; instead, she guided him with her. She tugged at his shoulders, urging him up and over until his heavy head found a resting place on her chest, right over the steady, calming beat of her heart.

She wrapped her arms around him immediately, locking him against her. She held him with a fierce, protective tenderness, cradling him like he was something rare and precious—something that the rest of the world tried to consume, but only she got to keep.

"Benjamin," she whispered into the darkness, the name tasting like a secret and a vow all at once. She pressed a kiss to the top of his head. "I’ve got you. I’m not going anywhere."

Her fingers drifted into his hair, nails lightly scratching against his scalp in a slow, soothing rhythm, combing through the messy strands. She could feel the tension slowly bleeding out of his shoulders, his breathing syncing with hers.

"And the cabin..." she murmured, her voice thick with sleep but absolute in its certainty. "Two weeks. Just us. I'm already packing in my head."

A shiver of cool air brushed against her skin, a reminder that the heat of the moment was settling into the cool quiet of the night. Reluctantly, she released him with one hand just long enough to reach down and grab the tangled edge of the duvet. She pulled it up over them, tucking the fabric around his shoulders and hers, sealing them into their own private, warm cocoon.

"Go to sleep, Benjamin," she breathed, her hand returning to his hair. "I'm right here."

[Benjamin Wilder]

He went willingly.

He was used to being the one in control—the one driving the rhythm, the one holding the weight, the one steering the ship through the chaos. But when she pulled at his shoulders, guiding him up and over her body, he folded.

He let his full weight drop, trusting her to hold him.

His head landed on her chest, his cheek pressing against the soft, yielding warmth of her breast. It was the perfect pillow. He let out a long, ragged exhale, the last of the tension leaving his body as he felt her arms lock around him.

Benjamin.

She whispered it into the dark, and he felt the vibration of it rumble through her chest, straight into his ear. It settled there, soothing the constant, low-level static that had been buzzing in his brain for months.

He closed his eyes, listening.

Thud-thud. Thud-thud.

Her heart was beating right against his ear. It was steady. Unwavering. It was the best rhythm section he’d ever heard. It was a metronome counting time in a world that usually moved too fast for him to catch.

He felt her fingers scratching lightly at his scalp, and he melted. He felt heavy, anchored, and completely safe.

"Two weeks," he mumbled against her skin, his voice barely a slur of sound. "Pack the paint. I’ll carry the bags."

He felt the duvet settle over his shoulders, a physical barrier sealing them in. The warmth was instant, enveloping them in a cocoon that smelled like her vanilla and his sweat.

For a second, his mind flickered to the outside world—the tour dates, the managers, the noise waiting for him when he turned his phone back on. But it felt distant now. Muted. Like a TV playing in another room.

Here, under the blanket, with the weight of her arms holding him down and the sound of her heart in his ear, none of that mattered.

He shifted slightly, nuzzling closer into her warmth, his arm draping heavily across her waist to keep her there.

"Right here," he echoed her whisper, his consciousness finally slipping.

He wasn't the rockstar. He wasn't the icon. He was just a man sleeping on the only shore that had ever felt like home.

And for the first time in a long time, Ben Wilder fell asleep without a single dream, because he was already holding the only thing he wanted.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo had told herself she was not going to do this today.

That had been the plan when she woke up with the same low, fluttering sensation in her stomach she had spent the last three mornings trying to explain away.

Jet lag, at first.

Then nerves.

Then too much coffee and not enough breakfast.

Except the jet lag from Australia had long since faded. Their suitcases were unpacked. Ben’s guitars were leaned carefully against the exposed brick wall beside her drafting table. His duffel bag no longer sat half-open near the radiator. The apartment had settled around them again after weeks of movement and airports and hotel rooms and soundchecks and family visits and all the fragile, hopeful trying they had done since Iceland.

And she was late.

Not dramatically late.

But enough.

Enough that the unopened box in the bathroom cabinet had started to feel less like a practical purchase and more like a living thing waiting for her.

So now she stood barefoot on the cool hex-tile floor of the tiny bathroom attached to her studio apartment, the door shut, her oversized cream T-shirt hanging off one shoulder, her hair piled into a loose knot that was already slipping apart.

Morning light filtered through the narrow frosted window above the clawfoot tub, turning the room pale and quiet.

Beyond the door was the apartment she had built into a life.

Her unmade bed tucked into the sleeping alcove by the tall warehouse windows.

Shelves crowded with sketchbooks, ceramics, and jars of paintbrushes.

Her drafting table scattered with charcoal pencils and unfinished ideas.

The compact kitchen with yesterday’s coffee mugs still in the sink.

Ben’s acoustic guitar resting on a stand beside the record player as if it had always belonged there.

The entire apartment was only a few hundred square feet, but over the past three weeks of being home together, it had somehow stretched to hold both of them.

On the counter beside the sink sat two tests.

One digital.

One traditional.

Because if she was going to do this, she needed certainty.

She needed the bluntness of a word.

She needed lines she could stare at with her own eyes.

Her hands trembled as she set both tests down on a folded hand towel and forced herself to step away.

Three minutes.

It sounded so small.

Three minutes after months of hope and disappointment and carefully timed calendars and laughing at ovulation strips and trying not to turn intimacy into obligation.

Three minutes after Iceland.

Her throat tightened.

Iceland had changed everything.

Not in one grand cinematic moment, but in the accumulated quiet of being together with nowhere else to be. Snow against the windows. The mineral warmth of the Blue Lagoon. Ben’s arms around her in the middle of a cold so vast it made the world feel clean. Talking about the future in the dark after making love, his fingers tracing lazy patterns over her bare back while they lay tangled beneath thick duvets.

He had said he wanted a child with her in the same steady tone he used when he said things he meant completely.

Not as an abstract someday.

Not as a vague possibility.

As a real desire.

As a life he wanted to build.

After that, they stopped pretending they were “not not trying.”

They started trying.

Really trying.

Then had come the weeks that followed.

Flying home.

Then Australia.

A short leg of Ben’s tour.

Sydney sunsets from hotel balconies.

Melbourne mornings wrapped in his T-shirt while he rehearsed lyrics under his breath.

Brisbane, where they had slipped away to the beach for two precious hours and he had carried her sandals while they walked barefoot at the edge of the water.

Trying in borrowed hotel rooms.

Trying when they were exhausted.

Trying when they were hopeful.

Trying when they were afraid to hope too much.

Then home again.

Three uninterrupted weeks of waking up together in her apartment.

Three weeks of domestic life that felt so achingly ordinary it bordered on sacred.

Coffee brewed in the tiny kitchen while she sat cross-legged on the counter.

Ben tuning a guitar at the foot of her bed.

Takeout containers balanced on their knees while they watched old movies.

His hand resting absentmindedly on her stomach as they slept in the narrow bed that somehow fit them both.

And now—

Now.

The timer on her phone buzzed.

The sound was so abrupt she flinched.

Her pulse thundered in her ears as she stepped toward the counter.

For one suspended moment, she couldn’t make herself look.

Her fingers curled around the edge of the sink.

Her breathing came shallow and fast.

Then she forced her eyes downward.

The first test.

Two pink lines.

Clear.

Undeniable.

Her hand flew to her mouth.

“No,” she whispered, though the word held no denial, only stunned disbelief.

Tears blurred her vision instantly.

Her gaze jerked to the digital test.

The screen was bright and impossible.

Pregnant.

The word hit her like a physical force.

The tiny bathroom tilted.

A sharp, strangled sound escaped her, half laugh and half sob.

Her knees nearly gave out, and she caught herself against the sink.

“Oh my God.”

The words broke apart as tears spilled over.

This was what she wanted.

This was what they wanted.

What they had whispered to each other in Iceland under heavy blankets and northern skies.

What they had carried across continents.

What they had kept reaching for even when every negative test had quietly hollowed out the rest of the day.

She pressed both hands over her mouth as sobs overtook her.

Joy came first.

Pure and bright and overwhelming.

Then fear rushed in just as quickly.

Fear of how much she already loved something she could not yet see.

Fear of the enormity of it.

Fear of the fact that everything was about to change.

Her body shook with the force of it.

A baby.

Ben’s baby.

Their baby.

The thought cracked her open completely.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror—tear-streaked, wild-eyed, trembling—and saw a woman standing at the edge of the life she had secretly wanted for years.

The intensity of it was too much to contain alone.

Her chest tightened until it hurt.

And before she could think about how to tell him, before she could compose herself or plan anything sweet or cinematic, his full name tore out of her like a prayer.

“BENJAMIN!”

The scream echoed through the small apartment, carrying past the bathroom door, over the exposed wood floors, into the single room that held their whole world.

Her voice broke on the second syllable.

She was crying too hard to stop.

Laughing and sobbing all at once, one hand pressed to her flat stomach, the other clutching the digital test as if it might vanish if she loosened her grip.

“BENJAMIN!”

This time the word came out shakier, soaked in wonder and terror and a happiness so large it felt impossible to survive.

And standing there in the morning light, tears falling unchecked, Cleo knew only one thing with absolute certainty.

No matter how frightened she was.

No matter how much the future suddenly dwarfed everything she thought she understood.

She had never wanted anything more.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben heard his name and lost all sense of scale.

One second he had been standing near the kitchenette in yesterday’s sweatpants, barefoot on the old wood floor, trying to convince the coffee maker to cooperate while a melody circled uselessly in his head. The apartment had felt morning-soft around him—mugs in the sink, one of Cleo’s charcoal pencils under the table leg, his guitar waiting by the record player like it had learned to be patient.

Then her voice cut through all of it.

Not irritated. Not playful. Not the particular tone she used when she found one of his socks somewhere offensive.

This was different.

His body reacted before his mind had time to translate it. The spoon clattered into the sink. Coffee splashed against the counter. His bare feet were already moving.

“Cleo?”

It came out rough, too sharp, his heart slamming so hard it seemed to take the rest of the apartment with it. He crossed the room in seconds, knocking his hip against the corner of the table and not feeling it until later, one hand catching the bathroom doorframe as he reached her.

For one terrifying instant, he saw only fragments.

Pale morning light.

Her face wet with tears.

The hard tremor in her shoulders.

Her hand at her middle.

Something white gripped in her fingers.

The world narrowed so violently he almost missed the rest.

“Hey—hey, what happened?” His voice was careful because panic wanted to make it loud. He swallowed it down with effort, stepping inside the tiny bathroom like the floor might fall out beneath them. “Are you hurt?”

His eyes moved over her, fast and frantic, searching for blood, broken glass, anything that made sense of the sound she’d made. Then his gaze dropped to the counter.

Two tests.

One with lines.

One with a word.

Everything stopped.

Not dramatically. Not like music cutting out.

More like the universe pulled in one long breath and forgot to let it go.

Ben stared.

His mouth parted slightly, but nothing came out. All the noise in his head—the unfinished melody, the coffee, the tour dates waiting somewhere in the distance, the thousand small worries that usually jostled for space—went suddenly, impossibly quiet.

He read it once.

Then again.

His hand, still braced against the doorframe, tightened until his knuckles blanched.

“Oh,” he said.

That was it.

One useless little sound.

Then his face changed.

The panic didn’t vanish so much as transform, breaking apart into something too big for him to hold in a normal expression. His brows drew together. His eyes went wet before he could do anything about it. A laugh caught in his throat and came out broken, disbelieving, almost silent.

“Oh my God.”

He looked at her then—not at the test, not at the counter, not at any proof outside of her.

Her.

Standing in the bathroom in that oversized cream shirt, hair half-falling out of its knot, tears running freely down her face, looking like the whole future had just arrived and handed itself to her without instructions.

He took one step closer.

Then another.

Slowly now, because this moment felt delicate enough to bruise if he rushed it. His hands lifted and then hovered for half a second, torn between wanting to hold her everywhere at once and being afraid of overwhelming her when she already looked full of lightning.

“Baby,” he breathed, the word shaking loose before he could stop it.

It was for her.

It was for the impossible little truth between them.

It was for both.

He reached for her face first, because that was where he always found her fastest. His thumbs brushed beneath her eyes, catching tears he had no hope of keeping up with. He laughed again, softer this time, utterly wrecked.

“Okay,” he whispered, nodding like someone had asked him a question, like if he kept nodding he might convince his body to stay standing. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.”

Brilliant. Historic. His finest lyrical work.

He would have made fun of himself if he had enough brain left.

Instead, he looked back at the counter, just to make sure he hadn’t invented it out of wanting too badly. The tests were still there. The word still there. The lines still there.

A sound escaped him then, low and stunned, almost a laugh and almost something else entirely.

“We did it.”

He said it like he didn’t trust it yet. Like the sentence was made of glass.

Then it hit again, harder.

They had done it.

All those careful calendars. All those jokes to keep the disappointment from getting teeth. All those mornings where they had pretended to be casual about hope because hope, handled too tightly, could cut. Iceland. Australia. Home. Her body under his hand in the dark. The way she had gone quiet after each negative, even when she tried not to let him see the exact place it hurt.

And now she was here.

They were here.

He sank to his knees before he realized he was doing it.

Not gracefully. Not with any plan. One second he was standing in front of her, and the next he was on the cool tile, arms wrapping around her middle with a reverence that made his chest ache. He pressed his forehead carefully against her shirt, just below where her hand had been, and closed his eyes.

He didn’t know what to say to something that small.

Something that wasn’t even visible yet and had already rearranged every room inside him.

So he started with the truth.

“Hi,” he whispered, voice wrecked and warm against the fabric. “Hi, tiny thing.”

A breath shook through him. Then another.

He tipped his face up toward Cleo, his chin still near her stomach, eyes bright and helpless and so full of wonder it almost hurt to look at her.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and a laugh broke through the tears in his voice. “That was probably not the cool first impression. I’m your dad, apparently. I panic in bathrooms and I make extremely good pancakes sometimes.”

His smile trembled.

“Not every time. We should be honest early.”

The attempt at humor barely held together, but it steadied him enough to rise again. He stood slowly and took her in his arms, all of her this time, pulling her close with the kind of care that was almost clumsy because his hands couldn’t decide where they were needed most. Her back. Her hair. Her waist. Her face.

He kissed her forehead first.

Then her temple.

Then the wet curve of her cheek, tasting salt and morning and something like a miracle.

“You’re pregnant,” he murmured, like saying it softly might help him survive it. His hands framed her face again. “You’re pregnant.”

His eyes searched hers, not for doubt, not for permission to be happy, but for her. The woman inside the enormity. The one whose fear would arrive right alongside joy because she was alive and paying attention and understood the size of things.

His thumb moved along her cheek.

“Hey,” he said, quieter now, steadier because she needed him steady and because he wanted to be. “Look at me. We’re okay.”

His own breath hitched immediately after, undercutting the confidence a little. He let out a watery laugh.

“I mean, I’m obviously not okay. I’m about three seconds away from calling your sister and saying something completely incoherent, so we should maybe take my phone away.”

He leaned his forehead against hers, breathing with her in the pale bathroom light.

“But we’re okay,” he said again. This time it landed stronger. “You and me. And…”

He couldn’t finish for a second.

The word was too much.

He looked down between them, his hand sliding slowly—carefully—to rest over her shirt, not pressing, just there. His palm covered the place where nothing had changed and everything had.

“And this,” he whispered.

His eyes closed.

For once in his life, Ben didn’t want a stage. Didn’t want the perfect line. Didn’t want a chorus big enough to hold the feeling.

He wanted this tiny bathroom.

This woman.

This impossible morning.

His coffee going cold on the counter.

The whole world reduced to a hand towel, two tests, and Cleo shaking in his arms while his own heart tried to become something worthy of what had just been handed to them.

He kissed her again, soft and lingering, right at the corner of her mouth.

Then he pulled back just enough to see her.

“We’re having a baby,” he said, and the smile finally broke through fully—terrified, radiant, boyish, all his. “Holy shit, Cleo.”

A beat.

His eyes dropped to the tests again, then back to her.

“I’m gonna need, like… a chair. Or a helmet. Or both.”

Another beat, softer.

“But mostly you.”

His arms tightened around her carefully, like he was already learning a new kind of gentleness.

“I need you.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The first thing Cleo felt was the force of his panic.

It came into the bathroom ahead of him—his voice rough and too sharp, his footsteps hitting the old floorboards hard enough that she could hear the urgency in every stride. For one terrifying second, she saw herself through his eyes: crying, shaking, clutching a plastic stick like it might explain why the world had suddenly become too large to fit inside her body.

Guilt flashed through the joy.

She hated that the sound she made had frightened him.

Then he was there.

Breathless.

Barefoot.

Hair sleep-tousled and eyes wide with a fear so naked it split her open all over again.

The tenderness of it undid her.

Her mouth trembled as he searched her face and shoulders and hands, looking for injury before he understood the real reason she had called for him. That instinctive need to make sure she was safe landed with such devastating clarity that fresh tears spilled over.

“I’m okay,” she tried to say, but the words caught on a laugh and came out broken.

His attention shifted.

She watched the exact instant comprehension overtook alarm.

The silence that followed felt enormous.

Not empty.

Sacred.

His small, stunned sound moved through her like a bell.

When his expression changed—when disbelief gave way to something bright and fragile and unbearably human—Cleo’s chest tightened so hard it almost hurt.

There he was.

The man she had fallen in love with in fragments and layers and impossible, ordinary moments.

The man who had held her in Iceland and spoken about children with a kind of quiet certainty that made her believe in futures she had been afraid to name.

The man who had crossed oceans and stages and hotel rooms with her and never once treated this hope like something inconvenient.

The father of her child.

The thought struck with fresh force, and her fingers curled tighter around the digital test.

When he stepped toward her more slowly, as though the moment itself required careful handling, she felt her breathing hitch. His hands hovering in the air before finally settling against her face made her heart turn over inside her chest.

His thumbs brushed away tears she hadn’t even noticed falling.

The shaking in his voice unraveled what little composure she had managed to gather.

A soft, watery laugh escaped her as he struggled for words.

The imperfectness of them made everything feel more real.

More theirs.

Then he looked at the tests again.

And spoke the truth.

Her eyes closed.

The sentence landed somewhere deep and permanent.

“We did,” she whispered, the words barely audible, but saturated with awe.

When he dropped to his knees, Cleo gasped.

Not because she expected grand gestures.

Because she knew he wasn’t performing.

There was nothing calculated in the movement. No attempt to make the moment bigger than it already was.

Just instinct.

Just reverence.

The feel of his arms circling her middle sent a shudder through her body. She brought one trembling hand to his hair, threading her fingers through the soft dark strands while his forehead rested against her shirt.

The pressure was so gentle.

So careful.

When he spoke to the tiny life inside her, Cleo’s breath fractured.

A sob broke loose before she could stop it, but it was softer now, threaded with wonder instead of fear.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, her fingers tightening in his hair.

The ridiculousness of his introduction, the nervous honesty, the mention of pancakes—all of it cracked something warm and helpless open inside her. She laughed through tears, the sound shaky and wet and full of love.

“Our baby is going to know exactly what they’re getting into.”

Her voice wobbled on the word baby.

She still could not quite believe she was saying it.

When he rose and gathered her fully into his arms, Cleo folded into him with no resistance at all.

Her body seemed to know where to go before her mind caught up.

Against his chest.

Into the familiar warmth of him.

His kisses to her forehead, temple, and cheek steadied her more effectively than anything else could have.

Each touch said the same thing in a different language.

I’m here.

I’m not going anywhere.

When he repeated the reality aloud, she felt the truth settle more firmly beneath her skin.

She was pregnant.

His searching gaze found her, and she understood immediately what he was asking without saying it.

Not whether the test was accurate.

Not whether he was happy.

Whether she was all right.

Whether the fear still pressing against her ribs was swallowing the joy.

Cleo drew in a shaky breath.

His attempt at composure, undercut by his own tears and humor, made her smile despite the tears still slipping down her face.

The moment his forehead touched hers, the frantic energy in her chest began to slow.

Not disappear.

But organize itself into something she could carry.

When his hand rested over her abdomen, her own hand slid over his.

The warmth of his palm against the place where their child already existed sent another wave of emotion through her—less chaotic this time, deeper and more rooted.

His words settled over her like a promise.

Then came the sentence that finally broke her open in an entirely different way.

I need you.

The rawness of it stole her breath.

Cleo lifted her face just enough to meet his eyes.

What she saw there—terror, devotion, joy, and complete vulnerability—left no room for doubt.

He was as overwhelmed as she was.

As scared.

As changed.

And he was still reaching for her.

Her fingers slid to his jaw, brushing over the faint roughness there. She studied his face as if committing this exact version of him to memory: barefoot in her bathroom, eyes wet, smile trembling, the whole future visible in the way he looked at her.

“I’m scared,” she admitted, the confession quiet but steady.

Her thumb moved along his cheek.

“But I have never wanted anything more than this.”

The truth settled between them, clear and unadorned.

A tear slipped free, but this one felt lighter.

Her lips curved.

“And I need you too.”

Cleo drew him closer until there was no space left between them at all. She kissed him slowly, with all the gratitude and wonder and trembling certainty she did not yet have language for.

When she pulled back, her forehead remained against his.

Her hand stayed over his where it rested on her stomach.

“Our baby,” she whispered, and this time the words no longer felt impossible.

They felt real.

Her smile widened, still damp with tears, but unmistakably radiant.

“You’re going to be such a good dad, Benjamin.”

The words settled between them and changed shape.

Our baby.

You’re going to be such a good dad.

Even after she said them, Cleo felt as though she were listening from a slight distance, as if the bathroom had become too small to contain what was happening inside it. Ben’s face—wet-eyed, astonished, utterly unguarded—seemed to glow in the pale morning light. His hand remained over hers against her stomach, and the steady warmth of it anchored her long enough for a practical thought to break through the emotion.

They had to tell them.

Not the world.

Not his fans.

Not managers or labels or publicists or anyone who would turn this into a headline before they had time to breathe.

Their people.

Her family.

His family.

The realization brought a fresh burst of happiness so sharp it made her laugh.

“Oh my God,” she said, the words tumbling out on another breathless smile. “We have to tell them.”

Her fingers squeezed his hand once before she reluctantly stepped away, still touching him as long as possible. The loss of contact lasted only seconds, but she felt it immediately, like moving away from a heat source in winter.

She snatched the digital test from the sink and carefully picked up the traditional one with her other hand. The plastic felt absurdly ordinary in her hands, two tiny objects that had somehow redrawn the entire map of her life.

Ben followed her out of the bathroom, and the apartment looked different now.

Not physically.

The same unmade bed.

The same paint-splattered drafting table.

The same coffee half-made in the kitchen, forgotten in his panic.

But everything held a new significance, as though every familiar object had shifted a fraction of an inch to make room for someone else.

Their child.

The thought still hit her with dizzying force.

At the small wooden dining table by the windows, Cleo set both tests down side by side. Morning light spilled across the surface, illuminating the word Pregnant and the two pink lines with such blunt certainty that she let out another disbelieving laugh.

Her hands shook as she reached for her phone.

She crouched slightly, framing the image with care. The tabletop still held faint charcoal smudges from her work, and the sunlight fell over the tests in a way that made the whole scene look almost too perfect to be real.

She snapped one photo.

Looked at it.

Burst into tears again.

It was the simplest picture imaginable.

And the most important she had ever taken.

Her thumb moved to the family group chat.

A thread that had existed for years.

Her sister.

The people who had known her before she knew herself.

Ben.

Jax.

Because neither of them had ever stood outside the family circle, not even during the years when she and Ben were apart and pretending history could be erased by distance. They had remained woven into the fabric of her life so thoroughly that this moment did not feel surprising.

It felt inevitable.

As though everyone in that chat had, in some quiet way, been waiting for this right alongside them.

Her throat tightened.

Without adding a single word, she sent the photo.

The message whooshed away.

Then she looked up at Ben, another wave of emotion rising.

“Your family,” she said, voice catching. “They have to know too.”

She crossed to him in two quick steps and held out her hand.

He handed over his phone without hesitation, his expression still dazed and luminous.

Cleo unlocked it and opened the family thread with his parents and siblings. Her vision blurred with tears as she attached the same photo. For a second she hovered over the send button, struck by the enormity of what this meant—not just for the two of them, but for everyone who loved him.

Then she pressed send.

The image disappeared into the conversation.

A fresh laugh escaped her.

“Okay,” she breathed, shaking her head in disbelief.

She set both phones on the kitchen counter and toggled each one to Do Not Disturb, silencing the flood she knew was already beginning—texts, calls, screaming voice memos, his mother crying, her sister absolutely losing her mind.

The apartment fell quiet again.

Just the hum of the refrigerator.

The faint hiss of the forgotten coffee maker.

Ben’s breathing.

Her breathing.

Their future waiting in the stillness.

Cleo turned.

He stood a few feet away, barefoot on the old wood floors, hair unruly, eyes shining, his whole expression transformed by wonder.

For half a heartbeat she simply looked at him.

This man.

This impossible, beautiful man.

The father of her baby.

Joy surged through her so suddenly that she could not contain it.

A high, delighted squeal burst out of her as she launched herself toward him.

Her arms flew around his neck, and she collided with him hard enough to force a startled laugh from her chest. She clung to him, half laughing, half crying, practically vibrating with happiness.

“We sent it,” she gasped against his cheek, words tumbling over breathless laughter. “They know. Your mom knows. My sister knows. Everyone knows and we’re having a baby.”

The sentence still felt impossible.

And yet there she was, wrapped around him in the middle of her sunlit apartment, grinning so hard her face hurt.

Cleo pulled back only enough to look at him, her hands framing his face, her eyes bright and overflowing.

“We’re really doing this,” she whispered, wonder softening the edges of her voice.

Then her smile widened until it became pure, incandescent joy.

“Benjamin,” she breathed, another squeal escaping before she could stop it. “We made a person.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben caught her because there was no universe where he didn’t.

She hit him like joy given a running start, arms around his neck, body warm and shaking with laughter and tears, and his own laugh broke out of him before he could stop it. It came out rough and startled and utterly wrecked, his hands finding her waist on instinct before immediately gentling, as if some brand-new, ridiculous, reverent part of his brain had already decided she was made of glass.

Then he realized what he was doing and laughed harder, breath catching against her shoulder.

“Oh my God,” he said, voice muffled against her hair. “I’m already being weird.”

His arms tightened anyway. Carefully. Completely.

He buried his face against her neck for half a second, breathing her in—skin, sleep, the faint clean scent of her T-shirt, the apartment around them, coffee burning somewhere faintly behind him because apparently fatherhood began with a minor appliance emergency.

They had sent it.

Their families knew.

Somewhere, phones were detonating. His mother was probably crying. Her sister was probably screaming. Jax was probably staring at the picture like it was abstract art and then texting something devastatingly sincere under five layers of sarcasm. The world, the small protected world of their people, had tilted with them.

But inside the apartment, everything had gone very still.

Ben pulled back only enough to look at her. Really look.

Her face was wet and shining, cheeks flushed, eyes bright with the kind of happiness that didn’t know where to go so it became motion, sound, touch. She was trembling in his arms. He was too. He could feel it now, the shaking in his own hands, the helpless flutter in his chest, the overwhelming sense that his body was too small for the life trying to happen inside it.

“We did,” he whispered.

A laugh slipped out of him, disbelieving.

“We made a person.”

He said it again like it was a lyric he had to test aloud before he believed it.

“A tiny person. Very small. Currently terrible at rent. Contributing nothing financially.”

His smile cracked wider, eyes wet.

“Already emotionally dominating the household, though. Strong start.”

The joke barely survived the feeling underneath it. His mouth trembled, and he pressed it together for a second, trying to get his breathing under control. Useless. Completely useless. He was gone. He had never been more gone in his life.

His hands lifted to her face, thumbs brushing gently beneath her eyes, not wiping the tears away so much as memorizing them. He wanted to remember this exact version of her forever. Morning light, bare feet, oversized shirt, happiness breaking through fear like sunrise through blinds.

“You’re…” He stopped, shook his head once, helpless. “I don’t have a word.”

That almost offended him. Professionally.

“I should have a word. Words are supposed to be, like, a thing I can do.”

His laugh came out watery again.

“I’ve got nothing.”

Then, softer, with all the humor stripped away because the truth had finally found a way through:

“You’re everything.”

His forehead lowered to hers. For a moment, he just stood there with her in the middle of the apartment, both of them breathing unevenly, both phones silenced on the counter, the proof sitting on the table in the sun.

He had imagined this before. Not in detail. He’d never let himself get that greedy. But in flashes: her hand over her stomach, a crib wedged into some impossible corner of wherever they were living, a little laugh that sounded like hers, a kid with paint on their hands and a toy keyboard under one arm. He had imagined wanting it and then told himself not to hold the image too tightly.

Now it was here.

Not fully formed.

Not safe from fear.

But real.

His gaze dropped, inevitably, to her stomach. Still flat beneath the soft fall of her shirt. No visible proof. No outward sign that the entire axis of his life had just shifted.

His hand moved there again, slower this time, almost shy.

“Hi,” he murmured, because apparently that was still the only thing his brain could manage when addressing their microscopic roommate.

He swallowed, then glanced back up at Cleo with a sudden, very serious expression.

“Do you think they heard me say the rent thing? Because I don’t want our first conflict to be financial.”

His thumb stroked once over the fabric of her shirt.

A beat.

“Also, I feel like we should be honest with them early that I was called Bean as a child. Just so nobody uncovers it later and uses it against me.”

The absurdity of that—of him standing barefoot in her apartment, announcing childhood nickname transparency to an embryo—hit him at the same time it hit his nerves, and he laughed again, low and overwhelmed.

Then he kissed her.

Not frantic. Not celebratory in some cinematic, sweeping way. Just deep enough to say what language kept failing to hold. He kissed her with gratitude, with terror, with a joy so bright it almost hurt. He kissed her like she was home and future and the person who had just handed him the rest of his life in a tiny plastic window.

When he pulled back, his hand stayed on her stomach.

“We’re doing this,” he said, steadier now. “You and me.”

His eyes searched hers, soft but intent.

“And I know we’re going to freak out. A lot. Probably creatively. Probably at inconvenient times.” His mouth curved. “I’m almost definitely going to Google something at three in the morning and make it everyone’s problem.”

He nodded toward the phones on the counter.

“And our families are going to become deeply unwell in approximately—actually, they’re probably already there.”

Another breath. His voice softened.

“But right now, before we let them in, before we answer anything…”

He looked around the apartment—the bed, the drafting table, the guitars, the forgotten coffee, the tests glowing in the sunlight like tiny artifacts from some impossible future.

Then back at her.

“I just want one minute where it’s only ours.”

His arms came around her again, careful and sure, drawing her into him with a gentleness he was already learning in real time.

“One minute,” he whispered against her hair. “With you. And them.”

He closed his eyes.

For once, he didn’t need music.

The room had its own rhythm now.

Her breathing. His breathing. The refrigerator hum. The quiet, impossible beginning of a third heartbeat they could not hear yet but already loved with everything they had.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

His laughter vibrated through her before the words did.

Cleo felt it in the solid warmth of his chest, in the way his hands found her waist and then softened almost immediately, as if some instinct had already rewritten the rules of how he touched her. The tiny adjustment was so unmistakably him—earnest, overthinking, impossibly tender—that a fresh burst of delighted tears stung her eyes.

He was already trying to be careful.

The realization was so sweet it bordered on absurd.

Her arms tightened around his neck as he pressed his face into her hair. The scrape of his stubble against her temple, the uneven rush of his breathing, the sound of his voice muffled against her skin grounded her more than any conscious effort could have. The apartment still smelled faintly of coffee and turpentine and the lavender detergent they both used now because he had quietly started buying the same one she did.

Home.

That word shifted too.

When he repeated what they had done, the statement landed differently than it had a moment ago.

Not theoretical.

Not something written on a digital screen.

A person.

The image of a tiny human being—half him, half her, entirely unknown—rose in her mind with such startling clarity that her knees nearly weakened again.

Then he mentioned rent.

A startled laugh burst out of her so quickly she had to bury her face against his shoulder to catch her breath. The sound echoed between them, breathless and bright, and the pressure that had been building behind her ribs loosened.

“You’re impossible,” she managed, smiling so hard her cheeks ached.

His observation about their child already taking over the household sent another helpless laugh through her. The humor was ridiculous and perfectly timed, a lifeline thrown into the middle of all this enormous feeling.

When his hands moved to her face, Cleo lifted her head.

The pads of his thumbs were warm and slightly unsteady beneath her eyes. His expression was so open it made her heart contract with a tenderness so sharp it almost hurt.

Then he faltered over language.

That, more than anything, struck her.

Ben—who could pull melodies out of thin air and make thousands of strangers feel understood—standing in front of her without a sentence big enough for this.

The rawness in his voice when he finally found something made the air leave her lungs in a quiet rush.

Her lips parted.

For a moment, she couldn’t answer.

The weight of what he meant settled through her slowly, touching every version of herself that had ever wondered if she would be chosen completely.

Her fingers slid into the hair at the nape of his neck.

“I love you so much,” she whispered, the words emerging with trembling certainty.

When his forehead rested against hers, the contact felt less like a gesture and more like alignment. His thoughts moved visibly across his face. She could almost see the images forming behind his eyes, futures taking shape one uncertain piece at a time.

His hand drifted down to her stomach.

The movement was tentative now, reverent in a way that made her throat tighten.

When he addressed the life inside her with such solemn absurdity, Cleo laughed again, softer this time. The seriousness with which he considered whether he had offended an embryo was so unmistakably him that she felt another surge of affection so strong it left her momentarily speechless.

“I think they’re already on your side,” she said, her voice warm with amusement. “And if they inherited your sense of humor, we may never stand a chance.”

The childhood nickname revelation nearly undid her.

She pressed both hands over her mouth, laughing and crying all at once, then lowered them to cup his face.

“Bean is absolutely staying in reserve,” she informed him, eyes shining. “For strategic use when you become unbearably smug.”

His kiss stole the rest of her breath.

She leaned into it without hesitation, letting gratitude and fear and wonder and love pour into the contact. His mouth was warm and familiar, but the meaning beneath it had changed. Everything carried greater consequence now. Every touch contained one more person.

When he drew back and spoke with renewed steadiness, Cleo felt something inside her settle into place.

Not because the fear disappeared.

Because he was standing in it with her.

The mention of anxious midnight searches made her smile through lingering tears. She could picture it with painful ease: Ben in bed, illuminated by his phone, spiraling over infant sleep schedules and obscure symptoms while insisting he was being “appropriately proactive.”

“Creatively,” she echoed, laughing softly.

His glance around the apartment pulled her attention with it.

The rumpled bed where they had slept.

The painting she had left unfinished the night before.

The tests still glowing on the table in a square of sunlight.

The muted phones on the counter holding a storm of love they were not ready to open yet.

Then he asked for a single minute.

The request moved through her with profound gentleness.

Not to prepare.

Not to perform.

Not to manage anyone else’s feelings.

Just to remain here.

Together.

Cleo’s expression softened until there was no strain left in it at all.

She stepped fully into his embrace and let her cheek rest over his heart. The rhythm beneath her ear was still fast, but steadier now, as if his body had begun to understand what his mind was only starting to accept.

Her hand slid beneath his T-shirt and spread over the warm skin of his back.

“Yes,” she whispered.

The word was quiet, but it held all of her.

She closed her eyes.

The apartment hummed around them. Sunlight warmed the floorboards. Somewhere beyond the silenced phones, two families were erupting with joy. But inside the circle of his arms, time loosened.

Cleo exhaled slowly and turned her face just enough to press a lingering kiss to the center of his chest.

Then she spoke into the space between his heartbeat and her own.

“Hi, baby,” she murmured, her palm drifting down to cover his hand over her stomach.

A smile curved against his skin.

“We’re right here.”

The silence they created together did exactly what she needed it to do.

Not erase the enormity.

Not reduce the fear.

But give everything a shape she could begin to hold.

Cleo stayed folded against him until her breathing matched the steady rise and fall of his chest. His arms remained around her, one hand warm and protective over her stomach, the other resting at the small of her back. The position felt so instinctively right that she had the strange, overwhelming sensation of standing in the center of a life she had been walking toward for years without fully realizing it.

Her fingertips traced absent patterns against his skin beneath his shirt.

His heartbeat thudded beneath her cheek.

The room remained soft and sunlit around them.

Eventually, the first edge of her practical brain began to stir.

It always did.

Not because she wanted to control everything.

Because looking ahead helped her breathe.

Because if she could identify the next steps, the future stopped feeling like a wave and started feeling like a series of things they could do together.

Cleo lifted her head slowly, reluctant to move even an inch away from him. Her eyes searched his face, taking in the lingering tears, the wonder still written openly across his features.

A smile tugged at her mouth.

“I’m about to become deeply annoying,” she said, voice quiet and almost apologetic, though amusement flickered beneath it.

Her thumb brushed the corner of his mouth.

“I can feel my brain making lists.”

The confession earned a soft laugh from her, and she tipped her forehead briefly against his before stepping back only enough to keep her hands looped loosely around his waist.

“First, we need to call my doctor and make an appointment to confirm everything.” Saying the words aloud sent another ripple of disbelief through her. She shook her head, smiling helplessly. “And figure out how far along I am.”

Her hand drifted down to her stomach again, fingers resting there with growing familiarity.

“Then vitamins, if the ones I’m taking aren’t enough. And probably a thousand things I haven’t even thought of yet.”

Her brows lifted as another thought arrived.

“Oh my God, we might need more space.”

She turned slightly, glancing around the apartment that had always felt expansive despite its modest size. The tall windows. The drafting table. The bed tucked into its alcove. The guitar stands and stacks of books and paint supplies and all the pieces of the life they had built in one open room.

Suddenly she tried to imagine a crib.

A changing table.

Tiny clothes folded into drawers they did not currently possess.

The image was both comical and incredibly real.

A laugh bubbled out of her.

“I mean, not immediately. Our child is not going to demand a mortgage next week.”

Her eyes returned to his.

“But maybe we start looking. Apartments. Maybe a house eventually.” The word house came out with a softness that surprised her. “Somewhere with an extra room.”

The vision unfurled before she could stop it.

A small nursery.

Sunlight on painted walls.

A rocking chair in the corner.

Ben humming to a baby at two in the morning.

Cleo swallowed around the sudden ache in her throat.

“And we should probably figure out what your South America schedule looks like.” Her fingers tightened slightly against his sides. “I know you still have that month, but I want to know what we’re working with.”

There was no accusation in it.

Only the instinctive need to understand the landscape ahead.

To know what they were navigating.

Her thoughts continued to gather momentum.

“Books,” she murmured, half laughing at herself now. “And insurance. And maybe we should make a list of questions for the doctor because I know I’m going to forget everything the second we get there.”

She stopped and pressed both palms lightly over her face.

A muffled laugh escaped.

When she lowered her hands, her expression softened with affectionate embarrassment.

“I’m doing it already, aren’t I?”

Her eyes met his.

The vulnerability beneath the humor remained visible.

She wanted this more than she had ever wanted anything.

And because she wanted it so much, she wanted to protect it.

Prepare for it.

Build around it.

Cleo stepped closer again until their bodies touched.

Her hands slid to rest against his chest, feeling the steady beat beneath her palms.

“I know we don’t have to solve everything today,” she said quietly. “I just…”

Her gaze dropped to where his hand still rested over her stomach, and her smile became smaller, more tender.

“I want to take care of them.”

She looked back up.

“And I want us to feel ready. Or at least… less hilariously unprepared.”

A watery laugh escaped her.

Then her expression softened into something calm and deeply certain.

“We’re going to figure it out.”

She rose onto her toes and kissed him gently, lingering there for a moment before pulling back just enough to brush her nose against his.

“One doctor’s appointment at a time,” she whispered.

Her fingers intertwined with his over her stomach.

“And maybe one apartment listing at a time.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben watched her brain come online in real time.

He knew the look. He loved the look. The slight narrowing of her eyes, the way her focus sharpened even while her cheeks were still wet, the way she could be standing in the middle of a miracle and still begin gently organizing it into tabs, appointments, timelines, categories.

It should have overwhelmed him.

It did, a little.

But mostly it made him love her so hard he nearly had to sit down again.

His hands stayed on her, one at her stomach, one low at her back, as if his body had already accepted a job his brain was still reading the description for. He felt the moment she started looking around the apartment differently. He followed her gaze to the bed, the drafting table, his guitars tucked into corners they had no business fitting into, the narrow kitchen where he had abandoned coffee in a state that could probably be described as criminal.

A crib.

A doctor.

Vitamins.

A house.

South America.

His chest tightened at that one—not with resistance, but with the sudden, sobering awareness that the future was no longer a vague glowing thing they whispered about under blankets. It had dates now. Logistics. Rooms. Bloodwork. Flights. A tiny life growing quietly inside her while his calendar still looked like a dare.

But then she kissed him, and his thoughts steadied around the warmth of her mouth.

One appointment at a time.

One listing at a time.

Ben let out a breath that shook at the edges and smiled against her nose.

“Okay,” he said softly. “First of all, I love your list brain. I need you to know that. It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

His thumb moved once over her stomach, careful and wondering.

“Terrifying, yeah. Extremely powerful. But favorite.”

He leaned back just enough to see her face, and the sight of her nearly wrecked him again. Damp lashes. Determined little crease between her brows. A smile trying to be practical while joy kept breaking through the seams.

“You’re not annoying,” he said. “You’re doing the thing you do when something matters so much it scares you. You’re building a little room around it so it has somewhere safe to live.”

His throat tightened as soon as he said it.

A little room.

God.

He was going to cry again. He could feel it rising, ridiculous and immediate, and because he was him, because sincerity still made him reach for a joke like a railing on an icy bridge, he blinked hard and glanced around the apartment.

“Also, for the record, I do think our child will demand a mortgage next week,” he said. “I’m getting a vibe. Very ambitious. Very real estate-forward.”

He nodded gravely toward her stomach.

“Tiny landlord energy.”

The laugh that broke through him helped. It loosened the pressure in his ribs enough for him to breathe again.

Then he sobered, but not heavily. Just enough to meet her where she was.

“We call your doctor,” he said. “Today. Or we send a message. Whatever makes the most sense.” A beat. “And we make the list of questions, because yes, absolutely, we are going to forget everything the second we get there. I’m going to forget my own birthday. I might introduce myself wrong.”

His mouth curved.

“If I say my name is Bean in a medical office, you have permission to stop me.”

His hand slid from her back to her waist, holding her steady while his mind began doing its own version of what hers was doing—less neat, more frantic, but real. Doctor. Vitamins. Food. Space. Calendar. Tour. Home.

He looked toward the counter, where their silenced phones sat like two grenades with the pins still in. Somewhere inside them, both families were probably losing their collective minds. He could practically hear the chaos through the glass. But the quiet in the apartment held.

He wasn’t ready to break it yet.

“We’ll look at apartments,” he said, the words coming slowly because they felt huge and he wanted to mean every one. “Not in a panicked way. Not in a ‘we need to move by lunch’ way. But we’ll look.”

His gaze moved again through the space they’d made together—her canvases, his guitar, the coffee mugs, the sunlit table with the tests on it. He loved this apartment. Loved it because it was hers before it had stretched to become theirs. Loved the way it had held them in the strange, tender in-between.

But he could see it now too.

A little room.

Paint on the walls.

A rocking chair.

A baby sleeping somewhere close enough that they both woke at every sound.

His voice softened.

“Somewhere with sunlight,” he said. “And room for your work. And a place where I can be loud without ruining nap time, which, honestly, may be my first real parenting challenge.”

He swallowed, then looked at her.

“And South America—” He nodded once, grounding himself before the logistics could turn sharp. “We figure it out. I’ll get the full schedule today. I’ll call whoever I need to call. We’ll map it around appointments as much as we can.”

His fingers tightened gently at her waist.

“You’re not carrying that part alone.”

He felt the weight of the sentence as soon as it left him. Not promise as performance. Not the kind of grand declaration that sounded good and collapsed under pressure. Something simpler. Better.

A commitment to be in the details.

To learn the names of vitamins. To remember appointment times. To stand beside her under fluorescent lights and ask the questions neither of them knew they needed yet. To be reachable. Present. Useful. Hers.

Theirs.

He glanced toward the kitchen and finally registered the faint bitter smell in the air.

“Also,” he said, eyes narrowing slightly, “I think I may have murdered the coffee.”

He held up a finger, suddenly solemn.

“That is not a metaphor for my fatherhood. I want that on record.”

The absurdity of it hit him, and he laughed again, one hand dragging through his hair in disbelief before returning immediately to her, like he couldn’t stand not touching her for more than a second.

“Okay,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “Food. You need food, right? That feels like a thing. Pregnant people need food. People in general need food. I’m already crushing this.”

He looked down at her stomach again, expression softening into awe despite himself.

“Your mom is going to make a list,” he told the tiny nothing-and-everything beneath his palm. “I’m going to make breakfast. We all have roles.”

Then he looked back up at Cleo, and the humor thinned into tenderness so complete it nearly stole his voice.

“I’m scared too,” he admitted quietly. “I’m happy—God, I’m so happy I feel insane—but I’m scared.”

His thumb brushed over her knuckles where their hands were intertwined.

“But not of doing it with you.”

That part was clear. Crystal.

He leaned in and kissed her once, gentle and slow, not to interrupt the planning but to bless it. To say yes to the doctor and the vitamins and the apartment listings and the million terrifying unknowns waiting just outside the room.

When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers again.

“One doctor’s appointment at a time,” he echoed.

A breath.

“One apartment listing at a time.”

His smile grew, shaky but radiant.

“One deeply unnecessary baby spreadsheet at a time.”

Then, softer, with his hand still covering hers over the place where their future had begun:

“And right now, one breakfast at a time.”

He kissed her cheek, then the corner of her mouth, then dropped one more kiss to her forehead because he couldn’t help it.

“Stay right here,” he whispered. “Or come with me. Or start the list. Whatever your brain needs.”

His eyes flicked toward the table where the tests sat in sunlight, and his chest filled all over again.

“But don’t go too far,” he added, voice warm and a little helpless. “I’m still in the part where I need to keep looking at you to make sure this is real.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo stared at him through the blur of tears and sunlight, and for one suspended second she could do nothing except feel.

Not just his words.

The certainty beneath them.

The way his hands never left her, as though every plan he was making began with the simple assumption that she belonged exactly where she was—pressed against him, trembling, carrying the child they had only just discovered.

Each promise found its place inside her.

He loved the part of her that turned fear into lists.

He answered every practical question she threw at him without hesitation.

Doctor.

Vitamins.

Apartments.

South America.

The tour.

He did not minimize any of it. He did not ask her to slow down or tell her they would worry about it later.

He stepped into the details with her.

And when he told her she would not carry any of it alone, something deep inside her finally unclenched.

She lifted her eyes to his face and saw everything there at once.

The joy that still looked almost too large for him to contain.

The fear he was honest enough to admit.

The quiet determination underneath both.

Not a grand declaration.

Not optimism for the sake of optimism.

Ben.

Steady. Open. Completely present.

A wet laugh slipped from her when he insisted the ruined coffee was not a symbolic reflection of his future as a father. She shook her head, wiping her cheeks as he spoke to the tiny life beneath his palm with all the solemnity of a man assigning official family duties.

The sight was so unbearably tender that her chest tightened all over again.

Then he said he was scared.

And when he followed that with the truth that he was not afraid of doing this with her, the world seemed to narrow to the space between their foreheads.

She believed him.

With a tenderness that made her hands tremble, she lifted them to his face and brushed her thumbs over the dampness at his lashes.

“You realize,” she said, her voice rough with emotion, “that our child is going to be impossible.”

A watery smile touched her lips.

“They’re going to inherit your flair for drama and my need to organize everything into color-coded categories.”

She let out a shaky breath.

“So by the time they can talk, they’ll probably be requesting a larger bedroom and presenting us with a five-year plan.”

His smile steadied her enough to continue.

Her fingertips slid down to rest over his heart, feeling the uneven beat beneath her palm.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The words were small, but they carried everything.

For meeting her fear with calm.

For answering her questions instead of avoiding them.

For already loving this child with his whole heart.

For making her feel less alone than she had ever felt in her life.

Another tear slipped free.

“I know this is huge,” she said softly. “And our timing is objectively ridiculous.”

Her smile wavered but held.

“But I have never felt safer than I do with you.”

She kissed him slowly, letting all the awe and gratitude she could not fully put into words pass between them.

When she drew back, she kept her forehead against his.

“And for the record,” she murmured, a small smile returning, “you can introduce yourself as Bean in every doctor’s office for the rest of our lives if it means you keep looking at me like this.”

Her hand slid down to cover his where it rested over her still-flat stomach.

The gesture felt instinctive now.

Natural.

As if they had always stood this way.

“Our baby,” she whispered, tasting the words again.

Theirs.

A life already reshaping the future in ways she could only begin to imagine.

A heartbeat they had not heard yet.

A nursery somewhere in the distance.

Sleepless nights.

Tiny socks.

Ben pacing with a newborn at three in the morning while humming absentmindedly under his breath.

The images came in flashes, but for the first time they did not feel overwhelming.

They felt real.

She looked back up at him, her eyes shining.

“I keep waiting to wake up,” she admitted. “Not because this feels wrong. Because it feels too good.”

Her fingers threaded through his.

“I know we’re going to be scared. And I know we’re going to make mistakes.”

A soft, tearful laugh escaped her.

“I’ll spiral after reading one alarming article online. You’ll buy something wildly unnecessary because you think it’s adorable.”

Her thumb brushed over his knuckles.

“But this baby is going to know they were wanted.”

Her voice broke on the last word.

“From the very beginning.”

She took a slow breath, grounding herself in the warmth of him.

“Okay,” she said softly, smiling through fresh tears.

“Come make me breakfast.”

She squeezed his hand over her stomach and let herself savor the truth one more time before speaking.

“And then,” she whispered, wonder brightening every syllable, “we start becoming parents.”

Cleo did not let go of his hand immediately.

For a moment she simply stood there, their fingers intertwined over the small, unchanged plane of her stomach, as though moving too quickly might disturb the fragile miracle that had settled around them.

Then Ben shifted, reluctant but smiling, and the warmth of his body began to pull away.

The loss of contact was brief, but she felt it instantly.

A strange, almost magnetic need rose in her chest to stay close to him—to keep him within arm’s reach, within sight, within the safe perimeter of this new and terrifying joy. So when he turned toward the kitchen, she followed without even thinking about it.

The apartment felt different now.

The same sun spilled across the wood floors.

The same half-finished canvases leaned against the walls.

The same test sticks rested on the dining table beside two abandoned mugs and the phones neither of them had touched.

And yet everything had shifted.

Every familiar object seemed to belong to a life that had quietly expanded while they were standing in the middle of the room.

Cleo settled onto one of the stools at the kitchen counter, tucking one leg beneath her as she watched Ben move through the small space.

He looked adorably overwhelmed.

Focused, but in the way he always was when trying to appear more competent than he felt.

He opened a cabinet, paused as if reconsidering what breakfast even meant, then reached for bread with exaggerated determination.

The sight made a soft laugh slip from her.

Her hand drifted unconsciously to her stomach.

Their baby.

The words no longer felt impossible.

They felt astonishingly real.

Ben moved around the kitchen with restless energy, pushing his hair back, checking the pan, opening the refrigerator, muttering quietly to himself as though narrating an extremely important cooking show no one else could hear.

The domesticity of it hit her harder than any grand declaration could have.

Not the dramatic moments.

This.

Watching the man she loved stand barefoot in his own kitchen, trying to make breakfast while mentally recalibrating his entire future.

Her throat tightened.

She imagined him here months from now, half-awake and carrying a newborn against his chest while balancing a bottle in one hand. She imagined him learning lullabies, researching strollers with absurd intensity, whispering ridiculous jokes to a baby who would almost certainly inherit his eyes.

The thought filled her so completely that she had to blink away fresh tears.

Ben glanced up, likely catching the expression on her face.

Cleo smiled, tender and helpless.

“I can’t stop looking at you,” she admitted softly.

Her fingertips traced idle circles over her stomach beneath the hem of her shirt.

“You’re making toast, and somehow it’s the most attractive thing you’ve ever done.”

A tiny laugh escaped her.

“Which is frankly unfair, because you’ve set the bar very high.”

She watched him crack eggs into a bowl with grave concentration, as though breakfast were now a matter of national importance.

Warmth spread through her chest until it nearly ached.

The fear was still there.

The unknowns remained.

Doctor appointments.

Schedules.

Tour dates.

Families.

A thousand things they would have to figure out.

But beneath all of it was a new and steady certainty.

They were doing this together.

Cleo rested both hands over her stomach and let the truth settle deeper with every breath.

Her eyes stayed on him as he moved around the sunlit kitchen.

“Our baby is so lucky,” she said quietly.

The words were simple, but they carried all the love she felt.

A small smile touched her lips.

“They get you.”

And as she watched him standing there in the morning light, making breakfast with a seriousness that was both absurd and profoundly beautiful, Cleo felt the future unfurl inside her with a tenderness so vast it left her breathless.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben almost dropped the egg.

Not fully. Not enough to make a mess. Just enough that it slid wrong in his hand and forced him to catch it with the kind of dramatic, full-body concentration usually reserved for saving heirloom glassware or defusing a bomb.

Because apparently that was who he was now.

A man who could survive festival crowds, red-eye flights, technical failures, and interviews conducted on three hours of sleep—but not Cleo sitting at the counter, hands resting over the place where their child existed, telling him their baby was lucky to get him.

He went still over the bowl.

For once, the kitchen noise did not save him. The pan warming on the stove, the faint pop of the toaster, the quiet hum of the refrigerator—all of it seemed to pull back and make room for what she had just said.

His throat tightened.

He looked up at her.

Morning light had caught in her hair and along the damp edges of her lashes. She was still tear-flushed, still trembling at the seams with joy and fear and everything too large to name, and her hands were resting over her stomach like her body had already learned where to protect the future.

Ben had no defense against it.

None.

He had spent years learning how to stay upright under attention. How to let thousands of people look at him and not feel stripped bare. How to take noise and turn it into something useful, something rhythmic, something he could survive.

But this?

One woman in his kitchen, looking at him like he was already becoming someone worthy of their child.

That undid him completely.

He glanced down at the egg in his hand, then back at her, his mouth parting around a laugh that came out shaky.

“I’m holding poultry under extreme emotional duress,” he said, voice rough. “So I need you to know that if this breakfast gets weird, legally, that’s on you.”

It helped. Barely.

He cracked the egg into the bowl with absurd care, like their entire future depended on shell-free scrambling. Then he checked the toast with the solemnity of a man monitoring a spaceship launch. His hands were still trembling a little, so he made them useful. Fork. Bowl. Salt. Pepper. Butter. Tasks. Small things he could touch while the rest of him tried to catch up to the fact that he was going to be a father.

A father.

The word moved through him again, huge and soft and terrifying.

His father had been a father.

His dad had packed lunches and changed tires and showed up with the kind of steadiness Ben had not always appreciated until adulthood made him understand how much quiet effort looked like love. And now Ben was standing barefoot in a sunlit kitchen, trying not to burn toast while some microscopic person existed inside Cleo and apparently already owned him completely.

He cleared his throat and pointed the fork at her with mock severity.

“Also, respectfully, our baby is lucky because they get you.”

His expression softened before he could stop it.

“They get your brain. Your eye for things. Your terrifying emotional accuracy.” A beat. “Your ability to turn fear into a spreadsheet before breakfast.”

He whisked the eggs a little too hard, caught himself, slowed down.

“They get the person who will notice if they’re quiet for a reason. Who will save their weird drawings. Who will know which songs undo them before they know how to explain why.”

His voice had gone quieter by the end, and he had to turn toward the stove for a second because if he kept looking at her, breakfast was going to become an abandoned concept.

He poured the eggs into the pan.

The soft sizzle steadied him.

“Meanwhile, from me they get… height, probably. Deeply unnecessary facial expressions. A historic inability to pack lightly.” He stirred the eggs gently, frowning in concentration. “And, if we’re unlucky, my childhood nickname coming back as generational trauma.”

He glanced over his shoulder, eyes bright despite the dampness still clinging there.

“For the record, we are not naming the baby Bean. I know you’re thinking about it. Don’t lie to me in front of the eggs.”

The toaster popped.

Ben startled so hard he nearly dropped the spatula.

He froze.

Then slowly looked toward her, caught between embarrassment and laughter.

“Great,” he muttered. “Excellent. Calm paternal presence. Very reassuring.”

But the ridiculousness of it loosened the room. He laughed under his breath and rescued the toast before it could cross from golden into symbolic failure. Butter went on thick because if there was ever a morning that deserved it, it was this one. He found a plate, then another, then opened the fridge and stared inside for three full seconds with no idea what he was looking for.

Fruit.

Right.

He grabbed strawberries, because they were there, because she liked them, because something about putting them on a plate beside eggs and toast felt like proof that he could provide at least one beautiful, unnecessary thing.

He rinsed them carefully.

Then he caught sight of her again.

Cleo at the counter, watching him.

Not laughing at him.

Not evaluating.

Just loving him through the chaos of becoming.

His chest went tight all over again.

He set the knife down and walked over to her before he could talk himself out of it. The eggs could survive thirty seconds. Probably. Maybe. If not, they would become part of the origin story.

He stepped between her knees where she sat at the stool and cupped her face in both hands. His thumbs moved lightly over her cheeks, reverent and still not quite steady.

“I’m going to try so hard,” he said.

The words came out plainly. No joke attached. No flourish.

His eyes stayed on hers.

“I’m going to mess things up. I know I am. I’m going to buy the wrong thing and overthink the right thing and probably assemble a crib backward while insisting I understand the instructions.”

A small, helpless smile touched his mouth.

“But I’m going to try. Every day.”

His gaze dropped to her stomach and something in his face changed again, gentler than awe, deeper than surprise. He lowered one hand, resting it over hers.

“For both of you.”

The sentence left him almost breathless.

Both.

There were already two people in front of him now.

Cleo, who he loved in a way that had survived every version of them.

And the baby, unnamed and unseen, already folded into the center of everything.

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to Cleo’s forehead. Then, after the smallest hesitation, he crouched enough to kiss the back of her hand where it rested over her stomach.

Not performative.

Not grand.

Just instinct.

Then he stood quickly, blinking hard, and pointed toward the stove.

“Okay. Breakfast. Before I become a Victorian ghost in this kitchen.”

He returned to the pan, salvaged the eggs with what he considered heroic timing, and began plating everything with the focus of someone arranging offerings at an altar. Toast. Eggs. Strawberries. A little extra butter. A glass of water because his brain had latched onto hydration as a fatherly duty and would probably never let it go.

When he set the plate in front of her, he did it with a small bow that was only half a joke.

“For the future mother of my child,” he said, voice warm and cracked at the edges. “Breakfast, version one. Nutritionally questionable but made with devastating emotional commitment.”

He leaned on the counter across from her instead of sitting immediately, because he still wanted to look. Needed to.

His eyes flicked toward the silenced phones. They were face down, mercifully quiet, but he could almost feel the chaos waiting there. Their mothers. Her sister. His siblings. Jax. The whole circle of people they loved becoming part of the morning as soon as they let the world back in.

Not yet.

Ben reached across the counter and took her hand.

“After this,” he said softly, “we can check the phones.”

A beat.

“Or we can throw them in a drawer and pretend we live in 1997 for another hour.”

His smile tugged crooked.

“I’m flexible. Mature. Extremely chill.”

He held the look for maybe half a second before shaking his head.

“No, I’m not. I want to see everyone lose their minds. But I also want this.”

His thumb brushed over her knuckles.

“You. Breakfast. Them.” His eyes dropped briefly to her stomach again. “This apartment before it becomes headquarters for everyone else’s joy.”

The eggs steamed gently between them. The coffee machine hissed once, offended and forgotten. Sunlight stretched across the floorboards and touched the table where the tests still sat side by side, blunt and miraculous.

Ben squeezed her hand.

“We’ll start becoming parents,” he said, echoing her without meaning to, letting the words settle into him. “But first you eat. Then we call the doctor. Then we let your sister scream at a frequency only dogs and unborn children can hear.”

His mouth curved.

“And then maybe I Google one thing.”

A pause.

“Two things.”

Another pause, honest and immediate.

“Okay, a medically irresponsible number of things, but I will do it beside you, so that makes it romantic.”

He finally sat on the stool next to her, close enough that his knee pressed against hers, close enough to keep one hand near her, because apparently distance was no longer an acceptable concept.

He looked at her plate, then back at her.

“Eat,” he said, gently bossy now, trying the role on for size. “Please. I have decided feeding you is my first official dad-adjacent act, and I need a win after the coffee incident.”

Then, softer, with his gaze steady on hers:

“And for what it’s worth…”

His voice lowered.

“I think they’re lucky because they get us.”

The word was small.

Us.

But it held the whole room.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo climbed onto the stool at the kitchen counter and tucked her feet beneath her, her fingers curling around the edge of the cool stone as she watched Ben move through the narrow space.

He was trying very hard to look like a man who had complete command of breakfast.

The effect was undermined almost immediately when he opened the refrigerator and stood there for a beat, staring into it as though eggs might have acquired new instructions in the last ten minutes.

A soft laugh escaped her before she could stop it.

The sound drew his attention for only a second, but that was enough. His hair was still disheveled from her hands. His T-shirt was wrinkled. His expression held the kind of concentrated seriousness most people reserved for defusing explosives.

Something in her chest squeezed so sharply she had to press her palm to her mouth.

He turned back to the stove, shoulders slightly tense, and she recognized what sat underneath the humor.

He was trying.

Not in a performative way.

In the quiet, deeply sincere way he approached anything he loved.

The skillet hissed when butter met the heat. The smell bloomed into the apartment, rich and familiar, cutting through the lingering bitterness of the coffee he had sacrificed earlier. Cabinet doors opened and shut. A fork clinked against a bowl.

Ordinary sounds.

And yet every one of them felt newly significant.

Cleo rested one hand low on her abdomen and let herself absorb the sight of him in this version of their life: barefoot, intent, slightly overwhelmed, making breakfast while carrying the same life-altering knowledge she was.

Her throat tightened.

There was no dramatic speech in front of her.

No cinematic declaration.

Just the man she loved, taking care of her because that was the most natural instinct he had.

He reached for the carton with too much enthusiasm, nearly lost his grip, caught it at the last second, and exhaled with visible relief.

Another laugh slipped out of her, warmer this time.

“You know,” she said, her voice soft but steadier than it had been all morning, “watching you handle eggs like they’re a high-risk operation is doing something to me.”

The corner of her mouth curved when he glanced over.

She traced her thumb across the fabric of her shirt where her hand still rested.

“I’m serious.”

Emotion swelled unexpectedly, but it was gentler now—less like a wave and more like a tide rising with quiet certainty.

She took in the set of his shoulders, the careful way he moved, the fact that even in his own shock his first instinct had been to feed her.

To make the next hour manageable.

To transform something enormous into a skillet, toast, and a place to begin.

Her eyes burned again.

“Our baby is going to think this is normal,” she said, almost to herself at first.

Then she lifted her gaze fully to him.

“They’re going to grow up assuming this is what love looks like.”

The words left her without calculation.

No flourish.

Just truth.

Her fingers tightened on the edge of the counter as emotion caught in her throat.

“A person who gets scared and stays anyway,” she said quietly. “A person who takes care of the practical things. A person who makes breakfast when the world changes.”

A tear slipped free, but she smiled through it.

“I’m really glad that person is you.”

She let the silence settle after that, warm and unhurried.

The butter crackled softly in the pan. Morning light shifted across the countertop. Ben stood in the center of her kitchen, and for the first time since seeing the two pink lines, Cleo felt the next moment arrive without fear.

She rested both hands over her stomach and watched him

Cleo waited until he set the plate in front of her before she moved.

The eggs were a little uneven, the toast slightly darker than usual, and there was a smear of butter near the edge of the plate where he had clearly been operating with more emotion than precision.

It was the most beautiful breakfast she had ever seen.

Her throat tightened as she picked up her fork.

The first bite tasted like warm bread, salt, and the unmistakable comfort of being cared for. She had not realized how hungry she was until the food settled in her stomach and some of the lightheadedness finally began to fade.

Ben took the stool beside her, close enough that their knees brushed every time either of them shifted.

Cleo chewed slowly, her fingers finding his free hand almost without thought. She laced their fingers together and looked down at their joined hands resting between their plates.

The image felt strangely intimate.

Not dramatic.

Foundational.

She swallowed and drew in a small breath.

“I’ve been thinking about something.”

Her thumb moved over his knuckles as she searched for the right words.

“I don’t want to know if the baby is a boy or a girl before they’re born.”

Saying it aloud brought an immediate sense of certainty.

She looked up to gauge his reaction, her expression soft but resolute.

“I want that moment to be a surprise.”

A smile tugged at her mouth.

“I want one of us to be crying and exhausted and completely overwhelmed, and then somebody says, ‘It’s a—’ and we find out right there.”

The thought sent a rush of anticipation through her that felt almost dizzying.

She took another bite, then continued, her voice growing more animated as the picture sharpened in her mind.

“And I don’t want the nursery to look like a candy store exploded.”

Her nose wrinkled slightly.

“No walls covered in bubblegum pink or electric blue.”

She set down her fork and began absentmindedly sketching shapes on the countertop with her fingertip.

“I want it to feel calm.”

Her eyes lifted, brightening as she imagined it.

“Soft greens. Warm browns. Muted yellows. Creams. Natural wood.”

She smiled, more grounded with every detail.

“Sunlight. Linen curtains. Maybe a vintage rug.”

The artist in her was already arranging tones and textures, building a room that felt gentle rather than overstimulating.

“I want it to feel like the rest of our home. Thoughtful and peaceful.”

Her hand drifted once more to her stomach.

“Something they can grow into, no matter who they turn out to be.”

The words lingered between them, and she felt a quiet thrill at how naturally she had said when rather than if.

When they arrive.

When they sleep in the room they create.

When they become a family in a way they were only beginning to understand.

Cleo took another bite of toast and leaned lightly into his shoulder.

“I know we have months before we need to pick paint colors,” she said, smiling. “And we should probably survive the first appointment before I start ordering swatches.”

Her fingers tightened affectionately around his hand.

“But I wanted you to know.”

She turned her head and looked at him, eyes full of warmth and certainty.

“That’s what I picture.”

A small, emotional laugh escaped her.

“Our little mystery baby in a room full of sunlight and soft colors.”

She brushed her lips to his shoulder.

“And us figuring it out as we go.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben had been doing a fairly convincing job of eating breakfast like a normal person until she started building the nursery in the air between them.

Then the fork paused halfway to his mouth.

Soft greens. Warm browns. Cream. Natural wood. Sunlight.

He could see it too vividly, too quickly: a room that didn’t exist yet, in an apartment or house they hadn’t found yet, with light falling across linen curtains and some small impossible person sleeping in the middle of it like they had always been on their way there.

His throat tightened around absolutely nothing useful.

He set his fork down carefully, because apparently he could no longer be trusted with utensils when she talked about their future in color palettes.

For a second, he just looked at her.

She was leaned into him, still eating the breakfast he had made with more love than skill, her hand warm in his, her mouth soft from the kiss she’d pressed to his shoulder. She looked calmer now than she had in the bathroom. Still tearful around the edges, still glowing with the enormity of it, but steadier. Like picturing the room had given the future walls.

And Ben realized, with a fresh and slightly terrifying ache, that this was how she was going to mother.

By making space.

By noticing light.

By refusing to let the world tell their child who to be before they arrived.

His thumb moved over her knuckles, slow and absent.

“Yeah,” he said, voice quiet at first. “Okay.”

It wasn’t a throwaway agreement. It came out small because the feeling behind it was too large.

He turned slightly on the stool so he could face her more fully, their knees still touching beneath the counter.

“I don’t want to know either,” he said. “I mean, for one thing, I would absolutely be the weak link. I’d know for eight minutes and then say something deeply obvious in front of your sister, and she’d pin me to a wall with her eyes.”

His mouth tugged into a crooked smile.

“I cannot be trusted with state secrets or baby secrets. I’m very brave, but I’m also… me.”

The humor helped him breathe, but it didn’t dilute the sincerity. Nothing could, not now. His gaze dropped briefly to her stomach, still hidden beneath her shirt, still completely unchanged and yet somehow the most important place in the room.

“And I like the idea of meeting them all at once,” he said, softer. “Not a file. Not a category. Just… them.”

He swallowed.

“I want that moment too. The crying, the exhausted, completely unhinged version. I want to find out when they’re here.”

A beat.

His brows pulled together slightly, thoughtful and tender and already overwhelmed by a memory that hadn’t happened yet.

“I’m going to cry so hard,” he admitted. “Like, medically concerning. The staff is going to be checking on me, which will be humiliating because you’ll be the one who did all the work.”

He looked back at her with mock solemnity.

“I’ll try to keep it tasteful. But no promises.”

His hand tightened gently around hers.

The nursery took shape again behind his eyes. Not as a finished room, not as some curated thing meant to look good in pictures, but as a place that felt like them. Her paintings. His records. Books that got chewed on. A rug with a history. Wood warmed by sun. Maybe a mobile that moved when the window was open. Maybe a tiny shelf for treasures no one else understood.

A room their child could grow into.

A room that didn’t shout expectations from the walls.

“No candy-store explosion,” he agreed. “No aggressive pink. No electric blue. Nothing that looks like a gender reveal party fought a toy aisle and lost.”

His eyes brightened.

“Though I do reserve the right to buy one deeply embarrassing onesie. Just one. Maybe two if the first one is musically relevant.”

He paused, then lifted a finger.

“Not a slogan onesie. I have standards. I’m a father now.”

The word landed funny in his mouth.

Father.

Dad.

He went still for half a second, then laughed under his breath, quiet and disbelieving.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Still buffering.”

He leaned closer and pressed a kiss to her temple, letting his mouth linger there while the morning hummed around them. The phones were still silent. The coffee was still ruined. Their plates were half-finished. The tests still sat in sunlight on the table like small, plastic witnesses.

When he pulled back, his expression had softened all the way through.

“I love what you picture,” he said. “I love that it already feels like them without knowing anything yet.”

His thumb brushed over the back of her hand.

“And I love that you want calm for them.”

He said it simply, but it moved through him in layers. Cleo knew too well what it meant to need peace. To need somewhere soft to land. To need a room that didn’t require performance before you could rest.

Their child would get that from her.

From them.

Ben let out a slow breath, then reached for the napkin near his plate and tugged it closer with sudden focus. He grabbed the nearest pen from the counter—one of Cleo’s, because there were always pens within arm’s reach in her apartment—and clicked it with unnecessary gravity.

“Okay,” he said, angling the napkin between them. “This is not a spreadsheet, because I respect your process and also because napkins have limited infrastructure.”

He started writing anyway.

“No gender. Mystery baby. Calm room. Soft greens. Warm browns. Muted yellows. Creams. Natural wood. Vintage rug. Sunlight.”

His handwriting was terrible. Emotional. A crime against legibility.

He looked down at it, frowned.

“Wow. This child is going to need to inherit your handwriting. Mine looks like a haunted bassline.”

He added one more thing at the bottom.

Then turned the napkin toward her.

At the end, beneath the colors and furniture and half-formed room, he had written:

Figure it out together.

His voice went quieter.

“That part’s my favorite.”

He looked at her then, all the teasing stripped back for a breath.

“Us figuring it out as we go.”

The fear was still there. Of course it was. It lived under the joy now, not gone but quieter. There would be appointments and bloodwork and schedules and impossible decisions. There would be days when the whole thing felt too enormous to hold. There would be mistakes. He would make some. Probably a lot.

But she was sitting beside him in the morning light, building a room for their child out of colors and gentleness, and he knew with absolute clarity that he would spend the rest of his life trying to be worthy of that room.

He lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles.

“Our little mystery baby,” he said, smiling against her skin. “Extremely stylish already. Very tasteful. Possibly judging my eggs.”

He glanced toward her plate, then back to her stomach.

“Fair, honestly. They’re uneven but sincere.”

Then he leaned his shoulder into hers, gentle and warm.

“And for the record,” he said, voice soft but certain, “I don’t care where the room is yet. Apartment, house, whatever. We’ll find it.”

His eyes moved around the small apartment again—their crowded, sunlit, impossible little world.

“Somewhere with enough space for them. Enough space for you. Enough space for me to badly assemble furniture while pretending I’m nailing it.”

A smile curved his mouth.

“And enough sunlight for the vintage rug you’re absolutely going to find and pretend was ‘practically free’ even though I’ll know it wasn’t.”

He kissed her shoulder, then stayed close, his cheek brushing lightly against her hair.

“But yeah,” he whispered. “That’s what I picture too.”

A room full of sunlight.

A baby they hadn’t met yet.

Cleo beside him, making the future feel less like a cliff and more like a doorway.

Ben looked down at the napkin again, then at her.

“Okay,” he said, gently bossy again because it steadied him. “Eat more. Then maybe we look at apartments for exactly fifteen minutes and absolutely do not accidentally fall in love with a place we can’t afford.”

A beat.

His expression turned thoughtful.

“Unless it has good light.”

Another beat.

“Then we’re doomed.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo watched the exact moment the fork stopped in his hand, and warmth moved through her immediately—not because he agreed with her, but because he didn’t dismiss the vision as impractical before letting himself enter it.

Most people did.

Most people heard softness and immediately reached for realism like it was maturity.

Ben just… went there with her.

The realization settled low and steady in her chest while he set the fork down with exaggerated care, like the conversation itself required both hands now.

Her fingers stayed laced through his as he turned toward her more fully, and the movement shifted the heat of him closer along her knee beneath the counter. The apartment still carried the sleepy remains of morning around them—coffee cooling too fast, butter drying on abandoned toast, sunlight creeping slowly across the wood floor in pale uneven bands.

When he admitted he’d be the weak link about finding out early, a smile pulled at her mouth before she could stop it.

Not teasing exactly.

Fond.

Because she could already see it happening with humiliating clarity. Him trying to act normal while visibly vibrating with information. Her sister narrowing her eyes from across a room like a hawk spotting movement in a field.

Cleo’s thumb brushed once against the side of his hand in silent agreement before he kept going.

Then his voice softened.

Not a category. Just… them.

Something in her chest tightened hard enough that she stopped chewing entirely.

There it was.

The thing she’d been trying to explain without fully knowing how.

He understood.

Not perfectly, not academically, not through some rehearsed language—but instinctively. Emotionally.

That mattered more.

Her gaze dropped briefly toward the counter between them because looking directly at him suddenly felt dangerous in the way honesty sometimes did. She could feel her pulse in her throat. In her wrists. Everywhere.

And when he started talking about the moment the baby arrived—messy and exhausted and real instead of curated—her breath left slowly through her nose.

The image that hit her wasn’t visual at first.

It was sound.

His voice breaking.

A newborn crying.

Her own breathing wrecked from effort.

The thought moved through her body with startling physical force.

Then he admitted he was going to cry.

Cleo let out a quiet laugh that folded instantly into emotion before it could fully become amusement. She pressed her lips together briefly, trying to contain it, but her shoulders still shook once.

“You’re going to scare a nurse,” she murmured softly. “They’re gonna think you’re the one delivering the baby.”

Her voice came out rougher than she intended.

Because underneath the humor, something vulnerable kept opening wider every time he spoke.

Not because he sounded fearless.

Because he didn’t.

He sounded present.

His hand tightened around hers again while he talked about the room, and Cleo could feel the rhythm of his nerves in the subtle shifts of pressure against her skin. The more he described it, the more her body relaxed beside him instinctively—not into fantasy, but into recognition.

He wasn’t trying to build an image.

He was trying to build atmosphere.

A place where a person could unfold safely.

That distinction mattered so much to her she almost couldn’t bear it.

Then came the terrible onesie discussion.

The laugh escaped her immediately this time, warm and breathy and impossible to hold back, her forehead dropping briefly toward his shoulder.

“Absolutely not,” she said, already smiling against him. “You get one.”

A beat.

“And I retain veto power if it looks emotionally manipulative.”

The word father shifted something visible in him the second he said it.

Cleo saw it happen before the laugh even arrived after.

Saw the flicker of disbelief move through his face.

Saw the tiny fracture in composure.

And God, that hit her harder than she expected.

Because suddenly he looked young to her for half a second. Not immature. Just unguarded in a way men rarely let themselves be when something matters enough to scare them.

The kiss at her temple lingered warm against her skin after he pulled back, and she stayed close instead of moving away, her shoulder fully settled into his now.

Outside, a truck rumbled somewhere down the street. Pipes clicked softly in the wall beside the sink. The city kept moving around them while this tiny kitchen somehow held still.

Then he said he loved what she pictured.

Cleo’s throat tightened again immediately.

Not because he complimented it.

Because he treated her inner world like somewhere worth living in.

That feeling landed deep.

She looked down at their joined hands while his thumb moved against her skin, and emotion gathered slowly enough this time that she actually felt it building before it arrived.

Then the pen clicked.

The sound pulled her attention back up instantly.

And suddenly he was making a list on a napkin with absurd sincerity.

Cleo stared at him for one suspended second, caught between affection and disbelief.

“You’re fully nesting already,” she said quietly.

The words slipped out before she could overthink them.

Not mocking.

Wondering.

She watched the pen move while he wrote color after color after color in awful handwriting, and when he frowned at it, another laugh threatened at the corners of her mouth.

But she stayed quiet.

Because she wanted to see what else he’d add when he stopped trying to be funny.

Then he turned the napkin toward her.

Figure it out together.

Everything in her softened at once.

Not dramatically.

Not all at once like a movie.

More like a knot loosening strand by strand.

Cleo picked up the napkin carefully with her free hand, studying the messy ink like it contained something fragile.

And maybe it did.

Because beneath the list and the jokes and the breakfast and the fear, what he’d really handed her was partnership without conditions attached to it.

No pretending he knew what he was doing.

No pretending she had to either.

Just—

Together.

Her eyes burned suddenly.

She blinked once hard before lifting her gaze back to him.

“My mom is going to steal this and put it in a frame made of driftwood,” she said softly.

A watery smile pulled at her mouth.

“And then tell us the baby’s aura already likes natural fibers.”

Cleo kept looking down at the napkin for another second after speaking, thumb smoothing unconsciously over one of the creases forming through the middle of it.

The paper already looked lived in.

Coffee-smudged at the corner. Bent slightly where his wrist had pressed into it while writing.

She loved it irrationally.

Her eyes finally lifted back to him, catching the way he was still watching her—not impatiently, not waiting for the conversation to become easier or lighter, just there with her fully—and something warm unfolded low in her stomach.

It made the next words come easier.

“You know what’s funny?” she said quietly, folding one leg higher onto the stool beneath her. “I didn’t realize how unusual my childhood was until I got older.”

The sunlight had climbed far enough now that it touched the edge of her shoulder, warming the thin fabric of her shirt. Dust drifted lazily through the beam near the window. Somewhere downstairs, somebody started playing music faintly enough that only the bass traveled through the floorboards.

Cleo leaned more comfortably into him as she spoke, letting herself settle there.

“I thought everybody grew up with parents who let random people stay for weeks because they were ‘finding themselves.’”

A small smile curved at the corner of her mouth.

“Or with six unfinished art projects happening in the kitchen at all times. Or adults having full philosophical debates with children like their opinions actually mattered.”

The memories arrived in fragments instead of chronology.

Bare feet on warm decks in summer.

Beaded curtains moving in the breeze.

People laughing too loudly late at night.

Her father sanding wood outside while somebody played Fleetwood Mac through blown-out speakers.

And every single morning—

She groaned softly, dragging a hand over her face.

“Oh my God, the green drink.”

Her expression pinched immediately.

“I’m still traumatized.”

The laugh that escaped her afterward came quieter, tangled up with affection instead of annoyance.

“My mother genuinely believed spirulina could solve emotional problems.”

She turned slightly toward him, eyes narrowing with playful seriousness.

“You already know this, but I need you to understand how bad it tasted warm.”

The memory hit so vividly she could practically feel the texture again. Grainy. Bitter. Somehow both earthy and aggressively alive.

Cleo shuddered dramatically.

“And every morning before school she’d hand it to me like she was passing down sacred wisdom from the mountain.”

A beat.

“I’d be wearing fairy wings and rain boots eating toaster waffles while she explained the importance of chlorophyll.”

The image pulled another soft laugh from her, but underneath it, emotion shifted quietly through her chest.

Because for all the weirdness—

For all the green sludge and moon rituals and strangers sleeping in the guest room—

She had never doubted she was loved exactly as she arrived.

Cleo’s fingers slipped back into his slowly, grounding herself there.

“They never cared who I turned into,” she admitted, voice softer now. “Not in the way people usually mean it.”

Her gaze drifted toward the window again, thoughtful.

“There wasn’t this pressure to become one specific thing that reflected well on them. If I changed my mind constantly, nobody panicked. If I got emotional, nobody treated it like I was difficult.”

She swallowed lightly.

“I could just… exist.”

The simplicity of that still felt startling when she said it out loud.

Especially now that she was old enough to understand how rare it actually was.

Cleo turned back toward him fully then, her knee pressing more firmly against his beneath the counter.

“That’s what I want for them,” she said quietly. “Not perfection. Not some curated childhood where everything looks impressive from the outside.”

Her thumb brushed once across the side of his hand.

“I want them to feel safe being unfinished.”

The words settled between them softly.

Not polished.

True.

She smiled faintly then, eyes lowering briefly toward the napkin again.

“And honestly? If they end up slightly weird because they were raised by two emotionally intense artists and occasionally forced to drink alarming smoothies, I think that’s probably fine.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben had been smiling about the smoothie horror story—really smiling, the kind that creased his eyes and made his whole face go warm—but the expression softened into something else when she said the part about being safe unfinished.

His hand stilled around hers.

For a second, the kitchen seemed to quiet around that sentence. The ruined coffee smell, the cooling toast, the faint bass from downstairs, the low hum of the fridge—all of it became background to the way those words landed in him.

Safe being unfinished.

He looked at her like he was trying to memorize not just the way she looked in the sunlight, but the exact shape of the thought she’d handed him. Her knee pressed against his beneath the counter. Her fingers were warm between his. The napkin lay nearby with his terrible handwriting on it, suddenly feeling less like a joke and more like the first artifact of a house they hadn’t found yet.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, his voice a little rough. “That.”

He swallowed, thumb moving once across her knuckles.

“That’s exactly it.”

He turned more fully toward her, the breakfast between them temporarily abandoned, because apparently fatherhood had already begun with cold eggs and emotional ambushes at the counter.

“I want that too,” he said. “I want them to know they don’t have to arrive fully formed. Or impressive. Or easy to understand.”

A small, crooked smile tugged at his mouth, but his eyes stayed earnest.

“Which is good, because genetically speaking, they’re probably not going to be easy to understand. They’re going to come out with very strong opinions about lighting, rhythm, and soup texture.”

He glanced at the napkin, then back to her.

“And possibly terrifying handwriting. We’ll work through it as a family.”

The humor steadied him, but only barely. Beneath it, something old and tender had been stirred. He thought about his own childhood—not bad, not cold, not cruel, but different from what she was describing. More ordinary in some ways. Less porous. Fewer strangers finding themselves on the couch. Fewer adults asking children what they thought and actually waiting for the answer.

He pictured little Cleo in fairy wings and rain boots, solemnly holding a cup of warm green sludge while her mother gave a speech about chlorophyll like it was a sacrament, and the image made his chest ache with such affection he almost laughed again.

Almost.

Instead, he lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her skin. “I’m going to need a second with fairy wings and toaster waffles. That might be the most Cleo origin story I’ve ever heard.”

His smile broke through properly then.

“And I do need to say, on behalf of children everywhere, warm spirulina feels like a violation of the Geneva Convention.”

He paused, thoughtful.

“Emotionally. Spiritually. Possibly legally.”

He held her gaze, the joke folding gently into the tenderness underneath.

“But I love that you had that,” he said. “Not the swamp beverage. To be clear. I’m anti-swamp beverage.”

His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist.

“I mean the room. The permission. The not having to turn into something acceptable before you were loved.”

The words came slower now, like he was choosing each one by hand.

“I love that you know what that feels like. Because you’re going to give it to them without even thinking. It’s already how you love.”

His eyes dropped to her stomach again, still flat beneath her shirt, and the sight of her hand there almost unraveled him. It wasn’t visible yet, nothing had changed from the outside, but his whole body had already recalibrated around that place. Around them.

He leaned down, just enough to rest his forehead briefly against her shoulder.

“God,” he muttered, voice muffled in the soft fabric of her shirt. “Our baby is going to be so weird.”

A beat.

Then, with deep seriousness:

“Beautifully weird. Artistically confusing. Emotionally articulate at an alarming age.”

He lifted his head and gave her that bright, crooked look, the one that arrived whenever he was trying to charm his way around the fact that he was dangerously close to crying again.

“I’m picturing a toddler in rain boots holding a tambourine and refusing to answer to their government name.”

His brows pulled together as if he were genuinely considering it.

“Honestly? Strong brand.”

Then the softness returned before he could outrun it.

He reached for the napkin again and dragged it closer, clicking the pen with solemn purpose.

“Okay. New addition.”

Under the messy nursery list, beneath Figure it out together, he wrote slowly, concentrating harder than necessary:

Safe being unfinished.

His handwriting was still terrible. Maybe worse now, because his hand was not completely steady.

He stared at it for a moment, then nodded once.

“That stays,” he said quietly.

He turned the napkin back toward her, and his expression had gone completely open again.

“That’s the thing I want on the wall,” he said. “Not literally, unless your mom gets involved and suddenly it’s painted on reclaimed wood with pressed flowers.”

A flicker of amusement crossed his face.

“Which, honestly, I would respect.”

He leaned closer, his knee brushing hers beneath the counter.

“But that’s the feeling. That’s the house. That’s the room. That’s us.”

His voice thinned slightly on the last word, not from uncertainty, but from being overwhelmed by how naturally it fit now. Us no longer meant two people orbiting each other with history between them. It meant three. It meant their child inheriting not a perfect home, but a living one. A place with paint on the floor and guitars in corners and sunlight and too many books and at least one parent overexplaining oatmeal consistency before eight in the morning.

He could see it so clearly it frightened him.

A baby asleep against Cleo’s chest while she sketched with one hand.

A tiny hand curled around his finger while he hummed something unfinished.

A child at the table, making a mess, being loved through it.

A person allowed to become.

He exhaled slowly and squeezed her hand.

“I don’t want to be the kind of dad who needs them to make sense all the time,” he said. “I don’t want them to feel like they have to be good at something before they’re allowed to love it.”

His eyes flicked toward his guitar beside the record player.

“I want noise. Bad songs. Weird drawings. Questions that ruin dinner. Emotional breakdowns over socks. Whatever.”

A small smile.

“I mean, ideally not all in one afternoon. But I’m flexible. I’m a father now. Very mature.”

He reached for his fork, then immediately set it down again because eating still felt absurd when the future was sitting beside him with damp lashes and bare knees tucked on a stool.

“And I want them to see you like this,” he said, softer. “Not scared exactly. Not perfectly calm either. Just honest. Making room for everything you feel.”

His hand moved carefully to her stomach again.

“They’re going to learn so much from that.”

The sentence surprised him with its certainty.

He leaned in and kissed her once—slow, warm, grateful. Not to interrupt the moment, but to seal it. When he pulled back, his mouth hovered near hers for another breath before he smiled.

“But I do have one concern.”

His expression turned grave.

“If your mom introduces our child to warm spirulina before they can legally protest, I may have to intervene.”

He lifted one hand.

“Respectfully. Diplomatically. Possibly with a decoy waffle.”

A beat.

“And if you start saying things like ‘alarming smoothies’ with that nostalgic look in your eye, I’m going to need a signed waiver.”

He looked down at her stomach, speaking now with ceremonial weight.

“Tiny mystery baby, this is your father. I support your artistic freedom and emotional development. I do not support room-temperature pond juice. We’ll discuss when you’re older.”

Then he looked back at Cleo, and the joke melted into something far warmer.

“But if they’re a little weird,” he said, “good.”

His thumb traced a slow circle over her shirt.

“Weird means they were allowed to become something specific.”

His throat tightened again, but he didn’t look away.

“And loved while they were still figuring out what that was.”

The room held them there, breakfast cooling, sunlight stretching, phones still silent, the napkin between them already becoming part of the story. Ben finally picked up her fork and nudged it gently toward her plate, his mouth curving.

“Okay,” he said, voice soft but mock-stern. “Eat another bite before I start crying into the eggs and making them worse.”

He glanced at the plate.

“Which would be hard. They’re already operating on sincerity alone.”

Then he leaned his shoulder into hers, staying close enough that she could feel him when he breathed.

“And after breakfast,” he added, quieter, “we can start making room.”

A beat.

“In the apartment. In our schedules. In our terrifyingly intense artist hearts.”

His smile turned lopsided.

“And in the smoothie policy, which I believe should require unanimous parental consent.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo felt the shift in him the second the words left her mouth.

Safe being unfinished.

It moved through him visibly.

Not dramatic. Not performative. Just real enough that his hand stopped moving against hers for a beat, and something inside her softened immediately in response.

She stayed quiet while he sat with it, watching the way his expression changed around the edges when something mattered too much for humor to carry first. The kitchen suddenly felt smaller in a strangely intimate way, narrowed down to warm hands, cooling breakfast, and the morning light catching in his lashes when he looked at her like that.

Then he said that.

That’s exactly it.

The certainty in his voice hit her harder than she expected.

Because she hadn’t realized until now how afraid some part of her had been that she would fail trying to explain this correctly. That it would sound naïve or impractical or too loose around the edges to someone raised differently.

But he understood the emotional architecture of it immediately.

Her shoulders eased without her meaning to.

When he started talking about their child not needing to be impressive or easy to understand, Cleo’s mouth curved slowly upward again, affection building warm and helpless in her chest.

Then came the soup texture comment.

She snorted before she could stop herself.

An actual snort.

One hand flew briefly over her mouth while her shoulders shook with startled laughter.

“Oh my God,” she breathed, already grinning. “Absolutely horrifying.”

The image arrived instantly: some tiny intense person rejecting soup based entirely on emotional mouthfeel while the two of them argued sincerely about whether that was developmentally healthy or deeply concerning.

And somehow that future felt weirdly plausible.

The kiss against her knuckles pulled her attention back to him immediately afterward, laughter fading softer this time around the edges.

When he mentioned fairy wings and toaster waffles again, embarrassment flickered through her first—quick and instinctive—but it dissolved almost immediately beneath the look on his face.

Not teasing.

Treasuring.

That did something dangerous to her heartbeat.

Cleo looked down briefly toward their hands because the tenderness of being seen that clearly always hit too close to the center of her.

Then he started talking about the spirulina like it was an actual human rights violation, and another laugh escaped her, quieter now but full-bodied enough that she tipped forward into his shoulder for a second.

“You’re so dramatic,” she murmured against him.

But she could barely get the words out through the smile still pulling at her mouth.

The warmth didn’t last untouched for long though.

Not because he changed.

Because he got quieter.

And when he started talking about permission instead of green drinks, the air shifted again.

Cleo felt it.

Felt the exact second the conversation stopped being playful and became something frighteningly sincere.

Her fingers tightened around his automatically.

He kept speaking slowly, carefully, like he didn’t want to rush past the truth accidentally, and every sentence landed deeper than the last.

It’s already how you love.

That one nearly undid her.

Not visibly at first.

But her chest tightened so hard it became difficult to breathe normally for a second.

Because he said it like it was obvious.

Like she wasn’t trying.

Like love naturally moved through her that way without effort.

Nobody had ever framed her softness as competence before.

The realization cracked through her quietly enough that she almost missed it.

Then his forehead rested briefly against her shoulder.

And the sound of his voice there—muffled, overwhelmed, affectionate—made her eyes burn instantly.

Our baby is going to be so weird.

Cleo laughed through the sting gathering behind her eyes, one hand sliding instinctively into his hair for half a second before resting against the back of his neck.

“Weird in a deeply committed way,” she whispered.

Then came the toddler image.

Rain boots. Tambourine. Refusing their government name.

The laugh that tore out of her this time was helpless.

Full.

She folded toward him again, forehead briefly against his shoulder while she tried unsuccessfully to recover.

“Oh, no,” she managed between breaths. “That’s real. That child already exists somewhere.”

Her stomach actually hurt from laughing now, which felt surreal after crying in the bathroom barely an hour ago.

Then the pen clicked again.

Cleo straightened slowly, still smiling as she watched him drag the napkin back closer with complete seriousness.

The shift fascinated her every time.

How quickly he moved from joking to reverent when something mattered.

She watched him write.

Safe being unfinished.

The sight of the words in his messy handwriting hit differently than hearing them spoken aloud. More permanent somehow. Tangible.

Her smile faded softer at the edges.

Then he said he wanted that feeling on the wall.

Not literally.

And Cleo immediately pictured her mother doing exactly that anyway.

The image arrived so vividly she laughed under her breath.

“She absolutely would,” she said quietly. “And she’d cry while sealing it with beeswax.”

Her thumb traced absentmindedly over the edge of the napkin while he kept talking, his knee brushing hers beneath the counter.

That’s the house. That’s the room. That’s us.

The us landed differently now than it used to.

He was right.

It didn’t feel theoretical anymore.

It felt inhabited already.

Cleo could practically see pieces of it flickering through him while he spoke—future memories forming in real time behind his eyes. She recognized the look because artists always got it when imagination stopped being abstract and became emotionally physical.

When he started talking about bad songs and ruined dinners and emotional breakdowns over socks, warmth spread through her again, slower this time.

Steadier.

“You say that now,” she murmured, watching him abandon the fork again almost immediately. “But wait until somebody screams for forty minutes because the moon looks judgmental.”

A tiny smile tugged at her mouth.

“Which, genetically, feels possible here.”

Then he said he wanted their child to see her honest.

Not fearless.

Not composed.

Honest.

The hand against her stomach made her inhale softly without meaning to.

Every time he touched her there, her body reacted before thought caught up. Heat bloomed low in her abdomen. Emotion followed immediately after.

Because he touched her like there was already someone there listening.

The kiss interrupted the spiral before it could pull her under entirely.

Slow.

Warm.

Grateful.

Cleo melted into it instinctively, one hand lifting to his jaw while the morning seemed to suspend around them again for one lingering second.

When he pulled back, she stayed close enough to feel his breath against her mouth.

Then his expression shifted grave.

And she knew immediately he was about to say something ridiculous.

The spirulina intervention nearly broke her again.

Especially when he started addressing the baby directly like a tiny legal representative.

By the time he finished condemning room-temperature pond juice, Cleo was openly laughing again, eyes wet, face warm, shoulders loose in a way they hadn’t been all morning.

“You are absolutely getting outvoted eventually,” she informed him softly. “If they come home from kindergarten wanting chia seeds in everything, that’s between you and the universe.”

But the humor faded gently when he looked back at her afterward.

Weird means they were allowed to become something specific.

That landed deep enough to quiet her immediately.

Not because it sounded poetic.

Because it sounded true.

Her gaze held his while his thumb moved over her shirt, and something inside her settled with frightening certainty.

This.

Not perfection.

Not certainty.

This.

The warmth. The fear. The honesty. The room they were already building emotionally before they ever found a physical one.

The fork nudged toward her plate pulled a quiet huff of laughter from her nose.

“Bossy,” she murmured automatically.

Still, she took another bite.

The eggs really were terrible now.

She chewed anyway while he leaned into her again, talking about making room.

The words wrapped around her slowly.

In the apartment.

In their schedules.

In their terrifyingly intense artist hearts.

Cleo swallowed, then turned her face toward him fully again, one hand lifting to touch the side of his neck gently.

“I think,” she said softly, “we already started.”

Cleo stayed close to him for another quiet second after speaking, her hand resting against the side of his neck while the apartment settled gently around them again.

The emotional intensity of the morning hadn’t disappeared, but it had changed temperature somehow. Earlier it had felt sharp and breathless and impossible to hold all at once.

Now it felt lived in.

Warm.

The kind of warmth that lingered in old kitchens and soft sweaters and conversations that changed people permanently without needing to announce it.

She watched him for a moment longer before finally taking another bite of eggs purely because he’d clearly committed himself to monitoring her breakfast intake like it was now part of his parental duties.

The eggs were objectively awful at this point.

Cold. Slightly rubbery. Too much pepper in one section and none in another.

Cleo smiled anyway while she chewed.

“Sincere,” she repeated quietly after swallowing, glancing toward the plate. “That’s a very compassionate way to describe these.”

Her foot brushed his beneath the stool.

Outside, the city had fully woken up now. Car horns drifted faintly through the windows. Someone downstairs was laughing loudly enough to carry through the pipes. Sunlight stretched farther across the apartment floor, reaching the legs of the table where the tests still sat beside abandoned coffee cups like evidence from another lifetime.

Except it hadn’t even been two hours.

That realization still felt surreal.

Cleo finished the last bite slowly, then reached automatically for her mug before remembering the coffee had gone cold too.

She grimaced faintly.

“Everything in this kitchen has emotionally moved on from breakfast.”

Still, she drank a sip anyway.

Terrible.

Her face pinched immediately.

Ben caught it, which only made her laugh under her breath as she finally slid off the stool.

The hardwood felt cool beneath her bare feet when she crossed toward the table where both of their phones still sat untouched beside the pregnancy tests. The screen of hers lit immediately the second she picked it up.

And—

“Oh my God.”

The words burst out of her before she could stop them.

Not panicked.

Overwhelmed.

Her shoulder shook once with a disbelieving laugh while notifications continued stacking faster than she could process them.

Texts.

Voicemails.

Photos.

Three missed FaceTimes from her mother.

Cleo unlocked the phone, thumb moving quickly while Ben stayed behind her close enough that she could still feel his warmth near her back.

The first thing waiting at the top was a video message.

Of course it was.

She opened it immediately.

And there her mother was—fully crying already, wrapped in some loose embroidered robe with wet hair and absolutely no concern for dignity whatsoever.

The video began mid-emotion.

Cleo pressed her lips together hard trying not to laugh while listening.

By the end of it, her mother was talking directly to “tiny cosmic baby” through the camera and promising to start knitting immediately despite never successfully finishing anything knitted in her life.

Cleo covered her mouth with one hand, shoulders shaking.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, eyes burning all over again. “She’s fully gone.”

But she was smiling too hard for the words to sound remotely critical.

Another message came through while she stood there.

Then another.

Her sister: i already bought a tiny plant. not for the baby. for emotional support.

One from an old family friend asking if the baby would “prefer natural fibers.”

A photo of her dad holding up a bottle of expensive champagne looking stunned in the background while her mother visibly cried beside him.

Everything about it felt exactly right.

Ridiculous.

Loving.

Immediate.

Cleo leaned back unconsciously until her shoulder brushed Ben’s chest behind her, grounding herself there while she answered messages one by one.

Her fingers moved slower after the first few.

Not because she didn’t know what to say.

Because emotion kept catching up to her in waves.

Everyone was happy.

Not cautiously supportive.

Not politely excited.

Happy.

The realization loosened something in her she hadn’t fully noticed was still tight.

When she finally lowered the phone slightly, her eyes drifted toward the window again where sunlight now flooded almost the entire living room floor.

The apartment looked different in daytime.

Messier.

Smaller.

Real.

Sketchbooks stacked beside the couch. Records leaning crookedly near the player. One of Ben’s sweaters hanging off the chair from the night before.

And somehow she loved it more now than she had yesterday.

Cleo turned finally, resting back against the edge of the table while looking up at him.

Her face still carried traces of crying and laughing both.

“My mother says the baby already has ‘gentle energy,’” she informed him solemnly.

A beat.

“She also said she’s making a blessing basket.”

Her expression broke immediately afterward.

“I don’t know what that means.”

The laugh that followed came softer this time, quieter around the edges from emotional exhaustion finally beginning to settle into her bones.

She reached for his hand again automatically.

Then looked down briefly toward her stomach before back up at him.

The room went still around the realization moving through her.

Not overwhelming now.

Certain.

This was real.

And somehow, against every instinct she’d had to panic earlier—

It felt good.

Scary.

Huge.

But good.

Cleo stepped closer until she could fold herself against him properly, cheek resting near his collarbone while she exhaled slowly.

“We should probably take a nap before we accidentally make seventeen life-changing decisions today,” she murmured.

A beat.

“Because right now I feel emotionally capable of buying a farmhouse and raising bees.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo woke before she understood why.

Sleep released her so abruptly that for a few disoriented seconds she simply lay there staring into the darkness, listening to the steady rhythm of the ceiling fan overhead while her body tried to explain what her mind hadn’t caught up to yet. A slow, uneasy roll moved through her stomach, beginning low before climbing higher until it settled beneath her ribs with an unmistakable heaviness that made her stay perfectly still. Maybe if she didn’t move, if she just breathed through it, whatever this was would fade as quickly as it had arrived.

She swallowed.

The instant she did, her mouth flooded with saliva.

Her eyes closed.

“Oh…”

The whisper barely disturbed the room.

She knew that feeling now. It had happened enough times over the past week that her body no longer needed an introduction. The strange rush of saliva always came first, as though it was politely announcing that the nausea was only a few seconds behind it. Sure enough, another wave rolled through her, stronger this time, tightening her stomach until she instinctively pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and swallowed again, hoping the sensation would disappear.

It didn’t.

If anything, it became worse.

More saliva gathered immediately, relentless enough that she parted her lips on a slow breath, trying not to think about it because thinking about it somehow always made the nausea climb another notch.

She cracked one eye open and turned her head toward the bedside clock.

2:47.

Morning sickness was such a ridiculous name.

There wasn’t a single thing about this that respected mornings.

Beside her, Ben hadn’t stirred. He remained exactly where sleep had left him, one arm stretched lazily across the mattress toward the space she’d occupied moments before, his breathing deep and even beneath the quiet hum of the fan. Moonlight slipped between the curtains, washing soft silver across the room and catching the edges of his hair where it disappeared into the pillow.

Cleo watched him for a moment, another swallow catching in her throat as her mouth watered all over again.

She really didn’t want to wake him.

Over the last couple of weeks he’d quietly adjusted his entire routine around hers without making it feel like she was being monitored. Crackers somehow appeared on her nightstand before bed. Ice water was always colder than she remembered pouring it. He’d started carrying little snacks everywhere because he’d realized asking if she’d eaten recently worked far better than asking if she was hungry. He worried enough already.

She could handle one middle-of-the-night bathroom trip on her own.

Another wave interrupted the thought so sharply that she bent forward slightly before she could stop herself, one hand flattening instinctively over the top of her stomach while the other covered her mouth. The saliva came again in a rush so sudden she almost laughed at how absurd pregnancy could be.

“Okay,” she breathed to herself, keeping her voice barely above a whisper. “We’re getting up.”

She eased the blankets away inch by careful inch until her feet found the cool hardwood floor. The change in temperature grounded her for a heartbeat, long enough that she thought she might have caught it in time. She stood slowly, waiting for the room to settle before taking her first step toward the bedroom door.

The hope lasted exactly that first step.

By the second, her stomach lurched again.

By the third, her mouth filled so quickly she had to stop and swallow, bracing one hand against the doorframe while she concentrated on breathing through her nose. She could already feel the nausea climbing higher, no longer sitting comfortably beneath her ribs but working relentlessly upward until it seemed to occupy her entire chest.

“Oh, God…”

The words came out small and strained.

She pushed herself away from the doorway and padded into the hallway, careful at first not to make enough noise to wake Ben. Then the faintest lingering smell of dinner drifted from the kitchen.

It wasn’t even strong.

Hours had passed.

The dishes had been washed.

The counters were clean.

But pregnancy caught it anyway.

Her stomach flipped violently.

Another rush of saliva flooded her mouth so fast her eyes widened, and every instinct abandoned quiet in favor of urgency. One hand flew back over her mouth while the other found the wall for balance as she hurried toward the bathroom, bare feet whispering across the hardwood, her heart suddenly pounding with the singular determination to reach the sink before her body decided waiting was no longer an option.

The bathroom light stayed off.

Cleo reached the sink by memory alone, moonlight spilling through the small bathroom window, just enough to separate the outlines of the counter from the walls. Her palm landed against the cool quartz, fingers spreading as she bent over it, another violent surge of saliva filling her mouth so quickly she barely had time to lean toward the basin.

She closed her eyes.

Breathed once.

Twice.

Her stomach tightened hard enough to steal the air from her lungs.

The first heave came without warning.

She caught herself against the counter, shoulders trembling with the effort of keeping it as quiet as she possibly could. Every muscle in her abdomen contracted painfully, her throat burning as she tried to muffle the sound behind tightly pressed lips. Tears sprang instantly to her eyes, not from emotion but from the sheer force of it, blurring what little light the room offered.

“Oh…”

It escaped anyway.

Barely audible.

She hated that it escaped.

Another wave followed before she’d fully recovered from the first, stronger this time, leaving her body no choice but to surrender. She gripped the edge of the sink harder, knuckles whitening beneath the pale light, willing herself not to make noise.

Ben was asleep.

Finally.

The last few weeks had already changed his sleep into something lighter than she’d ever known it to be. He woke when she shifted too quickly beneath the blankets. He woke when she lingered in the bathroom a little longer than usual. He woke because she sighed differently.

She didn’t want him waking tonight.

He deserved one night where his body wasn’t listening for hers.

One night where he wasn’t calculating how many crackers she’d managed to eat before bed or whether she’d kept dinner down or if she needed another glass of ice water.

He deserved uninterrupted sleep.

Her stomach disagreed.

Another cramp folded through her so suddenly she doubled over farther, forehead nearly touching her forearm as another quiet retch shook through her. She tried swallowing between breaths, tried calming the relentless watering of her mouth, but every swallow only seemed to invite the next wave.

She squeezed her eyes tighter.

“It’s okay,” she whispered hoarsely to herself, barely shaping the words. “It’s okay.”

The reassurance wasn’t convincing.

She wasn’t frightened.

Just exhausted.

Exhausted in that peculiar way pregnancy seemed determined to invent, where her body could sleep for ten hours and still feel wrung out before sunrise. Every heave left her weaker than the one before it, her knees beginning to shake beneath her as she stayed bent over the sink, breathing through her nose in slow, careful pulls while waiting to see if another wave was coming.

For a few precious seconds, nothing happened.

The silence settled around her again.

The fan hummed softly overhead.

Somewhere outside, a car rolled past on the street, its tires whispering over pavement before disappearing into the distance.

Cleo reached blindly for the faucet, letting cold water run over her fingertips before cupping a little into her mouth. She rinsed carefully, spit into the sink, then rested both palms against the counter again, lowering her head between her shoulders.

Maybe…

Maybe that had been it.

Maybe she could sneak back into bed before Ben even realized she’d left.

The thought had barely formed when her stomach rolled once more.

She let out the smallest, defeated little sigh.

“Oh, Sage…” she murmured under her breath, one hand drifting instinctively to the gentle, still almost invisible curve low beneath her sleep shirt. Her thumb rubbed there once, absentmindedly, while she stood waiting for her own body to decide whether it was finally finished with her for the night.

“I love you,” she whispered, her voice scratchy from the nausea, “but you’re making some very questionable choices.”

The warning came so suddenly she didn’t have time to convince herself it might pass.

Her stomach lurched with a force that stole the breath from her chest, another flood of saliva filling her mouth as she clamped her lips together, one hand flying from the counter to cover them.

No.

Not the sink.

She barely managed to turn before another violent cramp folded through her middle.

The few hurried steps to the toilet felt impossibly far.

She dropped to her knees, one hand catching the edge of the seat while the other hurriedly lifted the lid, her breathing already shallow, already broken into uneven little gasps as another wave climbed relentlessly upward.

“Oh…”

The sound dissolved into a helpless retch.

Her body gave up the fight all at once.

She leaned over the toilet as sickness overtook her, shoulders shaking with the effort of keeping herself as quiet as possible. Every muscle from her ribs to her back tightened painfully, another heave following before she’d fully caught her breath from the first. Tears streamed unchecked down her face, her eyes squeezed shut as she gripped the porcelain so tightly her fingertips ached.

It burned.

God, it burned.

She swallowed reflexively between waves, immediately regretting it as the familiar rush of saliva returned, warning her there was more.

Her forehead rested briefly against her forearm where it balanced on the edge of the seat. She tried breathing through her nose.

In.

Out.

Slow.

Maybe…

Her stomach answered before she’d even finished the thought.

Another heave bent her forward again, weaker than the last but no less miserable, leaving her coughing softly afterward, careful to keep every sound trapped low in her throat.

Don’t wake him.

Please don’t wake him.

She knew Ben.

If he heard even one unmistakable sound, he’d be in the bathroom before she could wipe her face, looking at her with those worried eyes that made her heart ache almost as much as her stomach did.

He couldn’t fix this.

He’d still try.

That was exactly why she wanted him asleep.

The nausea finally loosened its grip by degrees instead of all at once, retreating slowly enough that she didn’t trust it. She stayed where she was, kneeling on the cool tile floor, one arm draped over the closed lid while she waited for her own body to make another decision.

Nothing.

Just trembling.

Her breathing gradually evened out, though every inhale still felt raw against the back of her throat. She reached for the toilet paper with unsteady fingers, wiping at the tears beneath her eyes before pressing the flush with a tired hand.

The rush of water sounded deafening in the quiet house.

She winced instinctively, her gaze darting toward the bathroom door.

“…Sorry,” she whispered to no one in particular, though she wasn’t entirely sure whether she meant Ben, herself, or the tiny life quietly growing inside her.

Her hand drifted once more to the barely-there curve beneath her sleep shirt.

“I know,” she murmured, her voice hoarse. “We’re doing our best.”

She stayed on the bathroom floor another minute anyway, too drained to stand just yet, listening to the house settle around her and hoping—more than anything—that the bedroom down the hall remained quiet.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben woke to the flush.

Not fully, at first. The sound threaded through sleep like something distant and misplaced, tugging him out of a dream he couldn’t remember. For a few seconds, he lay there with his eyes closed, one hand moving automatically across the mattress toward Cleo.

Empty.

That woke him the rest of the way.

He opened his eyes to the dim room, the fan circling overhead, the sheets cool where she should have been. His body went tight before his mind had a chance to catch up. Then he heard the faintest sound from down the hall—water running, then stopping. A small shift. Barely anything.

But he knew her silences now.

This one had weight.

Ben sat up slowly, careful not to make the bed creak beneath him, and swung his feet to the floor. The apartment was dark except for the thin spill of streetlight through the curtains, everything washed in that blue-gray middle-of-the-night stillness that made ordinary objects look unfamiliar. His T-shirt clung slightly where sleep had warmed it. His heart had already started doing the wrong thing—too fast, too loud, too ready to imagine disaster.

He made himself breathe.

She didn’t need panic.

She needed him useful.

So he moved quietly.

At the bathroom door, he paused just long enough to take in the shape of her in the dark: kneeling on the tile, folded near the toilet, one hand against her stomach, her shoulders small and exhausted beneath her sleep shirt. The sight hit him harder than he expected. Not because he hadn’t known she’d been sick. He knew. Of course he knew. The crackers on the nightstand, the emergency snacks in every bag, the way she’d gone pale at the smell of garlic two nights ago and then apologized like her body had committed a social offense.

But seeing her alone on the floor trying not to need him made something hurt.

He stepped in softly.

“Hey,” he murmured, voice low enough not to startle the whole room. “It’s me.”

He didn’t turn on the overhead light. Too harsh. Too bright. Instead, he reached back and nudged the hallway light on, letting a dim strip of warmth fall across the bathroom floor. Enough to see by. Not enough to make the room feel exposed.

Then he crouched beside her.

Every instinct in him wanted to ask ten questions at once. How long? Did she throw up? Was she dizzy? Was she cramping? Did she need the doctor? Was she okay? Was the baby okay? But the questions stacked too quickly and none of them belonged in the first second.

So he started smaller.

“Don’t move yet.”

Gentle. Not commanding.

One hand settled carefully between her shoulder blades, warm through the thin fabric of her shirt. He kept the touch light at first, giving her room to lean away if she needed to. When she didn’t, his palm spread a little more firmly, steadying her where her body still trembled.

“Just stay there a second,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

He reached for the clean hand towel hanging by the sink, ran it under cool water, wrung it out with one hand, and folded it clumsily before pressing it against the back of her neck. His movements were quiet, practical, almost painfully controlled. Inside, he was a mess. A roaring, helpless mess. But his hands stayed calm.

That was the only thing that mattered.

The tile was cold under his knees when he lowered himself fully beside her. He didn’t mention that she’d tried not to wake him. Didn’t tell her she should have. Didn’t make her guilt bigger by naming it too soon. He just sat there in the dim bathroom, one hand on her back, the other holding the cloth to her neck while the house breathed around them.

The fan hummed in the bedroom.

A car passed outside.

The night held its breath.

“You’re okay,” he said softly, because even if he couldn’t know that in every medical sense, he could give her the sentence as a place to rest. “Miserable. But okay.”

His thumb moved once, slow, over the curve of her shoulder blade.

“And before you apologize, don’t.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, though his chest still felt tight.

“I know you. You’re loading one up.”

He shifted enough to look at her face, seeing the tear tracks, the damp lashes, the tired pinch at her mouth. Something fierce moved through him then, immediate and useless and almost frightening. He wanted to bargain with biology. Fight nausea in an alley. Write a complaint to the concept of first trimester symptoms and make it legally binding.

Instead, he brushed a stray piece of hair away from her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I know I can’t fix this.”

That was the worst part.

The helplessness.

He could bring water. Crackers. Towels. He could drive her to appointments and memorize the list of foods that turned traitor overnight. He could hold her hair and rub her back and sleep lightly enough to hear a breath change from another room.

But he could not take this part from her.

His hand slid lower, just for a moment, to cover hers where it rested against her stomach. Careful. Reverent even now, even here.

“Tiny Sage,” he whispered, voice warm but threaded with exhausted disbelief, “we love you very much, but this is a hostile work environment.”

The joke was barely a joke. More a small candle lit in a dark room.

He looked back at Cleo.

“Can I get you water?” he asked. “Or do you want to sit here first?”

He waited.

Not pushing. Not rushing her up. If she wanted silence, he could give her silence. If she wanted to lean against him on the bathroom floor until the nausea decided whether it was done with her, he would become furniture. Happily.

After a moment, he reached blindly toward the cabinet beneath the sink and pulled out the little sleeve of crackers he’d started keeping there three days ago, because she’d once looked at him like he was absurd for stocking multiple rooms and then eaten two with the seriousness of a person surviving wilderness conditions.

He set them on the counter within reach.

“Emergency bathroom crackers,” he said under his breath. “Not glamorous. Very strategic.”

Then he leaned back against the tub beside her, close enough that his knee touched her hip, the damp towel still cradled in his hand.

He was wide awake now. Completely. The kind of awake that came with fear and love and the knowledge that the person he loved was suffering in a way he could only witness. But he kept his voice even. Kept his breathing slow. Kept the world around her as small as he could.

No lights.

No fuss.

No big reaction.

Just him, beside her, in the quiet.

“You don’t have to talk,” he said after a while, softer than the water dripping once from the faucet. “You can just be mad at pregnancy in silence. I support that.”

His gaze stayed on her face, tender and worried despite every effort to tame it.

“But I’m here.”

A beat.

“And I’m staying.”

Ben settled more fully onto the tile, shoulder brushing the side of the tub, prepared to remain there as long as she needed. Morning would come eventually. The nausea would ease or return. The day would ask things of them again.

For now, there was only the bathroom, the moonlight, the cool cloth, Cleo’s breathing, and the tiny life making questionable choices beneath her hand.

He pressed his palm gently to her back again.

“Take your time,” he murmured. “We’re not going anywhere.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo heard the flush before she heard him.

The rush of water echoed through the quiet apartment, louder than it ever seemed during the day, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a second, her forehead dipping toward the closed toilet lid as she silently willed the pipes to be quieter than they were. It was ridiculous, really. The sound had already happened. There was nothing she could do to pull it back into the walls. Still, she sat there listening, every muscle in her body instinctively waiting for the bedroom door down the hall.

When she heard the faint shift of footsteps instead, disappointment settled gently into her chest.

Not because he was coming.

Because she’d failed.

She’d wanted one night where he slept through until morning without listening for her.

His voice reached her before his hand did, soft enough that it barely disturbed the stillness in the room. The familiar cadence loosened something inside her immediately, even as another part of her wished he had stayed asleep. She kept her eyes closed while he moved around her, listening to the quiet click of the hallway light instead of the overhead fixture. Warm amber light slipped across the bathroom floor, stretching over the tile until it reached her knees without ever forcing her to squint.

Of course he’d remembered.

He always remembered.

She became aware of him lowering himself beside her before she actually looked at him, the floor giving the faintest protest beneath his weight. The warmth coming off him reached her first, followed by the gentle instruction not to move. It wasn’t an order. It wasn’t even really a request. It sounded like someone trying to hold the world still long enough for her body to catch up with itself.

She obeyed without thinking.

The moment his hand settled between her shoulder blades, the trembling she’d been suppressing finally escaped. Not dramatically. Just a quiet shudder that ran through her shoulders before disappearing again beneath the steady pressure of his palm.

“I was trying…” she managed, pausing to swallow carefully when her throat protested the effort. Her voice sounded scraped raw in the quiet room. “…I was trying not to wake you.”

The cool towel settled against the back of her neck a heartbeat later, drawing an involuntary breath from her as the temperature shocked her overheated skin before melting into relief. She hadn’t realized how warm she’d become until then. The cold spread slowly across the back of her neck, easing some of the tension she’d been carrying there, and she let herself lean into it instead of fighting it.

The apartment settled around them again. The ceiling fan continued its slow rotation in the bedroom, the distant traffic outside softened into little more than white noise, and somewhere inside the walls the plumbing finished its quiet complaint. Everything else remained still.

His reassurance reached her gently, without trying to convince her of something she couldn’t feel. Miserable was accurate. She appreciated that he didn’t pretend otherwise.

When he told her not to apologize before she’d even spoken, a tired little breath escaped her that almost became a laugh.

“I hate that you know me that well,” she murmured, though there wasn’t a trace of resentment behind it. If anything, the words carried affection worn thin by exhaustion. She had been about to apologize. For waking him. For being sick. For kneeling on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night while he should have been asleep. He had intercepted every one of those apologies before they ever reached her mouth.

She finally lifted her eyes to him.

The dim hallway light softened the worry on his face, but it couldn’t hide it completely. He looked awake now. Completely awake. Not annoyed. Not frustrated. Just concerned in that quiet, attentive way he’d developed over the last several weeks, as though some part of him had permanently recalibrated itself to listen for her.

His fingers brushed the hair away from her cheek.

The gesture was so gentle it made her throat tighten in an entirely different way.

When he apologized because he couldn’t fix it, she shook her head before she even found the words. The movement was small, careful, but immediate.

“No,” she whispered. “Don’t be sorry.”

Her hand shifted beneath his until her fingers found his where they rested over hers, curling lightly around them. She wanted him to feel the answer before she spoke it.

“You don’t have to fix it. That’s never been your job.” She paused, letting another slow breath settle through her while she listened to her stomach, testing whether another wave was waiting. Finding only the lingering ache, she continued more quietly. “You being here is enough. I don’t feel like I’m doing it alone anymore.”

His hand moved over hers, both of them resting against the tiny life that had already managed to rearrange their nights, and then came the quiet complaint directed at Sage.

Despite herself, she laughed.

It came out rough around the edges, interrupted by the lingering burn in her throat, but it was unmistakably laughter. She bowed her head for a second, smiling into the darkness between them before looking back up.

“I think HR would absolutely side with me,” she said, her voice still hoarse. “I’ve got a very strong case.”

Then she noticed the crackers.

For a second she simply stared at the little sleeve sitting on the counter, her tired brain taking longer than it should have to understand why they were there. When it finally clicked, she looked back at him with an expression that landed somewhere between disbelief and overwhelming affection.

“…You put crackers in the bathroom.”

She could picture it so clearly it almost made her laugh again. Ben standing in here during the day, quietly stocking the cabinet like he was preparing emergency supply stations throughout the apartment, never mentioning it because mentioning it wasn’t the point. He had simply seen a problem before she’d had one and solved the part he actually could.

Her eyes stung again.

Not from being sick this time.

Carefully, she shifted sideways until her shoulder rested against his, then let herself lean a little farther, the side of her head settling against him. The warmth of his T-shirt soaked into her temple, grounding her more effectively than the cold tile ever could.

She stayed there for several slow breaths before speaking again.

“I think I’m done,” she murmured, though uncertainty lingered beneath the words. “At least… I hope I am.”

She didn’t trust the statement enough to say it with confidence.

Pregnancy had taught her that certainty lasted only until the next wave arrived.

A yawn caught her unexpectedly, stretching her jaw wide enough to water her eyes again. She covered it automatically, blinking heavily afterward.

“I just want to brush my teeth,” she said, her voice barely louder than the hum of the bathroom fan. “Then I want to go back to bed.”

Her fingers traced one slow line across the back of his hand before becoming still again.

“And next time…” A sleepy smile touched the corner of her mouth, stubborn despite everything. “I’m probably still going to try not to wake you.”

She opened her eyes enough to meet his, warmth replacing the apology she’d almost offered earlier.

“I already know you’re going to ignore that.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben’s mouth softened before he could stop it.

There she was on the bathroom floor, pale and exhausted and still stubborn enough to make a policy statement about future secrecy during nausea emergencies. Even half-wrecked in the middle of the night, she was trying to protect his sleep like it was some fragile civic resource.

It made him want to laugh.

It made him want to cry.

Mostly, it made him love her so intensely that for a second he had to look down at their joined hands to steady himself.

“Yeah,” he murmured, thumb moving carefully over her knuckles. “I am going to lovingly and respectfully ignore that every time.”

His voice stayed low, but there was no uncertainty in it.

“Just so we’re clear. You can try. Very noble. Very doomed.”

He gave her a small, tired smile, one that belonged only to the dim bathroom and the soft amber spill of hallway light.

“I’m not sleeping through you being sick on the floor. That’s not happening. Put it in the minutes.”

The attempt at humor was gentle, there to soften the edge without brushing away what mattered. Because beneath it, he meant every word. He meant it in the marrow. He meant it with his whole half-asleep, frightened, uselessly devoted body. She could want to spare him. She could plan around him. She could try to slip quietly out of bed and make herself small in the dark so he didn’t have to wake.

He would still come.

Every time.

Ben shifted the cool cloth away from the back of her neck and folded it once more, setting it on the edge of the tub within reach. Then he studied her for a second—not obviously, not in a way that would make her feel observed like a problem, but enough to take inventory. Her color was better than it had been when he first stepped in. Still drained. Still shaky. But present.

“All right,” he whispered. “Let’s get you up slow.”

He stood first, knees protesting faintly from the tile, then bent toward her with both hands offered. Not tugging. Not rushing. One hand found hers, the other settled at her elbow, steady and warm. When she began to rise, he moved with her inch by inch, bracing her without making a production of it. The last thing he wanted was for care to feel like panic.

Still, his body stayed alert to every shift of hers.

The small sway when she reached her feet made his hand slide instinctively to her waist.

“Easy,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”

Once she was standing, he didn’t let go right away. He kept one palm at the small of her back while she found her balance, his other hand reaching toward the sink to turn the faucet on low. The water sounded loud in the stillness, but gentler than the flush had, a thin silver stream catching the dim light.

He handed her the toothbrush and uncapped the toothpaste for her because the gesture was small and ordinary and he needed the relief of being able to do something. The mint scent rose sharp and clean into the air, cutting through the sour aftermath of sickness. He watched her face carefully when she leaned toward the sink, ready for the smell to make things worse, ready to abandon the whole plan if her body changed its mind.

It didn’t.

Not immediately, at least.

So he stayed beside her, close enough that his hip brushed the counter, one hand resting lightly against her back while she brushed her teeth. He looked anywhere except directly at her mouth because even now, especially now, he wanted to leave her some dignity. His gaze found the little sleeve of crackers on the counter instead. Then the towel. Then the moonlight on the bathroom floor.

He had never thought fatherhood would begin in fragments like this.

Emergency crackers in the bathroom.

A woman he loved rinsing toothpaste from her mouth at nearly three in the morning.

A baby no bigger than a secret making questionable choices from the dark.

His throat tightened around a laugh that didn’t quite come out.

When she finished, he reached for a clean cup, filled it halfway, and held it for her while she rinsed. Then he took the toothbrush from her and set it back in its place, aligning it beside his without meaning to. Their toothbrushes leaned there together in the faint light, domestic and ridiculous and suddenly enough to make his chest ache.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Bed.”

He didn’t ask if she could walk. He could see the answer in the heavy line of her shoulders, in the way exhaustion had started to pull at her features again now that the worst of the nausea had backed off. He slipped an arm around her, not carrying her but letting her lean as much as she wanted, then guided her out of the bathroom and into the hallway.

The apartment felt different at night. Larger somehow, hollowed by quiet. The floorboards were cool under his feet. A faint stripe of streetlight reached across the living room, touching the edge of a canvas propped near the wall, a pair of shoes, the soft disorder of their life together. Somewhere outside, a car rolled past slowly, then disappeared. The whole city seemed to be holding its breath around them.

Ben moved at her pace.

No hurry.

No lecture about waking him.

No list of things they needed to try tomorrow, though part of his brain was already building one. Ginger. Different crackers. Ask the doctor. More water by the bed. Maybe a bowl just in case. Maybe move the trash can closer. Maybe learn to sleep with one eye open, like a deeply anxious pirate.

Not now.

Now was just getting her back beneath the covers.

When they reached the bedroom, he released her only long enough to pull the blanket aside. The bed still held the shape of them from before, sheets twisted where she’d slipped out, his pillow creased from sleep he no longer wanted without her in it. He helped her sit first, then settle back, guiding the blanket over her legs and up around her shoulders with absurd care.

Tucking her in should not have felt like a vow.

It did anyway.

He smoothed the edge of the blanket near her arm, then adjusted the pillow behind her head. His hand lingered briefly at her hairline, brushing back the loose strands that had escaped in the bathroom.

“You’re okay,” he whispered again, quieter now. “And I know miserable still counts as okay in a very annoying technical sense.”

He leaned down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. She was warm, but not frighteningly so. He let himself check without making it obvious, lips lingering just long enough to read what his hands couldn’t.

Then he reached to the nightstand and shifted the glass of water closer.

Crackers too.

Of course.

He slid back into bed carefully, trying not to jostle the mattress too much. The second he was under the covers, he turned toward her and eased closer, slow enough that she could pull away if another wave came, but with no real desire to leave distance between them. His arm slipped around her gently, drawing her into the warmth of his chest, careful of her stomach even though there was nothing visible yet, careful of all of her because the whole day and every day after had taught him a new kind of tenderness.

The fan continued its slow rotation overhead. The hallway light still spilled faintly through the cracked bedroom door, turning the room soft at the edges. Ben lay there awake with her tucked against him, chest still tight with worry, heart still tender from the sound of her whispering to their baby in the dark.

He looked at her face, tired and pale against the pillow, and kept his voice barely above the hush of the room.

“Next time,” he murmured, “you wake me.”

A beat.

His hand moved slowly along her back, steady and warm.

“Or don’t. And I’ll come anyway.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo watched the change in his mouth before his voice followed it, and the sight made the tired smile on her own face deepen despite the soreness still burning along the back of her throat. She knew that look. It was the one he got when her stubbornness had stopped being irritating and crossed into something he found inexplicably endearing, which felt deeply unfair considering she was still sitting on a bathroom floor at nearly three in the morning with tear tracks drying against her cheeks. His thumb moved over her knuckles, careful enough that she felt every slow pass of skin, and when he made his future intentions perfectly clear, she gave him a long, sleepy look that carried absolutely no surprise. “I know,” she murmured, her voice hoarse but warm. “That’s why I said it. I wanted my objection formally recorded before you ignored it.”

The certainty in his tone loosened the last bit of guilt she’d been carrying about waking him, although she still wasn’t prepared to admit that aloud. She lowered her eyes to their joined hands instead, watching his thumb continue its quiet path while the amber light from the hallway stretched across his wrist and disappeared beneath the sleeve of his T-shirt. There was no point arguing with him when he’d already apparently legislated her nausea into some kind of shared household emergency policy, and the thought made the corner of her mouth twitch. “Fine,” she whispered. “Put it in the minutes. Cleo objects to excessive overnight heroism. Benjamin overrules her because apparently democracy has collapsed.”

When the cool cloth lifted from her neck, the immediate loss of it made her skin feel warmer than it actually was. She rolled one shoulder carefully, testing the strange weakness still lingering through her limbs, and watched him fold the towel before placing it within reach. His attention moved over her in that restrained way he had adopted lately, never openly inspecting, but never quite missing anything either. She could feel him taking note of the color in her face and the steadiness of her breathing, and rather than resent it, she found herself absurdly comforted by the fact that somebody else was paying attention when she was too exhausted to assess herself properly.

The suggestion that she stand made her glance toward the sink as though the few feet of bathroom between them required serious strategic planning. Her knees had gone stiff against the tile, and the moment she shifted her weight backward, every muscle in her thighs complained at once. “Slow sounds excellent,” she admitted, reaching for his offered hands without pretending she didn’t need them. His palm closed around hers first, warm and dry, while the support at her elbow gave her something solid to organize herself around. She pushed herself upward cautiously, inch by inch, feeling the blood move strangely through her body as she straightened until the bathroom seemed to tilt by a fraction.

Her fingers tightened around him before she could stop them.

The hand at her waist arrived immediately, and the pressure steadied her before panic had any chance to form. Cleo closed her eyes for one breath, letting the dizziness pass beneath the quiet reassurance near her ear, then opened them again when the sink stopped shifting in her peripheral vision. “I’m okay,” she said, though the words came with far less confidence than they might have an hour ago. She rested more of her weight against him for another few seconds and added, “I just stood up and apparently briefly left the planet.”

The faucet turned on low, and the running water filled the bathroom with a soft, continuous sound. Cleo watched him reach for her toothbrush, then the toothpaste, and the domestic intimacy of being handed both nearly embarrassed her with how much it affected her. She took them from him with a small smile, her fingers brushing his as the mint smell rose into the air. For one nervous second she waited for her stomach to rebel again, her whole body bracing around the possibility, but nothing happened beyond a faint, unsettled flutter. Relief came carefully; she no longer trusted anything enough to celebrate too quickly.

She leaned over the sink and brushed slowly, avoiding the back of her tongue with the precision of someone who had learned that particular lesson the hard way. Ben’s hand remained against her back, light enough not to crowd her, and the warmth of it moved with her every time she shifted. Cleo kept her eyes on her reflection only briefly. Her hair had escaped whatever shape it had been in when she fell asleep, her skin looked pale beneath the dim light, and her eyes were puffy from vomiting. She looked exactly like a woman who had been dragged out of sleep by her own stomach and lost the argument. The thought was almost funny, although she wisely kept the laugh inside until the toothbrush was safely out of her mouth.

When she finally rinsed, the cold water soothed the rawness enough to make her sigh. She handed the toothbrush back without thinking, watching him place it beside his, and her gaze lingered there for an extra second. Two toothbrushes. Two pairs of shoes abandoned in the hallway. His shirts migrating into her side of the closet and her paints somehow appearing on every flat surface he owned. Their whole life seemed built from objects slowly refusing to remain separate.

“Bed sounds even better than slow,” she said, the exhaustion returning so heavily that the word nearly became another yawn.

The arm around her was welcome before she’d even fully registered its placement. Cleo leaned into his side as they stepped into the hallway, allowing him to take more of her weight than she usually would have admitted she needed. Her bare feet moved carefully across the cool floor, and the apartment passed around her in shadowed pieces: the edge of a canvas near the wall, the low shape of the couch, a thin stripe of streetlight stretching over the floorboards. Each familiar thing made the bathroom feel farther behind her, and by the time they reached the bedroom, her eyelids felt impossibly heavy.

She sat where he guided her, the mattress sinking beneath her weight, and immediately wanted to lie down. The blanket came up over her legs before she could reach for it herself, followed by the soft adjustment of her pillow, and she watched him through half-lowered lashes while he fussed in the restrained, careful way he seemed to believe did not count as fussing. “You’re very subtle,” she murmured, a tired thread of amusement running through her voice. “No one would ever suspect you’re monitoring absolutely everything.”

His fingers brushed loose hair away from her face, and Cleo’s eyes closed briefly beneath the gentleness of it. The repeated reassurance didn’t feel patronizing now. It felt like something he needed to say almost as much as she needed to hear it, so she let him have it. When his lips touched her forehead, she remained still, warmth lingering where he’d kissed her after he pulled away. She knew what he’d been checking. The realization brought another tiny smile to her mouth, but she spared him the embarrassment of calling attention to it.

Water and crackers shifted closer on the nightstand. Cleo noticed both without opening her eyes fully, and the sight made her feel looked after in a way that was almost dangerously easy to get used to. She turned carefully onto her side as he returned to the bed, waiting for her stomach to decide whether the movement was acceptable. When nothing immediate happened, she let out a long, quiet breath and relaxed into the mattress.

His arm came around her slowly.

Cleo felt the warmth of his chest against her back first, followed by the light pressure of his arm settling around her. There was a strange carefulness in the way he held her now, as though the baby had made every inch of her newly fragile despite the fact that there was barely any outward evidence of pregnancy yet. She shifted backward deliberately until she fit more fully against him, refusing the unnecessary distance his caution had left.

“There,” she murmured. “You can hold me normally. Sage isn’t going to file a complaint.”

The ceiling fan moved cool air across the room while the light from the hallway softened the edges of the dresser and doorframe. Cleo’s breathing slowed in spite of herself, her body already sliding toward sleep now that the nausea had retreated. She was nearly gone when his final instruction reached her.

Her eyes opened a fraction.

She stared at the darkness for a second, feeling his hand travel slowly along her back, steady enough that she could predict the rhythm of it before each pass. He was serious. Of course he was. There would be no successful future escapes, no silent bathroom operations, no protecting his sleep from her changing body. Somehow, that knowledge no longer felt like failure.

Cleo covered his hand with hers where it rested against her.

“Okay,” she whispered.

The agreement surprised her enough that a faint smile touched her mouth.

“But I’m still allowed to complain when you show up.”

She closed her eyes again, fingers loosely threaded through his.

“And you’re not allowed to say ‘I told you so’ while I’m vomiting. That’s where I draw the line.”

A sleepy breath moved out of her, her body finally growing heavy against his chest.

“Goodnight, emergency bathroom cracker man.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben felt the moment she shifted back into him on purpose, closing the careful space he had left as if she were correcting an error in his technique. His throat tightened at the simple insistence of it, at how unbearably Cleo it was—exhausted, nauseous, still pale from the bathroom floor, and yet stubborn enough to enforce proper cuddling standards from beneath the blankets. He adjusted immediately, letting his arm settle more fully around her waist and drawing her back against him with the gentle pressure he had been holding in reserve. Not careless. Never careless. But less afraid now. More familiar. “Noted,” he murmured near her hair, his voice barely disturbing the dim room. “Holding normally. No formal complaint anticipated from Sage.”

His palm rested low against her stomach, warm through the thin fabric of her sleep shirt, and the shape of her body tucked into his made the room quiet in a different way. Not empty. Held. The fan kept turning above them, soft and steady, stirring cool air over their shoulders while the hallway light drew a thin amber line across the floor, just enough to keep the darkness from feeling too complete. When her hand covered his, when she gave him that small, surprising okay, something in him eased so deeply it almost hurt. She would still try, probably. He knew her. She would still wake quietly and calculate whether she could make it to the bathroom alone, still weigh his exhaustion against her own discomfort like those things belonged on opposite sides of a scale. But she had said okay, and for tonight, that was enough.

A quiet laugh moved through him at the rest of it, barely more than breath against the back of her neck. “No ‘I told you so’ while you’re vomiting,” he whispered. “Understood. Cruel and unusual. Bad bedside manner. Terrible brand for Emergency Bathroom Cracker Man.” His hand moved once over hers, slow and warm, while the corner of his mouth pulled into a tired smile she probably couldn’t see. “All complaints will be accepted in writing after dawn.” He could feel her body growing heavier by degrees, her spine softening into the line of his chest, her breathing beginning to stretch longer between words. The adrenaline that had carried him from sleep to the bathroom started to ebb now, leaving behind a tenderness so raw he didn’t quite know where to put it.

So he put it in the only places available to him: in the careful tuck of the blanket around her shoulder, in the way his hand stayed still over her stomach instead of fidgeting with worry, in the kiss he pressed into her hair, light enough not to pull her back from the edge of sleep. “Goodnight,” he murmured, his voice turning rough with exhaustion and feeling. “My very stubborn, very brave, very terrible undercover patient.” A beat passed, quiet and silvered by the hum of the fan, before his mouth curved again against her hair. “And goodnight, tiny hostile workplace.” The joke barely held its shape, but it was enough to make him smile in the dark.

He stayed awake after that, even as Cleo drifted closer to sleep. He listened to the small changes in her breathing, to the apartment settling back into its nighttime hush around them. The glass of water waited on the nightstand. The crackers too. The bathroom light was off now, the hallway glow dim and harmless, and everything had been arranged into the smallest possible version of safety. It wasn’t much. It was everything he could do. Ben let his eyes close, but not fully. Not yet. His body remained tuned to hers, alert beneath the quiet, while his heart kept circling the same impossible truth it had circled all day: Cleo in his arms, their baby beneath his hand, both of them here.

Both of them his to love—not as possession, but as a responsibility he wanted with a depth that still frightened him. He drew a slow breath and held her a little closer, normal this time, because she had asked him to. The warmth of her settled into him, steadying the last restless edge of his fear until all that remained was the low, fierce certainty that he would keep showing up for this, for her, for them, in whatever small and unglamorous ways the night required. “No more sneaking off alone,” he whispered, though he knew she was already almost gone. “Or do. I’ll still find you.” Then he settled his cheek against her hair and let the night close carefully around them.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The room had changed by the time Cleo woke again.

Morning light had pushed past the curtains in thin, pale bands, laying itself across the rumpled sheets and the edge of the dresser with none of the softness the night had offered. The fan still turned overhead, slower now only because she was awake enough to notice each rotation, and somewhere beyond the bedroom a truck moved down the street with the low mechanical groan of a city beginning another day. For several seconds she stayed exactly where she was, warm beneath the blanket, Ben’s arm still curved around her waist and his hand resting low against her stomach as though sleep had never convinced him to move it.

Her body felt different before she tested it. Not well, exactly, but emptied out. The sharp nausea from the bathroom had retreated into a low, sour unease beneath her ribs, and the muscles along her abdomen carried the dull soreness of having worked too hard in the middle of the night. Her throat still felt scraped raw when she swallowed, though the taste of mint lingered faintly enough to remind her that she had made it back to bed, that Ben had walked her there, that she had not spent the rest of the night alone on cold tile pretending she could manage without him.

She shifted carefully beneath his arm, testing the movement in small increments before committing to it. His chest remained warm against her back, his breathing deep and even near her hair, but his hand tightened almost imperceptibly over her the moment she moved, an unconscious response so immediate it made affection press hard beneath her sternum. Even asleep, some part of him was still listening.

Cleo settled again instead of trying to leave.

The choice came without argument this time.

She lay there watching the sunlight inch farther across the floor while the memories of the night returned in pieces: the sudden water flooding her mouth, the rush toward the bathroom, the humiliation of kneeling over the toilet, then the quiet click of hallway light and Ben appearing beside her without panic. She remembered the towel against her neck, the crackers hidden beneath the sink, his hand at her back, his voice keeping everything small enough to survive.

Her lips curved faintly against the pillow.

Emergency Bathroom Cracker Man.

The name had been ridiculous at three in the morning. In daylight, it was somehow worse.

A quiet laugh moved through her, barely enough to disturb the mattress, but Ben stirred behind her anyway. His breathing changed first, then the weight of his arm shifted as he came closer to waking. Cleo covered his hand with hers where it rested against her stomach, partly to reassure him before his eyes even opened and partly because the contact felt good.

“I’m okay,” she whispered, her voice still rough with sleep and the aftermath of being sick. “Before you ask.”

She felt the small pause in him that followed, the half-second where he was deciding whether to believe the answer without inspection. Cleo turned carefully within the circle of his arm until she faced him, the movement slow enough that her stomach only rolled once before settling. His hair had gone in every direction overnight, soft and unruly across his forehead, and the sight of it pulled a warmer smile from her.

“You look exhausted,” she murmured, studying the faint shadows beneath his eyes. “Almost like someone woke you up in the middle of the night and then made you sit on a bathroom floor.”

The teasing landed gently, not as dismissal of what he had done, but as recognition. Her fingers moved to his wrist, then slowly upward until they rested against the center of his chest, feeling the steady beat beneath his shirt.

For a moment she simply looked at him.

The gratitude was too large to hand over cleanly. Saying thank you felt almost inadequate when what she meant was thank you for hearing me, thank you for not making me feel helpless, thank you for making room around something ugly and undignified without turning away from it.

Her thumb moved once against the fabric.

“I’m glad you came,” she admitted quietly. “I still wish you’d slept, but I’m glad you came.”

The distinction mattered to her. She had not changed overnight into someone who wanted him hovering over every symptom. She still wanted to protect pieces of him when she could. But the bathroom had shown her the difference between carrying something privately and carrying it alone, and she had no desire to confuse the two again.

Cleo glanced toward the nightstand. The glass of water sat within reach, condensation long gone, the sleeve of crackers beside it unopened but ready. She pushed herself upright slowly, using one hand against the mattress while the other stayed near her stomach until the room decided to remain level. Morning light warmed the edge of the blanket across her lap, and she waited through a brief flicker of dizziness before reaching for the water.

The first sip caught painfully against her throat. She winced, tried again more carefully, then set the glass back down.

“I think I can eat,” she said, sounding surprised by the possibility. “Maybe toast. Or crackers. Something that doesn’t have a personality.”

Her stomach gave a faint, uncertain turn at the thought of actual food, but it did not reject it completely. That counted as progress.

She looked back at Ben and found herself smiling again, softer now.

“And I meant what I said last night.”

Cleo tucked one leg beneath herself, the blanket pooling around her hips as she settled against the headboard.

“I’ll probably still try to be quiet next time.”

The corner of her mouth lifted before he could react.

“But I won’t be upset when you show up.”

Her hand drifted down to rest low over her abdomen, the place still nearly flat beneath her sleep shirt. There was nothing to feel there yet, no movement, no outward proof of the tiny life responsible for turning their nights upside down. Still, the touch came easily.

“Sage and I are apparently running a very disorganized operation,” she said, glancing down at her hand before looking back at him. “We may need better policies.”

The humor stayed light, but the warmth beneath it did not.

Then she reached for the crackers, opened the sleeve, and held one out toward him first.

“Breakfast,” she said. “Very glamorous. Very strategic.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben came awake in pieces.

Not all at once, not cleanly. Sleep clung to him with stubborn little hooks, dragging at the backs of his eyes and making the room come into focus in soft, unreliable layers: the pale morning light striping the sheets, the fan turning lazily overhead, the warm indentation of Cleo’s body close to his, the faint sour edge of the night still lingering somewhere underneath mint toothpaste and cotton and sleep. His hand was already low against her stomach before he remembered putting it there. Or maybe he hadn’t remembered at all. Maybe some part of him had simply stayed awake inside the gesture after the rest of him finally gave in.

The first thing he registered clearly was her voice.

Rough. Small. Already trying to reassure him before he had earned consciousness.

His eyes opened with effort, lashes heavy, brain moving through molasses. For half a second, worry rose on instinct—sharp and immediate—because that was what the night had trained into him. Cleo shifting meant inventory. Cleo’s voice meant check her face, check her color, check whether she was pale or sweating or trying too hard to sound fine. He felt the question forming in his chest before his mouth could manage it.

Then she got there first.

Of course she did.

A tired breath left him, almost a laugh, almost surrender. He blinked at her in the morning light, taking in the way she had turned within his arm, her face softened by exhaustion, eyes still faintly shadowed from the night, mouth curved with that familiar, stubborn gentleness that made it impossible to decide whether he wanted to kiss her or argue with her.

Probably both.

“You preempted the health-and-safety committee,” he murmured, voice low and gravelly from sleep. “That’s very aggressive for someone who looks like she lost a fight with 2:47 a.m.”

His attempt at humor came out softer than usual, blurred around the edges by fatigue. He felt wrecked in the quiet, bodily way that came from being yanked out of sleep and never fully settling back into it afterward. His head felt full of lint. His shoulders ached faintly from the bathroom tile and the careful stillness of holding himself steady when all he’d wanted was to panic. But none of that mattered enough to resent. Not with her looking at him like that. Not with her hand near his chest, grounding him as if she didn’t realize he’d woken up already searching for proof that she was all right.

He let his gaze move over her without making it obvious. Better color than last night. Still tired. Throat probably still raw. Stomach uncertain, if the careful way she held herself meant what he thought it did. He wanted to ask anyway. Wanted to catalogue every symptom like a man who had mistaken love for a clipboard. Instead, he made himself breathe, then lifted a hand to brush his thumb lightly along the side of her wrist where it rested against him.

When she admitted she was glad he had come, something in his chest loosened so suddenly it almost hurt.

He had known, sort of. He had felt it in the way she leaned into him on the bathroom floor, in the way she let him help her stand, in the way she had shifted back against him under the covers and told him to hold her normally. But hearing it in daylight, with the night stripped of its urgency and turned into memory, reached a place the moments themselves hadn’t touched.

He swallowed, throat still thick with sleep.

“Good,” he said quietly.

It was too small for what he meant. He could feel that. Still, it was the only word that arrived cleanly.

His hand found her stomach again, not because he expected to feel anything, but because that was where every thought in him kept ending. The tiny life there had turned nausea into policy debate, crackers into emergency infrastructure, and his sleep into something permanently negotiable. His palm rested over the almost-flat plane beneath her shirt, warm and careful, and his thumb moved once before he stilled it.

“I’m glad I came too,” he admitted. His eyes lifted back to hers, softer now, more awake but not by much. “Not glad you were sick. To be clear. Terrible activity. Zero stars. Would not recommend.” A faint smile tugged at his mouth. “But I’m glad you weren’t alone.”

That was the part he could not joke away entirely.

The idea of her on the bathroom floor in the dark, trying to keep quiet for his sake while her body turned itself inside out, still made something in him go tight and protective. Not angry at her. Never. But pierced by the instinct to get there sooner next time, to make the path shorter between her need and his hands.

He shifted carefully when she sat up, rising onto one elbow despite the pull of exhaustion. The blanket fell in soft folds around them, morning light turning the rumpled fabric a dull gold at the edges. When she reached for the water, he watched without hovering so obviously that she would call him on it. Mostly. His fingers twitched once against the sheet when she winced, and he caught himself before he reached for the glass she had already managed perfectly well on her own.

Progress, maybe.

Microscopic. But progress.

The mention of food sharpened him a little. Not fully—his brain was still half wrapped in the dark from two hours ago—but enough that the practical part of him sat up straighter inside his skull and started pulling open mental cabinets. Toast. Plain. No butter unless she asked. Crackers. Maybe banana, if bananas had not become enemies overnight. Tea, maybe, but nothing with too much smell. Open the kitchen window first. Check the sink. No, the dishes were done. Good. Avoid coffee until they knew whether coffee had become offensive.

He was becoming exactly the kind of man who could build a tactical breakfast plan before brushing his teeth.

Terrifying.

“Something without a personality,” he repeated, solemnly nodding as if this were a refined culinary category. “Understood. Beige. Quiet. Nonconfrontational. Food that minds its business.”

A smile ghosted through his fatigue.

“I can do that.”

Then she held out the cracker.

For him.

Ben looked at it for a second, then back at her, and the tenderness that moved through him was so disproportionate to the object that it would have embarrassed him if he had the energy. A cracker. Dry, plain, slightly crumbly. The least romantic offering in the history of morning.

Except it wasn’t.

It was her, still pale and tired, still recovering from a brutal night, offering him a piece of the emergency system he had built for her. Letting him into it. Making the care reciprocal in the smallest possible way because that was how Cleo loved when she was too exhausted for speeches.

His mouth softened.

“Wow,” he said quietly, accepting it between two fingers with ridiculous gravity. “Breakfast in bed. We’ve become luxury people.”

He took a bite, because she had offered it and because refusing felt like some kind of insult to the sacred dignity of emergency bathroom crackers. It was dry enough to immediately remind him that he had a mouth, but he chewed dutifully and nodded once.

“Excellent vintage. Notes of cardboard, survival, and emotional dependence.”

His eyes warmed as he looked at her.

“Very strategic.”

He finished the bite, brushed a crumb from the blanket, then leaned closer and pressed a kiss to her temple. Not too long. Not enough to crowd her stomach or her sore throat. Just enough to put himself there in the morning, beside her, awake now, hers.

“And for the record,” he said near her hair, voice still rough but steadier, “I accept the new policy. You may complain when I show up. You may object to my presence. You may accuse me of excessive overnight heroism and hostile cracker placement.”

He eased back enough to see her face.

“I’ll still come.”

The certainty of it settled into the quiet bedroom without needing volume.

Then, because the seriousness sat too close to his ribs and he was still Ben, still half-asleep and helplessly in love and incapable of leaving a soft moment entirely unbothered, he glanced down at her stomach.

“As for you,” he murmured, addressing the tiny culprit with sleepy authority, “your operation is under review. We’re not mad. We’re disappointed in the workflow.”

His hand rested lightly over Cleo’s.

“Better policies are being drafted. Hydration. Crackers. Reduced surprise attacks. Maybe a suggestion box.”

He looked back at Cleo, and all the humor in him softened around the edges.

“But you two tell me what you need,” he said. “Even if it changes every six minutes.”

His thumb moved over her hand, slow and warm.

“I’ll learn.”

There it was—the thing underneath all of it. Not confidence exactly. Not certainty that he would know how to do everything right. He wouldn’t. He already knew that. Pregnancy had turned even the air into something unpredictable, and the baby was still too small to be called anything but loved.

But he could learn.

Her face at three in the morning. The sound of her throat after getting sick. Which foods were safe. Which smells became enemies. How long to wait before asking if she wanted help. When to stay quiet. When to show up anyway.

He would learn her through this version too.

Ben pushed himself a little more upright, blinking through the heaviness behind his eyes, and ran a hand through his disaster of a morning hair. It did nothing. He could feel it doing nothing.

“Okay,” he said, trying to sound like a man with a plan instead of a sleep-deprived musician being held together by love and one bite of cracker. “Toast. Crackers. Maybe a very boring piece of fruit if the council approves.”

He looked at her with a faint, affectionate squint.

“You stay here. Or come with me if staying here makes you feel weird. But you’re not doing kitchen labor after the night shift you just pulled.”

A pause.

“And yes, I realize calling vomiting a night shift is bleak. I stand by it.”

He leaned in once more, slower this time, and kissed the corner of her mouth with careful tenderness, mindful of her soreness, mindful of the morning, mindful of everything her body had endured in the dark.

When he pulled back, he stayed close for a breath, his forehead almost brushing hers.

“You’re really okay?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

Not because he didn’t believe her.

Because he loved her.

Because okay had layers now, and he was still learning which one she meant.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo watched him wake the way she imagined dawn happened over the ocean: gradually enough that it was impossible to point to the exact moment night surrendered. Sleep lingered around him even while his attention settled instinctively on her, his eyes searching her face with that familiar, careful inventory he kept trying to disguise beneath humor. She knew exactly what he was doing. She also knew he was trying very hard not to make it feel like an examination, and the effort alone made something warm unfurl quietly inside her.

His joke earned the small laugh he’d been aiming for.

“It wasn’t aggressive,” she said, her voice still carrying the rasp of the night before. “It was preventative paperwork.”

She smiled a little wider when he continued the joke, watching the last of sleep slowly loosen its hold on him. His hair had surrendered entirely sometime during the night, refusing every attempt at order, and she reached up almost absently to smooth one stubborn piece away from his forehead before giving up when it immediately sprang back into place.

“Hopeless,” she decided softly. “Your hair, I mean.”

His thumb found her wrist.

The contact was light enough that she almost missed it, but once she felt it, she couldn’t stop noticing it. It reminded her how many little reassurances had passed between them over the last several weeks without either of them announcing them. A thumb against her wrist. A hand at her back. Crackers beneath the bathroom sink. None of them solved anything. Somehow all of them mattered.

When he admitted he was glad he’d come too, the teasing eased out of her expression.

She believed him.

Not because he’d said it.

Because she’d watched him choose it.

He hadn’t stumbled into the bathroom because he felt obligated. He hadn’t sat beside her because it was the expected thing to do. He had simply arrived, quietly, without making her illness about his fear, and stayed until she no longer had to hold herself upright alone.

Her hand settled over his where it rested against her stomach.

“I’m glad too,” she answered, meeting his eyes. “I think… I needed to learn there’s a difference between protecting you and shutting you out.”

The words surprised her a little as they left her mouth.

She hadn’t planned them.

They had simply become true somewhere between the bathroom floor and waking up in his arms.

“I still don’t want every bad moment to become your bad moment,” she continued after a thoughtful pause, her thumb tracing slowly across the back of his hand. “I don’t think that part of me is ever going away.”

She smiled apologetically.

“But I also don’t want to spend the hard parts pretending I’m by myself.”

Silence settled comfortably between them while morning continued gathering around the room. The fan whispered overhead. A bird landed somewhere outside the bedroom window before taking off again almost immediately. Sunlight had reached the edge of the blanket now, warming the folds pooled over her legs.

His immediate acceptance of “food without a personality” made her laugh again.

“I knew you’d understand.”

The mental image of him categorizing breakfast by emotional temperament was ridiculous enough that she could almost picture him making a list.

“Toast seems… emotionally stable.”

She accepted the dramatic review of the cracker with an exaggerated nod.

“I specifically chose the vintage from under the bathroom sink. It’s considered one of the finer years.”

His kiss at her temple lingered long after he’d pulled away.

Then he started negotiating with Sage.

Cleo lowered her eyes to the hand still resting over her stomach, listening to him address someone barely bigger than a plum with complete sincerity disguised as humor. Her chest tightened in a way that wasn’t painful anymore. It was simply… full.

“You know,” she murmured once he’d finished, “I think you’re going to lose every argument you ever have with this child.”

Her gaze lifted back to him.

“They’re going to smile at you exactly once…”

She reached over and gently tapped the center of his chest with one finger.

“…and you’re done.”

His promise to learn quieted whatever response she’d been preparing.

She saw no performance in it.

No attempt to be perfect.

Just the steady willingness to keep paying attention.

It was, she realized, one of the reasons she’d fallen in love with him in the first place.

She leaned forward and kissed him herself this time, slow enough that neither of them had to chase the moment. It was brief, careful against her still-sensitive mouth, but entirely intentional. When she drew back, her forehead remained close enough that their noses nearly brushed.

“I know you will.”

The certainty came easily.

“I don’t need you to already know everything.”

Her fingers slipped into his hair again, smiling when it remained gloriously impossible.

“I just need you to keep asking.”

His final question settled between them more quietly than anything else he had said that morning.

You’re really okay?

She didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, she listened inward.

Her stomach still felt unsettled, though no longer rebellious. Her throat hurt. Her body carried the lingering heaviness that always followed vomiting. She was tired in a way sleep hadn’t completely repaired.

But underneath all of that…

She wasn’t scared anymore.

“I’m okay enough,” she said honestly. “I think that’s probably the most accurate version today.”

She brushed her thumb lightly across his cheek.

“And if that changes…”

A tiny smile appeared.

“…apparently there’s a committee now.”

Another yawn interrupted her before she could say anything else. She covered it with the back of her hand, blinking against the heaviness gathering behind her eyes again.

“I don’t actually want to stay in bed.”

She glanced toward the bedroom door, then back at him.

“I think I want…” She searched for the feeling rather than the object. “A nest.”

The word made immediate sense once she heard herself say it.

Something softer than bed.

Somewhere she could curl up without feeling like she was supposed to keep sleeping.

She slipped carefully out from beneath the blankets, slower than she normally would have, waiting through the brief adjustment as her body remembered it was upright again. The room stayed where it belonged this time. Satisfied, she crossed to the foot of the bed and reached for the blanket folded over the cedar chest there.

It was her favorite.

Worn enough that the edges had gone impossibly soft with years of washing, oversized enough to disappear beneath, and heavy without being suffocating. She gathered it into her arms almost automatically before padding barefoot toward the living room.

Morning had settled fully over the apartment by then.

Golden light poured through the larger windows, catching the paintings stacked along one wall and turning the hardwood floors honey-colored. The air carried the coolness of the previous night before the California heat would eventually arrive, and the quiet felt different from the bedroom. Less intimate. More awake.

Cleo crossed directly to the couch.

Instead of sitting immediately, she spread the blanket across one corner with practiced familiarity before lowering herself into it, tucking one leg beneath the other. Then she wrapped the remaining fabric around her shoulders until only her hands remained outside, pulling the blanket high enough to rest beneath her chin.

She exhaled slowly.

“There.”

The word was almost a sigh.

She drew her knees up slightly, settling deeper into the cushions while morning light spilled across the coffee table in front of her.

“This,” she declared with sleepy conviction, looking back toward the bedroom where Ben still lingered, “feels medically appropriate.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben stayed in the bed for exactly three seconds after Cleo left it.

Not because he intended to abandon her to the living room, but because his body was still negotiating with consciousness and losing. For a moment he sat there in the rumpled sheets, hair falling into his eyes, one hand braced against the mattress where her warmth had been. The room had the pale, washed-out quality of too-little-sleep morning—the kind where the light felt too honest and every object seemed to have sharper edges than usual. His brain was still lagging half a beat behind the present, caught somewhere between the bathroom floor at 2:47 and the quiet weight of her body tucked against his chest afterward.

Then he heard her moving through the apartment.

That did it.

The last of the fog cleared as soon as his feet hit the floor. Not completely—he was still exhausted enough that his eyes burned and his limbs felt loose at the joints—but his attention snapped into place around her with immediate, practical clarity. Cleo was upright. Cleo was no longer in bed. Cleo had relocated herself into what she had apparently diagnosed as a recovery structure, and now it was his job to assess the infrastructure and improve it without making it feel like he was assessing anything at all.

He pulled on the soft pants he’d abandoned near the bed, dragged a hand through his hair, accomplished absolutely nothing with it, and followed the trail of morning light into the living room.

The sight of her on the couch stopped him in the doorway.

She had cocooned herself into the corner beneath that old blanket she loved, the one that had gone soft at the seams from years of being chosen first. Only her face and hands were visible, tucked into the folds like the world had been narrowed down to warmth, fabric, and the minimum amount of effort required to exist. Golden light spilled across the coffee table and the floorboards in front of her, touching the edges of stacked canvases and the legs of his guitar stand. The apartment looked awake in a way the bedroom had not—quiet but not sleeping, sunlit but gentle enough not to demand anything yet.

Something about her there, pale and tired and stubbornly self-arranged into comfort, made his chest ache.

“Okay,” he said, voice still rough but more present now. “I’m going to formally endorse the nest.”

He stepped farther into the room, his gaze moving over the setup with mock-professional seriousness even as the tenderness beneath it kept threatening to show too clearly. He noted the blanket coverage, the cushion angle, the proximity to the coffee table, the distance from the kitchen, the way she had folded herself small without seeming diminished by it.

“Strong blanket work. Good corner support. Excellent access to horizontal recovery if needed.” His eyes softened when they found hers. “Very medically convincing.”

He wanted to go straight to her. Sit beside her. Slide an arm around her and keep her tucked against him until the day figured itself out. But her throat was raw, her stomach was unpredictable, and she had asked for something between bed and awake. So he gave the wanting a job.

Food.

Water.

A safer morning.

Ben crossed to the kitchen, more awake with every step now, the apartment’s familiar geography arranging itself around him. The old floor creaked near the counter. The toaster waited beneath the cabinet. The sink still held the clean quiet of yesterday’s dishes, and he was grateful for that in a way he would never have understood before pregnancy had turned lingering smells into threats. He opened the window above the sink a few inches first, letting in the cool Los Angeles morning before any food had a chance to declare itself too loudly.

“Breakfast protocol,” he announced softly over his shoulder, keeping his voice low enough not to disturb the fragile peace of the room. “We are aiming for beige, quiet, emotionally neutral.”

He found bread, then paused with the bag in his hand and considered it like a man making decisions that mattered. Toast, but not too dark. Too much smell could turn traitor. Butter was risky unless requested. Jam had personality. Peanut butter had a manifesto. He set two slices into the toaster and lowered the lever with ceremonial care.

Then he added crackers to a small plate because redundancy had become central to his parenting philosophy.

A banana sat in the fruit bowl, yellow and innocent-looking, which made him distrust it immediately. He picked it up, looked at it, looked toward Cleo, and decided not to gamble.

“Banana has been placed on administrative leave,” he said. “No one asked it to be dramatic, but here we are.”

He filled a glass with fresh ice water, then another smaller one, because one of them would end up too far away at the exact wrong moment and he refused to be outmaneuvered by thirst before eight in the morning. The toast popped up pale gold, blessedly mild, and he let it cool a few seconds before putting it on the plate plain. The whole thing looked aggressively unremarkable.

Perfect.

He carried everything to the coffee table like an offering: toast cut into manageable halves, crackers, water, a napkin, and the small trash bowl he’d grabbed from beneath the sink without comment. He set that last one slightly off to the side, accessible but not pointedly present. Dignity, he was learning, mattered in the placement of objects.

Then he crouched beside the couch instead of immediately sitting, bringing himself closer to her level.

“Your bland feast, my love,” he said softly. “Prepared with minimal seasoning and maximum emotional investment.”

The words were playful, but his eyes searched her face in the gentlest way he could manage. Not an inspection. A question with no pressure behind it. Her color was still too pale for his liking, but her eyes were clearer than they’d been in the bathroom. Tired, yes. Worn through. But not lost in that gray nausea-space that had scared him so badly in the night.

He let his hand rest on the edge of the couch near her blanket, close enough for her to take if she wanted.

“And for the record,” he added, his mouth curving, “the committee is already drafting better policies. First recommendation: all future nausea events are group projects, whether the lead researcher approves or not.”

He knew she would object. He also knew she had already softened around the truth of it. The thought warmed him more than the sunlight did.

For a moment, he simply stayed there, taking in the absurd beauty of the morning. Cleo tucked into a blanket nest. Toast cooling on the table. Water sweating faintly against glass. His guitar leaned against the wall, quiet for once, while the city outside the window began making ordinary sounds—truck brakes, distant voices, the soft rush of tires over pavement. Inside, everything felt held in suspension, as if the whole apartment had learned to speak gently because she needed it to.

He sat beside her then, carefully, not jostling the couch. Close enough that his thigh touched the blanket around her knees, close enough for warmth without crowding. He leaned back into the cushions and turned slightly toward her, one arm stretching along the back of the couch behind the nest without closing over her yet.

Not until she wanted it.

The urge to gather her up was still there, constant and strong, but so was the memory of her correcting him in HomeState, her voice steady as she told him not to protect her from her own answer. Love, he was realizing, was not always grabbing on. Sometimes it was leaving the door open and staying near it.

His gaze dropped briefly to the low place beneath the blanket where he knew her hand had rested earlier, where Sage was hidden inside all of this fatigue and nausea and astonishing tenderness.

“You,” he murmured, addressing the tiny chaos with quiet authority, “are very lucky your mother is patient and artistic and likes you already.”

He glanced back at Cleo.

“And that your father is excellent at toast.”

A beat.

“Mediocre at sleep. Strong in toast.”

His smile softened almost immediately after. He reached for one of the pieces, held it out to her without forcing it into her hand, and kept his voice low.

“Tiny bite first. No pressure.”

He wanted to say more. That he was proud of her. That watching her navigate the discomfort without turning hard around it made him love her in some new, almost frightening register. That he had woken up feeling like his body belonged to the project of caring for her now, not in a martyr way, but in a way that felt like purpose. But those words were too big for the morning and her sore throat and the little plate of toast between them.

So he kept it simple.

“I’m right here,” he said.

The sentence held everything he didn’t want to make her carry.

He leaned closer and pressed a kiss to her temple, careful and lingering, breathing in the clean, sleepy warmth of her hair and the faint mint still clinging to her from the night before. When he pulled back, he stayed close enough that his shoulder brushed her blanket.

“You made a good nest,” he whispered, admiration disguised as a joke and failing completely. “I’m proud of you.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo heard the bedroom floor creak before Ben appeared, and the sound drew her attention toward the hallway without making her lift her head from the cushion. She had expected him to follow eventually, but not quite so quickly, not while sleep still seemed to be clinging to every part of him. The sight of him in the doorway confirmed it. His hair remained thoroughly beyond saving, his soft pants sat low and slightly crooked at his waist, and the skin beneath his eyes carried the shadowed evidence of how little rest he had managed after bringing her back to bed. Guilt stirred on instinct, small and immediate, but it did not have time to sharpen before his gaze landed on the blanket wrapped around her and softened with such obvious affection that the feeling changed shape inside her. She tucked her chin farther into the worn edge beneath it, allowing herself to enjoy the ridiculous solemnity with which he evaluated the couch rather than turning his exhaustion into another reason she should have stayed alone.

“Thank you,” she said with equal seriousness, shifting one foot beneath the blanket until her toes found a warmer fold. “I worked very hard on the structural integrity.”

His eyes moved across the couch with enough concentration to make her smile deepen, but the attention never settled on her in a way that felt clinical. He seemed to register the angle of the cushions, the blanket gathered beneath her knees, the distance between her and the coffee table, all while pretending the assessment belonged entirely to the nest. Cleo watched him do it and let him. The restraint beneath his humor mattered more than she could explain without making the morning heavier than either of them needed. He wanted to check her color, her breathing, the steadiness in her eyes. Instead of demanding answers, he allowed the room to tell him what it could.

When he turned toward the kitchen rather than coming directly to the couch, a brief, selfish disappointment caught her by surprise. She had expected the warmth of him beside her, perhaps an arm behind her shoulders or his thigh pressed against the blanket, and the absence of it registered before she understood that he had given his concern somewhere practical to go. The disappointment dissolved as quickly as it had formed. She shifted against the cushion until she could see him more clearly through the open room, the blanket bunching beneath her cheek while he crossed the old floorboards with the loose, tired gait of someone whose body had not yet agreed to morning.

The window above the sink opened with a faint scrape, and cool air moved gradually into the apartment, touching the exposed skin of her face before slipping beneath the blanket at her shoulder. Cleo drew the fabric closer without taking her eyes off him. The care in that first choice landed quietly. He had remembered that smell arrived before food did now, that something perfectly harmless could become unbearable before she had even identified it. He had made space for the morning air before asking her body to tolerate anything else.

His breakfast classification pulled a soft laugh from her, the sound catching briefly against her sore throat before escaping.

“Nothing opinionated,” she agreed. “I’m not emotionally equipped for assertive food.”

The bread bag crinkled in his hands while he stood at the counter considering it with absurd gravity. Cleo could almost see the decisions crossing his face even from the couch: how dark the toast should be, whether anything spread across it might become offensive, whether the smell would carry too far. His concentration made her chest tighten, not because breakfast required such vigilance, but because he had begun treating every small uncertainty as something worth learning rather than something she ought to manage privately. She watched the toaster lever descend and settled farther into the cushions, the fabric beneath her body yielding now that she had stopped holding herself ready to move.

The crackers appearing beside the bread did not surprise her. Redundancy had apparently become one of his guiding principles, and she suspected there were already sleeves hidden in places she had yet to discover. Her gaze followed the banana when he lifted it from the bowl, and the mere sight of the yellow peel caused her stomach to shift uncertainly. Ben set it aside before she could decide whether the reaction meant anything. Relief moved through her with embarrassing speed.

“Good call,” she murmured, pressing one palm lightly beneath the blanket over the unsettled place below her ribs. “It was looking suspicious.”

The water running into two glasses made her notice the dryness in her mouth again. She swallowed carefully and felt the rough pull along her throat, but the movement did not bring nausea with it. The absence remained fragile enough that she refused to name it as improvement. She simply listened to the ice knock against glass and watched the pale slices rise from the toaster while morning air continued to travel through the kitchen, carrying almost no scent at all.

When he turned toward her with the plate, Cleo pushed herself a little more upright. The adjustment pressed the couch seam into her hip and sent the blanket sliding from one shoulder, but she caught it before the cooler air reached too far beneath her sleep shirt. Her eyes moved over what he had assembled as he approached: pale toast cut into smaller pieces, crackers, water, a folded napkin, everything plain enough to look almost apologetic. Then she saw the bowl set slightly apart from the rest.

Her breath paused.

He did not mention it. He did not place it directly in front of her or make its purpose the center of the room. He simply left it near enough that she would not have to move quickly if her stomach changed its mind. The discretion made the object easier to bear. Cleo looked away from it before gratitude could become tears, focusing instead on the condensation beginning to gather against the glasses.

Ben lowered himself beside the couch, and the change in height brought his face close enough that she could see how red the rims of his eyes remained. The urge to reach for him came before she decided what to do with it. Her hand emerged from the blanket and moved toward his where it rested near the cushion, her fingers sliding over the back of it until they curled loosely around his palm. The contact warmed her cooler fingertips, and his presence at her level made the apartment feel smaller in the best possible way.

“This is the most emotionally invested toast I’ve ever received,” she said, her voice softer now. “I’m trying not to let the pressure affect its performance.”

His attention moved over her face again, gentler than touch but no less perceptible. Cleo held still beneath it, resisting the old impulse to brighten her expression so he would stop worrying. Her body still felt weak. Her stomach still carried a low, undecided ache. Pretending otherwise would only force him to guess more carefully. She let him see the truth available to him: she was tired, she was pale, and she was better than she had been on the bathroom floor.

The new rule about shared emergencies made her mouth tilt, but the objection she might have offered no longer came with any real force. His hand remained inside hers, close enough that she could feel the faint shift of his fingers against her skin when he spoke, and she traced the edge of his knuckle with her thumb before answering.

“I reserve the right to be a difficult project partner,” she warned. “I will question the methodology and complain about mandatory meetings.”

The city continued gathering beyond the open window while he stayed crouched beside her. Tires hissed over the street outside. Someone called out from farther down the block, the words indistinct by the time they reached the apartment. The guitar stand cast a narrow shadow across the floor, and sunlight crept closer to the couch without yet touching her feet. Cleo noticed all of it more clearly because nothing inside the room demanded that she hurry. Ben had placed food within reach, water beside it, himself beside her, and then allowed the quiet to remain quiet.

When he finally sat down, the couch dipped beneath his weight and shifted her slightly toward him. His thigh met the thick blanket covering her knees, a muted pressure through the layers, while his arm stretched along the cushions behind her without closing the last distance. Cleo felt the hesitation embedded in the posture. He wanted to touch her, but he had left the choice where she could reach it.

She did not make him wait.

Keeping the blanket wrapped around her, she leaned sideways until her shoulder settled against his ribs and the side of her head found the familiar place beneath his shoulder. The movement pressed warmth through the fabric between them, and she exhaled when his body steadied hers without needing to adjust anything else. Her hand remained linked with his near her lap, hidden now beneath the edge of the blanket.

“There,” she murmured, eyes falling half closed. “Nest expansion approved.”

His attention lowered toward the place beneath the blanket where Sage remained impossible to see, and Cleo felt her awareness follow it. The baby existed in symptoms more than shape right now: nausea, exhaustion, the soreness behind her ribs, the appointments marked on their calendar, the sonogram waiting inside the memory box. Hearing Ben speak toward that hidden place still made the reality gather more densely inside her, as though his voice gave the tiny life another position in the room.

The description of her patience earned a doubtful hum.

“I don’t know that the evidence supports ‘patient,’” she said. “I threatened our child with an HR complaint last night.”

The claim about his toast made her lift her head just enough to look at him. His tired confidence was so sincere that she could not help the fondness spreading across her face.

“You put bread in a machine,” she reminded him gently. “Let’s remain humble during these formative years.”

The offered piece waited between them. Cleo looked at it, then listened inward before freeing her other hand from the blanket. Her stomach did not recoil, but it did not welcome the idea either. The uncertainty tightened her fingers once against his hand. She breathed through her nose, catching only cool air and the mildest trace of bread, then took the toast from him.

Its surface felt dry and faintly warm against her fingertips. She broke off a smaller corner rather than biting into the whole piece, bringing it to her mouth slowly enough that she could still change her mind. The first chew scratched slightly against her throat. She paused, holding the bland taste on her tongue while her body decided what to do with it. Nothing surged upward. No saliva flooded her mouth. The ache beneath her ribs remained exactly where it had been.

Cleo swallowed.

The bite moved down with effort, but it stayed down.

She released a breath she had not realized she was holding and looked at Ben, allowing a small, cautious triumph to reach her eyes.

“One point for toast,” she whispered. “Do not get arrogant.”

His reassurance settled beside the food rather than pressing against her. She did not need to answer it immediately; the fact that he had stayed close enough for their shoulders to touch already gave the sentence a physical shape. She broke off another tiny corner, holding it between her fingers while she waited to make sure the first one had truly been accepted.

The kiss at her temple arrived warm and slow. Cleo’s eyes closed as his lips rested against her skin, and the minty, clean scent still clinging faintly to her own breath mixed with the familiar sleep-warm smell of his shirt. The contact did not ask anything of her. It simply remained long enough for the tension along her jaw to loosen before he drew back.

Pride, however lightly offered, caught her somewhere unguarded.

Her eyes opened, but she kept them lowered toward the toast in her hand. Being sick had not felt brave or impressive. It had felt ugly, involuntary, and deeply inconvenient. Building the couch nest had required little more than dragging a blanket down the hallway and collapsing into the cushions. Yet he had looked at what she had managed, however small, and treated it as enough to deserve tenderness.

She set the toast back on the plate before the feeling in her throat became indistinguishable from nausea. Then she turned beneath the blanket, lifting one arm around his middle and pressing herself closer until her cheek rested fully against his chest. The steady rhythm beneath his shirt reached her ear through the fabric.

“I’m proud of you too,” she said, the words muffled slightly against him. “You survived the night shift, made tactically appropriate toast, and demonstrated excellent bowl placement.”

Her fingers curled lightly into the side of his shirt. The humor carried her through the first layer of what she meant, but she did not let it hide there completely.

“You made it easier,” she added quietly. “Last night. This morning. You made all of it feel less frightening without pretending it wasn’t awful.”

Cleo lifted her face enough to meet his eyes, her body still tucked into the warmth beside him. The second bite of toast waited on the plate, the water caught the sunlight at the edge of the table, and the blanket remained gathered around both of them now where her movement had pulled part of it across his thigh.

“So stay in the nest,” she told him. “Breakfast can be slow.”

Her hand slid beneath the blanket until it rested low over her abdomen, not searching for anything she could feel yet, only acknowledging the small, disruptive presence there.

“And you,” she murmured toward Sage, her tired smile returning, “are officially on probation.”

Cleo kept her hand low over her stomach after the words left her, the warmth of her palm sinking through the thin fabric of her sleep shirt while the second bite of toast remained untouched on the plate. For a few quiet seconds, nothing changed. Ben’s chest rose steadily beneath her cheek, the blanket held its soft weight over both of them, and the apartment continued waking around the nest they had built. A car door shut somewhere below. Water moved through the pipes in another unit. The open kitchen window let in a thin current of cool air that lifted the loose hair near her temple and carried almost no scent with it. She should have stayed inside that small, manageable morning, with the toast and the water and his arm close enough to reach. Instead, her mind slipped ahead before she could stop it.

She saw the calendar first.

Not the actual one hanging near the kitchen, though she could picture its square blocks and the notes written into them. She saw the dates waiting beyond this morning, the ones they had talked around because talking around them had been easier than counting down to them directly. Rehearsals. Packing. The first departure. The weeks that would stretch across cities and highways while she stayed in Los Angeles measuring time by appointments, nausea, and whichever food her stomach had decided not to hate that day. The thought arrived without warning, sharp enough that her fingers tightened against Ben’s shirt.

She had always intended to go with him.

That assumption had lived so comfortably inside her that she had barely recognized it as a plan. Of course she would go. She would bring her sketchbooks and complain about the coffee and steal the quietest corner of the bus when everyone else became too loud. She would watch soundchecks from the side of the room, paint when she could, sleep against him while the highway moved beneath them. Even after the positive test, some part of her had held on to the image as though pregnancy would simply join them instead of changing the conditions of everything.

The bathroom floor returned to her body before it returned to her mind. The cold beneath her knees. The violent roll of her stomach. The effort of reaching the toilet in time while the apartment remained perfectly still around her. Her hand pressed more firmly against the place beneath her ribs as the truth settled with humiliating clarity. A tour bus would not be their bed, their bathroom, their familiar hallway. It would move beneath her while she tried not to be sick. It would smell like other people’s food, road air, detergent, coffee, sweat, whatever venue they had left behind. There would be nowhere to disappear when nausea came and no way to ask the highway to stop.

She would not survive it.

The conclusion was dramatic enough that she knew it was not literally true, but her body accepted it as fact before reason could intervene. Her throat tightened around the next breath. Heat rose behind her eyes so quickly that she blinked, startled, and lowered her face toward Ben’s chest as though hiding the first reaction might prevent the rest of it from happening. The movement pressed her nose into the worn cotton of his shirt. His familiar scent should have steadied her. Instead, it made the coming absence feel closer.

He was going to leave.

The tears spilled before she could decide whether the thought deserved them.

One slid hot across the bridge of her nose and disappeared into his shirt. Another followed almost immediately, then another, the response multiplying with an efficiency that would have been impressive if it were not happening to her. Cleo squeezed her eyes shut and drew in a careful breath through her nose, trying to stop the sudden collapse before Ben felt it beneath the arm around her. Her chest still betrayed her with one small, uneven hitch.

“Oh, no,” she whispered, the words aimed more at her own body than at him.

She lifted one hand from his side and pressed the heel of it beneath her eye, but the pressure only pushed more tears loose. There was no gradual emotional descent, no careful building grief she could examine and manage. One second she had been considering toast. The next she was crying into his shirt because a tour bus contained wheels and smells and therefore represented the complete destruction of every plan she had made.

The absurdity registered at the same time as the sadness, which only made her cry harder.

“This is hormones,” she said quickly, her voice already breaking around the explanation. She pulled back enough to wipe at both cheeks, annoyed when fresh tears replaced the ones she had removed. “I know it is. I’m not having some enormous revelation. I’m not secretly devastated about our entire life. My body has just apparently decided this requires a full emergency response.”

Her breathing remained uneven despite the attempt at clarity. Cleo looked down at the blanket gathered across their laps because looking directly at Ben would make the crying feel more serious than she wanted it to be. Her fingers picked once at a softened seam, then stopped when she realized they were trembling.

“I started thinking about when you leave,” she admitted, the sentence catching in the middle. “And I was going to come with you.”

The past tense hurt more than it should have.

She swallowed, felt the raw pull in her throat, and immediately regretted it when another tear slipped free. The toast sat on the plate in front of her, still pale and harmless. The water shone in the morning light. Everything in the room remained exactly as it had been, which made her reaction feel even more disproportionate.

“There is no way I can live on a bus like this,” she continued, pressing her lips together briefly when they began to wobble. “I barely made it down our hallway last night. A moving bathroom would be an act of war. Someone would make coffee, or eat garlic, or use the wrong soap, and I would have to throw myself out at highway speed.”

A wet, involuntary laugh broke through the tears, only to collapse into another shaky breath. Cleo covered her face for a second, embarrassed by the sheer physical force of the crying when the rational part of her remained standing nearby with its arms folded, fully aware that nothing catastrophic had happened.

“I know how ridiculous that sounds.”

She lowered her hands again and finally looked at him. Her eyes already felt swollen, her cheeks damp and warm above the blanket pulled to her chest. The sight of him blurred almost immediately, forcing her to blink through another spill of tears.

“I just wanted to go,” she said, quieter now. “And now I can’t.”

The word could not hold the amount of feeling her hormones had poured into it. It sounded like a canceled trip. Her body had interpreted it as abandonment, separation, failure, and the end of some imagined version of pregnancy in which she remained entirely unchanged except for a growing stomach. Cleo knew the difference. Knowing did not stop the tears.

She reached for him before pride could make her sit upright and apologize for the mess. Her hand caught in the front of his shirt, and she moved back into his chest, tucking her face beneath his chin while the blanket shifted around them. The contact gave her crying somewhere to go that was not the open room.

“I’m not asking you not to leave,” she said into the fabric, the words muffled and urgent because she needed that understood before anything else. “I’m not. I know you have to go. I know it’s your work, and I knew that when we decided to do this.”

Another uneven breath moved through her.

“I’m just crying because apparently pregnancy has removed every reasonable barrier between a thought and my tear ducts.”

Her grip loosened slightly against his shirt, though she did not move away. The warmth of him pressed along her front, solid beneath the blanket, and she focused on that instead of the bus, the dates, or the empty side of the bed she had not yet had to face.

“I’m going to be fine,” she insisted, sounding less convincing now that her face was wet against him. “I’ll stay here. I’ll paint. I’ll go to my appointments. I’ll eat emotionally neutral toast and terrorize you by phone.”

Her mouth twisted against his chest as another small laugh escaped.

“I’ll be completely functional.”

The tears continued anyway, slower now but no more obedient.

Cleo drew the blanket higher around her shoulders and held on to him with both hands, allowing herself the indignity of crying over a future tour bus she could not tolerate while morning sunlight crept across the rug toward the couch.

“Just don’t make fun of me,” she whispered, though she knew he would not. “Not until I stop. Then you can tell me I declared war on transportation.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben felt the first tear hit his shirt before he fully understood what had happened.

It was warm, impossibly small, and it soaked through the cotton just below his collarbone with the kind of immediacy that made his whole body go still. One second she had been tucked into him, making jokes about toast probation and his allegedly inflated relationship with the toaster, and the next her fingers were curled into his shirt with a desperation that sent every remaining trace of sleep out of him at once. Not panic, exactly. Panic was sharp and loud and wanted to do too many things. This was different. This was his entire attention narrowing to the tremor in her breath, the tightness of her hand against his chest, the sudden hot spill of tears she was trying to explain before she’d even let herself have them.

He didn’t interrupt her.

He wanted to. God, he wanted to get in front of every hurt word before it could land. Wanted to tell her no immediately, not because she was wrong about the bus, but because he hated the shape the thought had taken inside her. He hated that her brain had gotten as far as highway smells and moving bathrooms and the empty side of the bed before he knew it was happening. He hated that the first trimester had not just stolen food and sleep and whatever peace existed at 2:47 in the morning, but had now reached ahead to take something she had been counting on without asking either of them first.

But he kept still. Held the quiet around her instead of filling it too quickly. His arm tightened around her beneath the blanket, not enough to trap her, just enough to give her the chest she had moved toward and the steady thing she was asking for without having to say it. His other hand came up slowly, settling at the back of her head, fingers spreading into her hair with the kind of care he had learned in the bathroom hours earlier. The apartment was bright around them now, morning pouring across the floorboards and catching dust in the air, but the couch felt tucked away from all of it. Their strange little nest. Their recovery station. Their first-line defense against nausea, fear, and apparently the entire concept of tour transportation.

“No,” he said finally, voice low and rough, close to her hair. “I’m not making fun of you.”

The words came out steadier than he felt. His chest was tight, but not from fear alone. Something else had risen there too, heavy and aching and deeply familiar: the old knowledge that his life moved. That it had always moved. Cities, venues, buses, hotels, early call times, late flights, people needing pieces of him at hours when he most wanted to belong only to one person. He had accepted that motion because he loved the music. Because the work still lit him up in ways nothing else did. Because the stage, for all its noise, was still a place where some essential part of him could breathe.

But Cleo crying against his chest because she had imagined herself unable to follow him cracked that cleanly in half.

He pressed his mouth to her hair and closed his eyes for a second. The smell of her shampoo, faint mint, blanket-warm cotton, the cool morning air from the kitchen window—everything around him felt too vivid. He could see the bus as clearly as she could now. The cramped bathroom. Someone’s coffee. Someone’s cologne. The unpredictable lurch of the road beneath her feet. He imagined her pale and trapped in motion, trying to be brave in a space that gave her nowhere to recover, and the answer inside him was immediate.

Absolutely not.

Not like that.

“First of all,” he murmured, his thumb moving once against the back of her head, “you are allowed to be upset that the plan changed. That’s not ridiculous. You wanted to come. Of course you’re sad you can’t. That’s not hormones making something out of nothing. That’s… something.”

His mouth tightened because his own sentence was not elegant enough for the tenderness he felt, but he pushed through anyway.

“That’s a real thing. Even if the tears are showing up with, like, emergency sprinkler-system intensity.”

A faint breath of humor softened the edge of it, but he didn’t let it become a joke at her expense. His hand slid from her hair to the curve of her shoulder, rubbing there slowly through the blanket while she stayed folded into him. He could feel the damp patch on his shirt where she had been crying. He could feel the way her breathing still hitched, smaller now but not finished. It made every protective instinct in him sit upright, but he forced those instincts into gentleness. Into pace. Into not solving the entire future before she had even gotten through half a piece of toast.

“And second,” he continued, quieter, “you are not getting on a tour bus if the idea of it feels like an act of war. That’s not up for debate. Sage can take that up with management.”

He glanced down toward where the blanket covered her stomach, his expression softening even though she couldn’t see it. Their baby was still invisible beneath all of this—too small to announce themself in any way except upheaval—but somehow already present in every decision. Every plan had a third pulse now.

“I don’t want you proving you can survive something miserable just so we can pretend nothing changed,” he said. “Things changed. You changed. We changed. The plan can change too.”

That was the part he needed her to hear, though saying it made the tour dates loom up inside him with a cold, practical weight. There were people counting on him. A crew. Tickets sold. Rehearsals scheduled. A machine already moving because machines were good at moving whether hearts were ready or not. He could not pretend there were no consequences to his work, no commitments beyond the couch and the blanket and the woman carrying their child. But he could also refuse to let the machine become the only thing with gravity.

His hand drifted down her arm until he found her fingers twisted in his shirt. He covered them with his own, warm and anchoring.

“We are not figuring out the whole tour from this couch right now,” he said, because he knew himself well enough to set the boundary before his own anxiety started making spreadsheets out of dread. “You threw up half the night. I slept like a haunted raccoon. We have had one point for toast and a formal probation hearing before nine in the morning. This is not the decision-making panel at its peak.”

He felt the tiniest shift in her against him, maybe a breath, maybe a laugh trying and failing to exist. He kissed her hair again.

“But we will figure it out,” he said. “Not you sitting here trying to be ‘completely functional’ while I disappear and pretend phone calls are the same as being useful. We’ll actually look at it. The dates, the gaps, where I can come home, where you need help, who’s with you at appointments, what days are hardest. All of it.”

His throat tightened around the next part, and he let the truth be less polished because there was no elegant way to say it.

“I don’t want to leave you like this either.”

There. It was out.

Not as refusal. Not as guilt. Not as pressure for her to reassure him. Just truth set gently beside hers.

He looked over the room while he held her—the plate of toast on the coffee table, the water catching the morning light, the small bowl placed discreetly to the side. His guitar leaned quiet against the wall. The couch blanket had spilled across his thigh now, claiming him as part of the nest whether he had intended to be or not. The apartment looked ordinary enough to make his chest ache. Safe enough to resent anything that would pull him away from it.

“I know I have to go,” he said, softer. “I know you know that. And I love that you know that without making me feel like the work is something I have to apologize for.”

His fingers moved gently over hers.

“But loving the work doesn’t mean I’m going to act like leaving is easy. Not now.”

His free hand slid beneath the blanket, carefully finding the low place over her abdomen where her hand had been moments before. He rested there lightly, not pressing, just present.

“Especially not now.”

For a while, he didn’t say anything else. He let the quiet return around them, but it wasn’t empty this time. It had shape. His hand at her stomach. Her face tucked beneath his chin. The couch holding them both. Morning traffic passing below like the rest of Los Angeles had no idea that one small apartment had become a negotiation between love, work, nausea, and a tiny life with very disruptive scheduling preferences.

When he spoke again, his voice had warmed, gentler now that the worst of the wave in her seemed to be slowing.

“And for the record, when you are ready for me to make fun of transportation, I have material.”

He paused.

“Not you. Never you.”

His mouth curved against her hair.

“Transportation. Buses. The highway. Possibly garlic. Several soaps. Any coffee that acts suspicious.”

He leaned back just enough to see her face, though he kept one arm around her so she didn’t have to hold herself upright if she didn’t want to. His thumb brushed carefully beneath one damp eye, wiping what he could without fussing over the fact that there was anything to wipe.

“You don’t have to be fine right this second,” he said. “And you don’t have to sell me on how functional you’re going to be.”

His eyes searched hers, soft but awake now, fully there.

“You can be sad you can’t come. You can be mad at the bus. You can cry into my shirt and still know I have to leave. All of those can be true at the same time.”

He glanced down at the damp spot on his chest and gave it a very small, solemn nod.

“This shirt has accepted its role.”

A beat.

“Heroic textile service.”

The faint humor stayed tender, never sharp. He reached for the toast plate with his free hand and dragged it a little closer, not because he expected her to eat immediately, but because the tiny practical things were still the only tools he had.

“We’ll go slow today,” he said. “Toast. Water. Nest. Maybe later we make the tour less monstrous on paper. Maybe I call someone and ask annoying questions about flights and gaps and whether there’s any way to avoid me being gone in giant, stupid blocks.”

His jaw shifted once.

“And if I can come home between things, I will. Even if it’s for a day. Even if it’s for one night and I’m useless and jet-lagged and my hair looks like this again.”

His mouth softened.

“I’ll come home.”

He knew he shouldn’t promise the impossible. He wouldn’t. Not anymore. That had been part of what had broken them once—wanting so hard to make the distance harmless that he’d pretended wanting could solve what logistics did not. But this was not that. This was a promise to look for every possible door.

To stop treating absence like something she simply had to endure quietly because she loved him.

Ben settled back into the couch, taking her with him as much as she allowed, his cheek resting lightly against the top of her head. He let his hand remain low over the place where Sage had created chaos before breakfast, thumb still, palm warm.

“And Sage,” he murmured down toward the blanket, voice quiet with mock severity, “you and I are going to discuss timing. Because making your mother cry about buses before she’s had a full piece of toast is, frankly, poor leadership.”

He waited one beat, then added, “Still love you. Probation remains active.”

His attention returned fully to Cleo, the humor fading back into something more careful and more real.

“I’m here right now,” he whispered. “We don’t have to do the leaving part this morning.”

He held her a little closer, normal now because she had asked him to, and because he needed it too.

“This morning is just the nest.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo listened without trying to interrupt him, her cheek still resting against his chest where the damp patch in his shirt had become an undeniable piece of evidence that the morning had gotten away from her. His heartbeat remained steady beneath her ear, slower now than it had been when she’d first started crying, and she focused on that rhythm while he answered each piece of what she’d spilled into him. She hadn’t expected him to argue with her. She hadn’t expected him to solve it either. Somehow he managed neither. He simply stayed where she had found him and made room for every tangled thought she’d been too overwhelmed to separate herself.

When he said she was allowed to be upset because the plan had changed, something inside her gave way with surprising force.

She hadn’t realized she’d been asking herself for permission.

Her fingers loosened where they had been gripping his shirt. She hadn’t noticed how tightly she’d been holding on until then, the fabric gathered into a small fist beneath her hand. Slowly she smoothed it flat again, watching the wrinkles disappear beneath her fingertips.

“I keep telling myself it shouldn’t matter,” she admitted quietly, her voice muffled by the place she’d tucked herself beneath his chin. “Because the important part is that Sage is okay.”

She swallowed carefully.

“And they are.”

Her hand drifted beneath the blanket until it rested over his where he’d settled it against her stomach. The warmth of his palm spread through both of her hands at once.

“But I think…”

She stopped, not because she didn’t know the thought, but because saying it aloud made it feel unexpectedly fragile.

“I think I was still imagining pregnancy happening around my life instead of… changing it.”

The words landed more softly than the tears had.

She stared at the blanket pooled across both of them, following one loose thread near the edge with her eyes while she tried to understand the feeling herself.

“I kept picturing us on tour.”

A small laugh escaped her, tired and damp around the edges.

“I never updated the picture.”

She could still see it so clearly. Sketchbooks balanced on her knees while the bus rolled through another state. Falling asleep beside him in the narrow bunk. Complaining about terrible roadside coffee she couldn’t actually drink anyway. Painting backstage while soundcheck echoed through empty arenas.

None of those pictures had included a bathroom floor.

None of them had included waking up nauseous before sunrise or spending ten minutes deciding whether toast had too much personality.

The grief wasn’t enormous.

It was oddly specific.

She was mourning a version of the next few months that had quietly disappeared while she’d been busy learning how to survive each day.

When he said they weren’t solving the tour from the couch, her shoulders eased a fraction.

She hadn’t realized she’d already begun trying.

Her brain had skipped weeks ahead before she’d even finished breakfast, gathering logistics into impossible piles she was somehow expected to carry all at once. Hearing him place the problem back down where it belonged made the future seem farther away again.

One morning.

Just this morning.

She could manage one morning.

The promise that they would actually look at it together settled differently than reassurance usually did. It didn’t erase the sadness. It simply kept her from feeling stranded inside it.

“You don’t have to fix every mile,” she whispered after a long pause.

She lifted her head enough to look at him properly.

Morning had reached his face now, catching the tiredness still sitting beneath his eyes. She wondered if he knew he looked almost as emotionally wrung out as she felt. He was trying so hard to be steady that she suspected he hadn’t noticed how much of himself he was giving away in the attempt.

Her fingertips found his cheek.

“I don’t need you driving yourself into the ground trying to come home every twelve minutes.”

The corner of her mouth twitched faintly.

“I mean… I’d enjoy it.”

Another tiny smile.

“But that’s not what I’m asking for.”

She traced her thumb once beneath the faint shadow beneath his eye.

“I just…”

Her voice caught again, though this time no fresh tears followed.

“I needed to know you were going to miss me too.”

The admission surprised her enough that she looked away almost immediately.

“There.”

She laughed once under her breath.

“Apparently that’s what all of this was actually about.”

Not the bus.

Not the toast.

Not even the tour itself.

She had imagined him leaving while she stayed behind, and somewhere beneath the hormones and the crying and the impossible sensitivity of pregnancy, a quieter fear had whispered that perhaps he would be too busy to notice the space she’d left.

He had answered that before she’d even understood the question.

Cleo leaned forward again until her forehead rested lightly against his shoulder.

“I’m sorry your shirt got caught in the crossfire.”

She glanced down at the damp patch with a tiny grimace.

“It died a hero.”

His solemn defense of transportation earned the first genuine laugh she’d managed since the tears started.

It wasn’t interrupted by crying this time.

It simply existed.

She shook her head slowly.

“I think garlic remains the primary offender.”

Her eyes drifted toward the kitchen.

“Coffee hasn’t officially committed a crime yet.”

A thoughtful pause.

“But it’s on the watch list.”

The ordinary absurdity of the conversation slowly returned the apartment to itself.

The toast still waited patiently on the coffee table.

The water caught bright ribbons of sunlight as someone outside pulled away from the curb. The blanket remained wrapped around both of them now, her favorite nest having quietly expanded until it no longer belonged only to her.

She reached for the plate again.

This time she didn’t hesitate quite as long.

Breaking off another small corner, she held it for a second while she listened inward, then brought it carefully to her mouth. She chewed slowly, almost experimentally, giving her stomach every opportunity to object.

It stayed quiet.

She swallowed.

Then looked back at him with cautious satisfaction.

“Two points for toast.”

She rested the remaining piece back on the plate before curling her fingers around his hand again.

“And…” She drew a slow breath, feeling it settle much more evenly than the ones she’d managed a few minutes earlier. “You’re right.”

Not about the buses.

Not about the logistics.

About the morning.

She looked around the living room as though seeing it for the first time since the tears had started. The sunlight. The blanket. The open window. His guitar standing silently against the wall. The untouched water. The apartment that still held them both.

“We don’t have to leave today.”

Her gaze returned to him, softer now.

“So…”

She shifted closer until there wasn’t any daylight left between them beneath the blanket.

“I vote we stay exactly here for a little while.”

Her fingers laced through his.

“And let the committee reconvene after I’ve eaten enough toast to become emotionally stable again.”

Cleo felt the last of the tears easing, not because the sadness had disappeared, but because crying with pregnancy seemed to obey its own strange weather. It arrived like a summer storm, overwhelming and immediate, then drifted away just as suddenly, leaving everything damp and strangely peaceful in its wake.

She let out a long breath against his shirt.

“I hate that,” she admitted quietly.

“My brain is standing over there…” She lifted one hand and pointed vaguely toward the kitchen, her expression still blotchy from crying. “…being perfectly reasonable.”

Then she pointed back toward herself.

“And apparently my hormones are over here setting fire to public transportation.”

A tiny, exhausted smile pulled at the corner of her mouth.

“I feel like there should be a mediator.”

She carefully wiped beneath one eye with the edge of the blanket, then the other. Her skin already felt tender from crying, warm beneath her fingertips. When she looked back up at him, her lashes were still damp, though her breathing had finally begun to even out.

“I do feel better,” she said.

She sniffled once.

“I mean… emotionally.”

A thoughtful pause followed.

“I think.”

The uncertainty in the last word made her huff out the smallest laugh.

She settled back against him again, letting the familiar warmth of his chest steady her while the apartment returned to its quiet rhythm. Outside, somewhere below the open kitchen window, a motorcycle passed before fading into the morning traffic. The sunlight had crept farther across the living room floor now, warming the coffee table where the toast still waited patiently between them.

Her gaze drifted toward it.

“I should probably keep earning those points.”

She reached for another small piece, breaking it in half almost absentmindedly while she continued talking.

“You know what else is unfair?”

She glanced up at him.

“I finally understand why everyone kept telling me the first trimester is survival mode.”

She gave a tired shake of her head.

“I thought people were exaggerating.”

Another small pause.

“They were not.”

Her eyes wandered toward the bright window.

“I thought I’d be painting every day. I’d reorganize the studio. Maybe start sketching nursery ideas.”

She smiled faintly to herself.

“I’ve spent the last week feeling disproportionately proud every time I successfully shower.”

The confession made her laugh under her breath.

“And yesterday I cried because I couldn’t find the sweatshirt I wanted.”

She looked back at him.

“It was hanging on the back of the bathroom door.”

A beat.

“I had already looked there.”

She rolled her eyes at herself.

“So I don’t think I’m currently qualified to make any significant life decisions.”

Her fingers turned the tiny piece of toast over thoughtfully.

“I think the committee should postpone all major votes until I’m no longer emotionally compromised by misplaced clothing.”

The smile lingered as she brushed one final tear from the corner of her eye.

She lifted the toast toward her mouth.

It stopped halfway there.

The smile disappeared.

Not gradually.

Instantly.

Something shifted deep beneath her ribs.

A slow warmth climbed the back of her throat.

Her stomach tightened with startling force, every muscle in her abdomen drawing inward at once. Before she had even processed what was happening, her mouth flooded with saliva so quickly she had to stop herself from swallowing.

“…Oh.”

The tiny sound escaped before she meant to make it.

She froze completely, the piece of toast still suspended between her fingers.

For one hopeful second she stayed perfectly still.

Maybe it would pass.

Maybe—

No.

Her eyes widened.

“Oh, no.”

The words came out thicker this time, interrupted by another hard swallow as the nausea rose with terrifying speed. It was different from the slow ache that had lingered all morning. This arrived all at once, overwhelming every other sensation.

Her free hand flew to her mouth.

The room seemed to tilt.

She pushed herself upright so suddenly the blanket slid from her shoulders and pooled onto the couch behind her. The toast slipped from her fingers onto the plate as she caught herself against the edge of the coffee table, blinking once through the wave of dizziness that threatened to stop her before she’d even started moving.

She shook her head.

“No…”

Another swallow.

“I’m sorry…”

The apology barely formed before another violent surge rolled through her stomach.

She was already moving.

Bare feet struck the hardwood floor in quick, uneven steps as she hurried toward the hallway, one hand clamped tightly over her mouth while the other skimmed the wall for balance. The apartment suddenly felt much larger than it had a minute earlier. Every step jostled her stomach just enough to make the nausea climb higher.

She knew.

She wasn’t going to make it if she hesitated.

The hallway blurred at the edges as another dizzy spell swept over her. She steadied herself against the doorframe for the briefest second before pushing through it, dropping almost immediately to her knees in front of the toilet.

Her hands barely found the porcelain before her body took over completely.

The quiet morning that had only moments ago been filled with talk of toast, transportation, and nursery sketches dissolved beneath the unmistakable sound of morning sickness returning before breakfast had ever truly begun.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben had been trying to keep the morning small enough to fit inside the nest.

That was harder than it should have been, because every time Cleo found another piece of truth and placed it between them, the room seemed to widen around it. He could feel each admission as a physical thing: the way her fingers smoothed his shirt after gripping it too tightly, the quiet ache in her voice when she named the picture she hadn’t known she’d needed to update, the careful distinction between not needing him to destroy himself for every mile and needing to know the leaving would cost him too. That one lodged beneath his ribs and stayed there. It would have been easy to answer too quickly, to make some sweeping promise that sounded romantic because it was impossible, but the sight of her face—blotchy from crying, damp-eyed, still brave enough to be honest about the embarrassing shape of fear—kept him from turning sincerity into a performance. He covered her hand where it rested on his shirt and let his thumb move over the back of it, slow enough to prove he wasn’t reaching for the nearest dramatic exit. “I’m going to miss you so much it’s going to make me annoying,” he said quietly, the words rough at the edges because sleep deprivation had stripped the polish off him. “Not poetic-annoying. Logistical-annoying. Texting you pictures of vending machines and asking whether you drank water and calling from parking lots because the hotel room feels weird without your shoes in the wrong place.” His mouth softened as he looked down at her. “You were never going to be the only one noticing the empty space.”

The truth of that made his chest hurt in a way he didn’t try to hide. He had spent too many years acting as if missing someone was something that could be managed privately, tucked behind work, swallowed before it got large enough to inconvenience anyone. He’d been good at that once. Too good. But Cleo had cried into his shirt because some part of her had imagined him carrying on untouched while she stayed behind building days around appointments and bland food, and the thought made him want to go back in time and interrupt the fear before it ever reached her. Since he couldn’t, he stayed exactly where she’d asked him to stay, tucked into the expanded nest with her blanket across his thigh and the plate of pale toast waiting on the coffee table like an offering to a very temperamental god. “And I know you’re not asking me to wreck myself,” he added, quieter. “I hear that. I do. But I’m also not going to treat being away from you like it’s weather. Like, inconvenient but unavoidable, so everyone should just bring a jacket and stop talking about it. We’re allowed to hate parts of it. We’re allowed to plan around it. We’re allowed to admit it sucks and still do what has to be done.”

Her apology about his shirt made him glance down at the damp patch and accept its ruined dignity with all the seriousness it deserved. He smoothed one hand over the cotton near the spot as if comforting it, then looked back at her with a solemnity that lasted exactly one second before tenderness broke through. “This shirt volunteered for service,” he murmured. “It knew the risks when it entered the nest.” Her laugh reached him cleanly, not snagging on another sob this time, and relief moved through him so quickly it almost made him lightheaded. He didn’t make a big thing of it. He only let his arm settle a little more securely around her and breathed with her as the room returned to itself by degrees: the open window, the quiet guitar, the water shining in the glass, the everyday sounds of the building waking around them. When she began assigning blame to garlic and placing coffee under observation, he nodded with grave agreement because if ordinary absurdity was a bridge out of the crying, he would help build it plank by plank. “Garlic is absolutely the ringleader,” he said. “Coffee gets surveillance only. We don’t move on coffee without probable cause.”

The second bite of toast surviving seemed to change the air more than any reassurance could have. He watched her swallow it and felt an embarrassingly intense surge of pride, the kind usually reserved for stadiums or medical miracles or someone landing a plane with no training. But pregnancy had rewritten scale entirely. Toast mattered. Water mattered. A breath that came evenly after crying mattered. He had learned in the last twelve hours that the most important victories could look like a woman sitting under a blanket, keeping one small bite of bread down while morning light crept across the rug. “Toast is doing honest work,” he said, careful not to sound too triumphant because she had warned him against arrogance and he respected the delicate diplomacy of bland carbohydrates. “Humble. Reliable. No big speeches. We like toast. Toast can stay.”

He was still smiling when she described the strange weather inside her—reason in one part of the apartment, hormones elsewhere preparing an arson case against public transportation—and the image landed so perfectly that a laugh moved through him before he could stop it. Not at her. Never at her. At the wild, unfair mechanics of it. At the fact that the person he loved could know exactly what was happening and still be trapped inside the force of it. His smile faded into something softer as he watched her wipe beneath her eyes with the blanket, her skin pink from crying, lashes still damp, her expression caught between embarrassment and exhaustion. He wanted to tell her there was nothing undignified about any of it, but he knew dignity wasn’t always convinced by being named. So instead, he let his hand find her knee beneath the blanket and squeezed gently. “The mediator is me,” he said. “Obviously underqualified, possibly biased, but very present. I’ll stand between the reasonable brain and the transportation fire and ask everyone to lower their voices.”

When she spoke about survival mode, about the distance between what she’d imagined and what she was actually managing, Ben felt his amusement settle into a deeper, quieter ache. The list she gave him was small and devastating in its ordinariness. Painting every day. Reorganizing the studio. Sketching nursery ideas. Instead, she had been measuring herself by showers and safe foods and whether a sweatshirt had successfully remained findable. He looked toward the kitchen as she described it, picturing her standing there a week earlier in the fog of hormones and exhaustion, undone by a thing that had been within reach the entire time. It should have been funny, and it was, a little; but beneath the humor was the reality that her body had become unfamiliar territory and she was trying to navigate it without making anyone feel alarmed. “Hey,” he said, his voice lowering, more awake now and more serious for it. “Showering absolutely counts. Existing counts. Keeping down two points of toast counts. We can reorganize the studio later. The studio isn’t pregnant. It can wait its turn.” He brushed the back of his fingers lightly along the edge of the blanket near her hip. “And all major votes are postponed. Motion passed. No one in this administration is making life decisions under the influence of missing sweatshirt trauma.”

Then he saw her face change.

It happened before the sound, before she could explain anything, before the piece of toast had finished hovering uselessly in the air. The softness left her mouth first. Then the stillness came over her body too fast, unnatural in its suddenness, the kind of frozen attention he had started to recognize with a fear so immediate it no longer had to introduce itself. Ben was already moving when her eyes widened. Not frantically, not this time. The night had taught him the cost of panic, and morning had given him enough alertness to put love into motion cleanly. His hand slid away from her only long enough to clear the blanket from where it tangled near her legs, and the bowl he’d placed off to the side was in his grip before he made the conscious decision to reach for it. “Okay,” he said, voice steady, low, already shifting into the calm he wanted her body to borrow. “I’ve got you.”

She was faster than the bowl.

By the time he had the blanket out of her way and the plate safe from the sudden movement, she was already across the room, one hand catching the wall as she disappeared down the hall. His own body followed with the sharp, lucid efficiency of someone fully awake now—not rested, not fine, but awake in every cell that mattered. He grabbed the bowl anyway, snatched the damp cloth from where he’d left it earlier on the arm of the couch, and moved after her without calling out too loudly. Noise felt dangerous. Smell felt dangerous. Everything felt like something that could push her over the edge, so he kept himself quiet and quick, bare feet nearly silent against the floorboards as he reached the bathroom doorway a few seconds behind her.

The sound hit him first.

His stomach clenched in sympathy, but he didn’t let it reach his face. He stepped in and lowered himself beside her, setting the bowl aside within reach even though they no longer needed it, then gathered her hair back with one hand while the other found the center of her back. The bathroom tile was cold against his knees again. The room still held the faint clean trace of mint from earlier, now overrun by the raw, miserable reality of sickness, and Ben hated every second of it with a useless intensity that had nowhere to go. He held her hair anyway. Rubbed slow circles between her shoulder blades anyway. Made his breathing audible enough to give her something steady without crowding her with words. “You’re okay,” he murmured, close but not too close. “I’m here. Don’t worry about anything else.”

The apology she’d tried to offer on the way down the hall still echoed in him, and he wished he could pull it from the air and throw it directly out the open window. She had nothing to apologize for. Not for the toast, not for the suddenness, not for needing the bathroom again after trying so hard to believe the morning had turned a corner. He waited until the worst of the first wave loosened before he spoke again, his palm still moving in a slow, repetitive pattern over her back. “No sorry,” he said softly. “None. Absolutely not. The committee has banned apologies during active nausea events.” His mouth tried to curve, but the expression didn’t quite make it. Worry had him by the throat, not because he thought this was abnormal—he knew, intellectually, that it could happen exactly like this—but because knowing something was common did nothing to make it easier to watch her body betray her in real time.

He reached up with his free hand and flushed only when there was a lull, then tore off toilet paper and folded it neatly because neatness was one small mercy he could manage. He didn’t force it into her hand, just placed it where she could take it when she was ready. Then he dampened the cloth under the sink with cool water, moving in half-crouched silence, and returned it to the back of her neck. His hand was steadier now than it had been during the night. Not because he felt less, but because the fear had found its grooves. Water. Cloth. Hair. Back. Wait. Listen. Don’t crowd. Don’t catastrophize. Don’t ask if she’s okay while she is actively proving that okay is a complicated category.

Another wave took her before he could say anything else, and Ben leaned with her, keeping her hair clear, his hand firm enough at her back to make sure she knew he wasn’t going anywhere. The part of him that had been joking about garlic ten minutes ago fell silent completely. In its place was something quieter and more enduring, a love stripped of ornament by the sheer ugliness of the moment. There was nothing cinematic about this. Nothing glowing or soft-focus. Just his exhausted pregnant almost-wife on the bathroom floor, sick before breakfast, and him kneeling beside her in crooked sweatpants with bed-wrecked hair and a damp cloth in his hand, wanting so badly to take the misery from her that the wanting felt almost physical.

When the wave eased, he bent closer and kissed the back of her shoulder through her shirt, brief and grounding, because he needed to put tenderness somewhere her body might still understand. “Toast got cocky,” he whispered, because he could feel the room asking for something small to hold onto, something that did not deny the awfulness but left them one thin thread of normal. “That’s on me. I praised it too early.”

His hand shifted lower along her spine, then back up again, slow and careful. He watched the tiny details without making her feel watched: the way her fingers gripped the porcelain, the tremble in her shoulders, the effort it took for her to drag in the next breath. His mind, now fully awake and practical, began organizing the aftermath before the sickness had even finished. Fresh water. New toothbrush rinse. Maybe no more toast yet. Call the doctor if this kept happening. Ask about nausea options. Move the nest closer to the bathroom? No, maybe the couch was fine, but the bowl needed to stay directly beside her. Crackers could wait. Maybe ice chips. Maybe lemon. She liked lemon sorbet when nauseous—could he get lemon sorbet this early? Probably not. Grocery delivery later. Add it to the list.

But none of that belonged in the moment yet.

For now, he stayed on the tile.

“Breathe when you can,” he said, voice quiet and even. “No rush. Let it be awful. I’m right here.”

He meant it as permission as much as comfort. She didn’t have to make it tidy. Didn’t have to be functional. Didn’t have to turn the misery into a joke before it was done using her body. His palm remained between her shoulder blades, the other hand still holding her hair, and the morning outside the bathroom continued as if nothing had happened: traffic below, a window open somewhere, sunlight advancing through an apartment where a plate of toast waited abandoned on the coffee table.

Ben did not look toward it.

His whole world had narrowed to the woman in front of him and the tiny life inside her making their presence known with ruthless, terrible insistence.

“Still on probation,” he murmured toward the hidden baby, gentler than the words suggested. “Major points deducted for timing.”

Then his focus returned completely to Cleo, soft and unwavering.

“And you,” he whispered, rubbing another slow circle into her back, “don’t have to earn anything this morning. Not toast points. Not stability. Not being okay enough.”

His throat tightened, but his hands stayed calm.

“You just have to get through this part. I’ve got the rest.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo wanted to answer him.

The intention formed somewhere beneath the nausea, beneath the ache in her throat and the lingering burn that made every breath feel scraped raw, but her body refused to cooperate. She stayed where she was for another long moment, forehead resting against the cool porcelain, eyes closed while the bathroom slowly stopped pitching beneath her. Ben’s hand remained between her shoulder blades, moving in those slow, patient circles that never asked anything of her. He wasn’t trying to hurry her toward feeling better. He wasn’t waiting for her to reassure him. He was simply there, his presence so steady that it gave her something solid to lean her awareness against while everything inside her continued behaving like unfamiliar weather.

His words lingered more stubbornly than the sickness.

I’ve got the rest.

Something inside her loosened with almost painful gentleness.

She had spent the last week trying to carry every miserable little piece of this pregnancy without letting its weight become his problem. Every failed breakfast. Every wave of exhaustion. Every irrational certainty that she’d somehow already disappointed the tiny person they hadn’t even met yet. She had told herself she was protecting him because he had rehearsals and interviews and flights and a career built around showing up no matter how tired he felt. Somewhere along the way she’d quietly started believing that needing him too much would become another burden he deserved to be spared.

Yet he was kneeling on a cold bathroom floor before sunrise, holding her hair away from her face as though there were nowhere else in the world he would rather be.

The thought broke against her more cleanly than the tears earlier had.

She lifted one trembling hand from where it had been braced against the side of the toilet and searched for him without opening her eyes. Her fingers found his forearm first, warm beneath the sleeve of his sweatshirt, and slid down until they reached his wrist. She curled around it with what little strength she had, not because she thought he might leave, but because touching him made the room settle another fraction.

“I’m trying,” she whispered after a long silence, her voice rough enough that she barely recognized it. The words emerged between careful breaths. “I know you know that… but I still want you to hear it.”

She swallowed against the lingering taste in her mouth and waited another moment before trusting herself with more.

“I’m trying really hard not to disappear into this.”

The admission surprised her even as she heard herself say it.

She hadn’t known those were the words waiting underneath everything else.

Her thumb moved weakly against the inside of his wrist, tracing a thoughtless path over the pulse beating there. Strong. Unhurried. Certain. She concentrated on it for a second, borrowing its rhythm while her own body slowly remembered how to be still.

“I keep thinking…” She paused, breath catching as another ripple of nausea threatened before easing again. “I keep thinking that eventually you’re going to look at me and this is all you’re going to see.”

Heat gathered behind her eyes again, softer this time, stripped of panic.

“The girl who can’t finish breakfast.”

She laughed once, the sound tiny and frayed.

“The girl who cries because she lost a sweatshirt that was hanging on the back of a chair.”

Another breath.

“The girl who keeps ruining perfectly good mornings.”

Her fingers tightened around him before she could stop herself. She knew the fear wasn’t reasonable. Ben had spent every minute proving the opposite. He had held her through the night, slept beside her on the floor, celebrated toast like it deserved a medal, and followed her into this bathroom without the smallest flicker of irritation.

But fear had never cared much about evidence.

She finally lifted her head enough to look at him.

His hair was still flattened on one side from sleep. There was a crease across his cheek where the pillow had pressed into his skin hours earlier. The knees of his sweatpants already carried faint smudges from the bathroom floor, and the damp cloth had slipped halfway down his wrist without him seeming to notice.

He looked exhausted.

He also looked entirely present.

Cleo studied his face for several quiet seconds, taking in the concern he hadn’t tried to hide and the steadiness he had chosen anyway. She thought about everything he had said back in the living room—the vending machines, the parking lots, her shoes left in impossible places—and realized with a sudden, almost dizzy certainty that he hadn’t been reassuring her for the sake of ending the conversation.

He had simply been telling her the truth.

The realization settled somewhere deep enough that it didn’t need words.

She reached up slowly, brushing her fingertips along the line of his jaw. The morning scruff rasped lightly against her skin, familiar enough now to feel like part of home. Her hand lingered there, cupping his cheek with more affection than strength.

“You know,” she murmured, a tired smile threatening despite everything, “you keep making promises that sound… really impossible to live up to.”

She watched his eyes instead of looking away.

“And somehow…” Her thumb stroked once across the edge of his beard. “I believe every single one.”

The confession left her quieter rather than lighter.

She leaned the small remaining distance until her forehead rested gently against his, closing her eyes again as the coolness of the bathroom disappeared beneath the warmth of him.

“I don’t feel very brave this morning,” she admitted.

A careful breath.

“But I feel… less alone.”

The distinction mattered.

Bravery still seemed impossibly far away, buried somewhere beneath hormones and nausea and a body she no longer fully understood. Alone, though—that had shifted.

She wasn’t carrying this by herself anymore.

Not because the sickness had lessened.

Because someone had climbed down into it with her and refused to make her earn being loved before he stayed.

The trembling eased by degrees rather than all at once.

Cleo stayed where she was until her breathing no longer felt borrowed, until the rawness in her throat settled into something she could tolerate instead of something she had to think around. The nausea hadn’t disappeared; it lingered in the background like a storm that had moved a few miles offshore without actually leaving. But the violent certainty of it had passed, replaced by the peculiar emptiness that always seemed to follow, as though her body had exhausted itself enough to become briefly quiet.

She let herself rest there another minute anyway, her cheek turning slightly toward Ben’s hand where it remained warm between her shoulder blades.

“I think…” she said carefully, testing both the words and her stomach before committing to either. Her voice still sounded scraped thin, but it no longer shook. “I think the world’s stopped spinning.”

A tired smile tugged at one corner of her mouth.

“Maybe just… slowed down enough that I can negotiate with it.”

She opened her eyes and looked around the bathroom as though seeing it properly for the first time since she’d hurried inside. The cool tile beneath her knees suddenly seemed very hard. The porcelain was no longer something she needed to cling to. Her shoulders ached from hunching forward.

Very slowly, she leaned back onto her heels.

The movement made her pause, waiting to see whether her stomach would protest.

It didn’t.

Relief arrived so quietly she almost missed it.

She tipped her head back until it rested lightly against Ben’s shoulder instead, closing her eyes for one grateful second. His sweatshirt smelled faintly of laundry detergent beneath the lingering traces of the morning, familiar enough to make her chest loosen.

“I think…” Another slow breath. “I’d like to go back to our nest.”

The words came with almost childlike hope, and she laughed softly at herself.

“Our very glamorous nest.”

She finally turned enough to look at him properly. The concern hadn’t left his face. It had simply settled there, becoming part of his expression in the way exhaustion had settled beneath his eyes. He looked as though he’d forgotten entirely that he’d been awake for most of the night.

The realization filled her with a tenderness so immediate it almost eclipsed the lingering nausea.

She reached up and smoothed a piece of bed-rumpled hair away from his forehead.

“You look like you’ve been through it too.”

Her thumb lingered against his temple before she withdrew her hand again.

“I’m sorry…” She caught herself immediately, blinking once before an amused huff escaped her. “No.”

Her smile grew a fraction.

“I’ve been informed apologies are temporarily illegal.”

The joke landed more gently than she’d expected, mostly because she could already hear him insisting on enforcing his own ridiculous rule.

With his help, she shifted carefully onto her feet.

She moved slowly, giving her body every opportunity to object. It complained in small ways—her legs unsteady from kneeling so long, her stomach still uncertain—but the overwhelming urgency had retreated. Ben’s hand remained at her waist without steering her, simply offering something solid to lean against if she needed it.

The walk back down the hallway took only a handful of steps, yet it felt strangely significant.

She’d left it running.

She was coming back walking.

By the time they reached the living room, the sunlight had stretched farther across the rug. The abandoned plate of toast still waited on the coffee table exactly where they’d left it, looking heartbreakingly optimistic.

Cleo eyed it for a second.

“I think…” she said solemnly, “…the toast and I need some time apart.”

She eased herself back beneath the blankets with a quiet sigh that sounded almost involuntary as the cushions accepted her weight. The nest felt even softer than before. Familiar. Safe. She tucked her feet underneath herself, drawing the blanket over her lap before resting her head against the back of the couch.

For several long seconds she simply sat there, listening to the apartment breathe around them.

The open window.

The distant traffic.

The quiet guitar still drifting through the speakers.

Ben moving somewhere close enough that she didn’t have to look to know where he was.

Her stomach gave one tentative little roll.

Not angry.

Thinking.

She frowned at it with cautious concentration.

“…Okay.”

She waited.

“…This is going to sound either completely reasonable or absolutely unhinged.”

Another pause.

“I think I want vanilla ice cream.”

She looked over at Ben almost apologetically, though there was a hint of wonder beneath the embarrassment.

“Not fancy vanilla.”

She shook her head.

“Just… plain vanilla.”

She considered it another second, checking with whatever mysterious committee currently governed her appetite.

“No chocolate.”

Another beat.

“No caramel.”

She made a tiny face.

“No little crunchy pieces.”

Then, with complete seriousness:

“And absolutely no vanilla bean.”

She couldn’t explain why.

The thought of those tiny black flecks suddenly seemed deeply offensive, as though they had personally wronged her.

“I don’t know what vanilla bean ever did to me,” she admitted, sounding faintly baffled by herself. “But I don’t want to look at it.”

She pulled the blanket a little higher around herself, cheeks warming with sheepish amusement.

“I just want the really boring kind.”

Her eyes drifted toward the ceiling as she listened for her stomach’s opinion.

“…I think.”

A small smile found its way back onto her face.

“The kind that tastes like childhood birthday parties and freezers in the back of grocery stores.”

She looked back at him, visibly tired now that the worst had passed, but softer too.

“If I change my mind in five minutes…” she warned gently, “…I’m requesting diplomatic immunity.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben felt the first part of her admission land in him long before the craving did.

It stayed with him through the careful shift from tile to hallway, through the slow return to the couch, through the soft sound the blanket made as it settled around her again. He had kept one hand close to her waist the whole way, not steering, not claiming, just there in case her body decided gravity had become optional again. But inside, the words she had given him in the bathroom kept moving. She was afraid of being reduced by this. Of becoming only the symptoms. Only the girl who couldn’t finish breakfast, who cried too suddenly, who bent her whole morning around whether her stomach would tolerate bread. The fear had come out raw and scraped thin, but it had not sounded foreign to him. It sounded like the same old wound wearing a new shape: the terror that needing too much would make love smaller.

By the time she was back in the nest, Ben’s throat had tightened around a thousand things he wanted to say too quickly. He didn’t, because she still looked like one wrong smell could undo her, and the room had finally softened around them again. Instead, he moved the abandoned toast plate a polite distance away, not with ceremony, but with all the respect due a defeated treaty partner. The bowl came closer. Water stayed within reach. The damp cloth was folded fresh over the couch arm. Small things. Manageable things. His hands needed tasks while the rest of him caught up to how badly he wanted to crawl inside her fear and tear out every lie by the roots.

When he finally sat beside her again, he did it carefully, letting the couch dip under his weight before he turned toward her. The morning light had climbed higher while they were in the bathroom, spilling across the rug in warm, indifferent bands, catching the edges of the canvases near the wall and the glass of water on the coffee table. Everything looked too normal for the amount that had happened inside him in the last ten minutes. He rested his forearm along the back of the couch behind her, close but not pinning her in, and let his eyes find her face. She was tired in a way that had gone past sleepy into something softer and more translucent, like the morning had worn through her defenses one layer at a time. It made him ache with a tenderness so serious he had to breathe through it before trusting his voice.

“Hey,” he said quietly. “Before we get to the ice cream foreign policy crisis, I need to say one thing.”

His mouth curved faintly, but the humor was only there to make the door easier to open. He leaned closer, enough that his shoulder brushed the blanket around hers, enough that she could feel him without having to hold herself upright. His hand came down gently over the place where the blanket hid her fingers, a warm weight through the fabric.

“I don’t look at you and see symptoms,” he said. “I need you to know that. I see you having symptoms, yeah, because I have eyes and a very aggressive membership in the health-and-safety committee. But that is not the same thing.”

The distinction mattered so much he could feel it in his pulse.

He had to get it right.

He looked at her carefully, wanting every part of him to stay unguarded enough for her to believe him. Not polished. Not performer-sincere. Just morning-raw and exhausted and hers.

“I see Cleo,” he continued, softer. “I see the woman who got up off the bathroom floor and still made jokes about toast. I see the woman who’s terrified of becoming a burden and still keeps letting me closer even when it scares her. I see the artist who is going to paint our kid’s whole first world when her body stops treating standing upright like an extreme sport. I see the person I loved before any of this, and the person I love inside it, and the person I’m going to love after this phase passes and we’ve moved on to whatever other weird, beautiful, inconvenient thing comes next.”

His thumb moved slowly against the blanket, finding the outline of her hand beneath it.

“You’re not disappearing,” he said, and the words came out rougher than he meant them to. “Not to me.”

For a second, he couldn’t joke at all. The bathroom still lived too close under his skin—the trembling in her fingers around his wrist, the way she had touched his face like she was trying to memorize proof of him, the quiet confession that she didn’t feel brave but did feel less alone. That had nearly undone him. Not because it was tragic, exactly, but because it felt like the closest thing to a vow either of them could make from a bathroom floor before breakfast. He had not made her brave. He couldn’t. But he had made the room less lonely. That was something he could do again. A thousand times, if he had to.

Then the ice cream request finally caught up with the more practical half of his brain.

Ben blinked once, looked toward the kitchen as if plain vanilla might have materialized there through sheer emotional specificity, then looked back at her with the grave expression of a man receiving classified intelligence.

“Okay,” he said. “This is the clearest directive we’ve had all morning.”

His tired face shifted, concern loosening just enough to let affection through. There was something so beautifully absurd about the specificity of it that it almost made him dizzy. Not elegant vanilla. Not speckled vanilla. Not dessert pretending to have a résumé. Something plain and cold and nostalgic enough to bypass nausea by way of memory. The craving had arrived wearing such intense conditions that he loved it immediately.

“Diplomatic immunity is granted,” he said. “Full immunity. Broad protections. You may reverse your position at any time without penalty, public comment, or committee review.”

He stood, more awake now than he had been all morning, though the exhaustion still lived in him like a low hum behind the eyes. This time, when he crossed into the kitchen, he moved with purpose instead of sleep-heavy drift. The open window had cooled the room enough that the faint trace of toast had thinned into almost nothing, and he was grateful the apartment seemed to be cooperating. He grabbed the discarded toast plate first and set it near the sink, far enough away to respect the requested separation. Then he washed his hands, because the morning had involved enough bodily betrayal that ritual cleanliness felt suddenly sacred, and dried them on the towel hanging from the oven door.

His phone was on the counter where he’d abandoned it the night before. He picked it up, squinting at the brightness for one offended second before lowering it, then started searching with a focus that would have been ridiculous if the mission were anything less important than feeding the woman carrying his child. Grocery delivery. Ice cream. Plain vanilla. No flecks. No artisanal nonsense. No “French” anything that might surprise them with eggy richness or philosophical ambition. He scanned labels as if he were defusing a bomb.

“Absolutely not,” he muttered at the screen. “Why does everything have a personality now?”

He could feel her behind him in the living room even without looking—blanketed, quiet, listening. That awareness threaded through every small action he made. He didn’t want to leave her alone if he could avoid it. Not yet. Not with the nausea still hovering like an unpredictable storm offshore. Delivery made more sense. Stay in the apartment, keep the bowl nearby, let the ice cream come to them like civilization intended.

He found one that looked boring enough to earn trust.

No flecks in the picture. No caramel ribbon lurking beneath a charming description. No crunch. Just plain freezer-aisle vanilla in a tub that looked like it had no ambitions beyond being cold and sweet. Perfect.

“I have located a candidate,” he called softly, glancing over his shoulder. “Very boring. Extremely low drama. Looks like it has attended several children’s birthday parties and never once networked.”

He added it to the cart, then added two more because he had already learned that pregnancy cravings could become law for anywhere between six minutes and three weeks, and he refused to be underprepared by frozen dairy. He hesitated, then added lemon sorbet too—not for now, not to suggest she should want something else, but because the past week had taught him that nausea sometimes wanted sharp and cold after it had finished ruining everyone’s plans. He added plain crackers, ginger ale, and one box of popsicles that looked aggressively simple. Then he stared at the cart with the solemn regret of a man becoming his father in real time.

He submitted the order before he could overthink it.

“Done,” he said, coming back toward her. “Reinforcements are on the way. I did get more than one container, because I am trying to become the kind of father who does not get caught with insufficient boring vanilla. This feels foundational.”

He lowered himself back onto the couch, slower now so the cushion wouldn’t jostle her, and slid into the space beside the nest as naturally as if he belonged there because he did. The blanket had shifted while he was gone, and he adjusted the corner near her shoulder with light fingers, tucking it just enough to keep the cool air from sneaking in too aggressively. His hand lingered for a moment afterward, resting near her collarbone over the blanket, not quite touching skin.

“And for the record,” he added, voice quieter, “I am very prepared to pretend I never heard about the vanilla if the government collapses in five minutes.”

His eyes warmed.

“No judgment. No questions. We pivot. That’s policy now.”

He wanted to make her laugh again, but he also wanted her to rest. The line between the two had become delicate, and he found himself paying attention to things he once would have missed entirely: whether her mouth tightened at a smell, whether her shoulders lifted with another wave, whether her eyes lost focus in that split second before nausea became urgent. But she was still here. Tired, pale, wrapped up almost to her chin, but here. The world had stopped spinning enough for her to ask for something. That felt like a victory too.

Ben leaned in and pressed a careful kiss to her temple. Her skin was warm beneath his mouth, softer now that the crisis had passed, and he stayed there for one breath longer than necessary because he wanted to feel her in the present. Not the tour. Not the next appointment. Not the next bathroom run. Just her, in their living room, asking for the least glamorous ice cream on earth like it was a sacred craving delivered from above.

When he drew back, he stayed close.

“We’ll make this easy,” he murmured. “Ice cream when it gets here. Little spoon. Maybe two bites. Maybe the whole thing. Maybe you look at it and decide it has betrayed you spiritually. All acceptable outcomes.”

His hand found hers beneath the blanket again and folded around it.

“And until then, you don’t have to do anything. No proving you’re okay. No explaining why something sounds good or terrible. No apologizing if your stomach files a surprise appeal.”

The apartment quieted around them for a moment. The delivery confirmation sat on his phone, face down now on the coffee table. The toast had been exiled. The bowl waited discreetly close. Outside, traffic rolled on beneath the open window, but inside the nest everything had narrowed to breath and warmth and the soft scratch of blanket fibers against his wrist.

Ben let his head rest lightly against the back of the couch and looked at her, really looked, with the full ache of the morning still in him.

“You are the woman I love,” he said, the words low enough that they almost belonged to the room more than the air between them. “Sick, crying, craving suspiciously specific grocery-store vanilla, declaring legal protections for future appetite reversals. All of it. Still you.”

His thumb moved once over the back of her hand.

“Always you.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo didn’t answer him immediately.

She couldn’t.

Not because she didn’t know what to say, but because every sentence he offered seemed to arrive somewhere different inside her, settling before the last one had finished. She stayed tucked beneath the blanket, one hand still hidden beneath its weight where his eventually found it, her body heavy with the lingering exhaustion that followed being sick. The apartment had become strangely quiet again. The toast was gone. The bowl waited within reach without drawing attention to itself. Morning sunlight had continued its slow journey across the living room while neither of them had been paying attention, warming the hardwood beneath the coffee table as though this had been an ordinary Saturday all along.

It felt impossible that the world had kept moving while hers had narrowed first to a bathroom floor and then to the space between his voice and her own heartbeat.

She watched him while he spoke.

Really watched him.

Not the broad shape of him, but the details she would have missed if she’d been trying to answer too quickly. The hesitation before certain words, as though he was weighing each one against the possibility of hurting her by accident. The way his thumb never stopped moving against the blanket once it found the outline of her hand. The exhaustion still sitting plainly beneath his eyes, refusing to be hidden behind humor even when he offered it anyway. There wasn’t performance in any of it. He wasn’t trying to rescue her from the morning. He was trying to make sure she didn’t mistake the morning for herself.

The distinction settled somewhere painfully deep.

She hadn’t realized how completely she’d begun collapsing the two together until he separated them out loud.

Symptoms.

Cleo.

The words should never have needed to become different things.

Somewhere over the last several weeks they quietly had.

She lowered her eyes to where their hands rested beneath the blanket, her fingers curling instinctively around his as if her body understood something before the rest of her could catch up. Pregnancy had made her world astonishingly small in ways she hadn’t expected. Days that used to be measured in paintings, walks along the beach, grocery runs that somehow turned into an afternoon together, mornings spent barefoot in the studio with music playing too softly to identify from another room—they had gradually become measured by nausea, by appointments, by whether she’d managed breakfast, by how long she’d gone without crying over something that wouldn’t have mattered a month earlier.

Without noticing, she’d started introducing herself to herself through the symptoms first.

He had looked straight through them.

Not ignored them.

Seen through them.

The difference was so profound she felt tears gathering before she’d even consciously recognized what she was feeling.

She laughed once under her breath instead, a tiny, watery sound born almost entirely from disbelief.

“You make…” Her voice caught, forcing her to pause for a breath before trying again. “You make it sound so obvious.”

She looked back up at him then, her vision softening around the edges from the tears she still refused to let fall just yet.

“And I know it should be.”

Another small smile appeared, fragile but genuine.

“I know I’m still me.”

She drew a slow breath that lifted the blanket gently around them both.

“But somewhere between throwing up before breakfast and crying because I couldn’t find a sweatshirt that was literally hanging behind the pantry door…” She shook her head at herself, affection finally beginning to replace embarrassment. “…I think I accidentally started believing I was becoming… the difficult version of me.”

The confession left her more quietly than she’d expected.

Not dramatic.

Just honest.

Her thumb brushed once across the back of his hand.

“The version everybody has to manage.”

Silence settled again, but it no longer felt quite so heavy.

She watched him disappear into the kitchen a moment later, her eyes following him almost absentmindedly while she remained curled beneath the blanket. She listened to cabinets opening, water running briefly at the sink, the faint tap of his phone against the countertop, and found herself smiling before she’d realized why.

He approached grocery delivery the way other people approached emergency response.

With complete commitment.

She could hear it in the muttered negotiations with ice cream labels.

No French anything.

No personality.

No philosophical ambition.

By the time he declared he’d located a suitably boring candidate, she was laughing openly enough that it didn’t hurt.

“I knew you’d understand the assignment,” she called back, her voice still hoarse but lighter now.

“The ambitious ones can’t be trusted.”

She rested her head against the couch cushion while he continued building what sounded suspiciously like an emergency preparedness kit for frozen dairy and pregnancy. Every item he added carried its own quiet meaning. Not expectation. Not pressure that she should eat it.

Possibility.

If this doesn’t work, maybe this will.

If not today, another day.

There was something deeply comforting about being cared for by someone who seemed perfectly willing to prepare for outcomes without becoming attached to any particular one.

When he returned, bringing the warmth of the kitchen back with him, she watched him settle beside her with the same care he’d used all morning. Even the way he adjusted the blanket felt thoughtful rather than fussy, protecting her from the breeze drifting through the open window without making her feel fragile.

His hand lingered near her shoulder.

She leaned into it almost imperceptibly.

The joke about governmental collapse earned another quiet laugh, but this one came easier.

“I appreciate a legal system with flexible precedent,” she murmured. “Very progressive.”

Then he kissed her temple.

She closed her eyes before she meant to.

The warmth of his mouth lingered against her skin long after he’d pulled away, and for one suspended second she let herself simply exist inside that feeling. No future. No tour. No doctor’s appointments. No countdown to the next unpredictable wave of nausea. Just this living room. This couch. This blanket wrapped around both of them. The steady presence of the man beside her who had somehow turned an ordinary morning into something that felt less like surviving and more like being carried through it.

His voice remained quiet when he spoke again about the ice cream.

Little spoon.

Two bites.

The whole container.

Complete betrayal.

Every possibility welcomed without disappointment.

She smiled before opening her eyes again.

“I think…” she said slowly, studying their joined hands as her fingers intertwined with his once more, “Tiny Sage might be very relieved to hear there won’t be legal consequences if negotiations break down.”

Then her gaze lifted back to his.

The smile faded into something softer.

More serious.

“You know…” she began quietly, taking her time because this deserved the same care he’d given her all morning. “I told you in the bathroom that I didn’t feel brave.”

She watched his face for another long moment.

“I still don’t.”

The admission no longer embarrassed her.

It simply existed.

“But I think…” She swallowed gently. “I think bravery might have less to do with how I feel than I thought it did.”

Her free hand found the edge of the blanket, smoothing the fabric absently between her fingers.

“Because I keep having really awful moments…” she said. “And somehow they still end with me letting you see them.”

Her eyes met his fully.

“I don’t know if that’s bravery.”

A tiny smile returned.

“But I know it’s trust.”

The words settled into the quiet between them before she continued.

“And every single time you stay…” Her thumb moved slowly across the back of his hand. “Every single time you look at me like you did today instead of looking at everything that’s happening to me…”

She felt another sting behind her eyes, gentler this time.

“…it gets a little easier to believe you.”

Not because she doubted him.

Because she was slowly learning how to stop doubting herself.

She shifted closer until her shoulder rested fully against his, letting the weight of her head settle carefully against him with a tired sigh that carried more peace than exhaustion now.

“I love you,” she whispered.

The words were simple.

They didn’t need decoration.

After everything else they’d shared that morning, simplicity felt truest.

“And… I would very much like to meet the aggressively boring vanilla when it arrives.”

A tiny smile curved against his shoulder.

“I think Tiny Sage has chosen wisely.”

Cleo looked at him for another long moment after the last of her words settled between them.

There wasn’t anything left she needed to explain.

The morning had already stripped them both down past language in so many ways that silence no longer felt unfinished. It felt earned. She let herself simply watch him, taking in the familiar lines of his face, the exhaustion still lingering around his eyes, the softness that never quite disappeared no matter how tired he became. She thought about everything he’d done since she’d opened her eyes—how many times he’d quietly rearranged the apartment around whatever her body needed next without ever making it feel like an inconvenience. The bowl within reach. The water. The folded cloth. Grocery orders for the most aggressively ordinary vanilla ice cream either of them had ever discussed with constitutional seriousness.

He had spent the entire morning making the world a little gentler wherever she happened to be standing.

Or kneeling.

Or crying.

Love, she realized, didn’t always arrive as grand declarations.

Sometimes it looked like someone moving a plate of toast without mentioning it because they noticed you couldn’t bear to look at it anymore.

Her chest tightened with a tenderness so complete it almost felt like another kind of ache.

Without saying anything, she shifted beneath the blanket.

She reached for him instead.

One hand found the front of his shirt, gathering the soft fabric loosely in her fingers, not because she needed to pull very hard but because she wanted him to understand where she was going before she moved. Then she leaned sideways, guiding him with the slow confidence of someone who knew he would follow without asking why.

The couch cushions dipped beneath the combined shift in their weight.

She settled onto her side first, drawing one knee carefully upward beneath the blanket before gently tugging him the rest of the way with her. It wasn’t dramatic. There was no sudden collapse into each other. Just a gradual rearranging until sitting no longer made sense and neither of them had to pretend otherwise.

The blanket slid after them with a soft whisper.

She caught one edge before it slipped completely away and drew it over both of them, pulling it higher until the morning light narrowed to a warm strip across the outside of the fabric instead of directly across their bodies. The nest they’d built earlier somehow transformed beneath the simple movement, becoming something smaller, quieter, enclosed on every side by blanket and couch cushions and each other.

Less a place to sit now.

More a cocoon.

She tucked herself against him without hesitation, fitting into the familiar space beneath his arm as though her body had been searching for it all morning. Her forehead found the curve beneath his jaw almost automatically. One arm rested across his middle beneath the blanket, her fingers curling lightly into the cotton of his shirt while the steady rise and fall of his breathing met her cheek.

Only then did she close her eyes.

The apartment still existed beyond the blanket. Traffic continued somewhere below the open window. A floorboard settled softly in another room. The refrigerator hummed its quiet, dependable rhythm from the kitchen.

But all of it sounded farther away now.

Muted.

As though the blanket had managed to keep more than just the morning chill outside.

She breathed him in slowly.

Laundry soap.

A trace of toothpaste.

The faint, familiar scent that belonged only to him.

It settled something inside her that conversation couldn’t quite reach.

“I think,” she murmured at last, her voice nearly lost against his neck, “this is probably the safest place I’ve ever been.”

She didn’t mean the couch.

Or the apartment.

Her fingers tightened gently against his shirt before relaxing again.

Then she fell quiet, making no effort to fill the silence, perfectly content to let the cocoon hold both of them while the rest of the morning continued without asking anything more.

[Benjamin Wilder]

For a moment, Ben forgot how to breathe normally.

Not in the sharp, panicked way he had forgotten in the bathroom when her body folded itself over the toilet and all he could do was hold her hair back with one hand and keep the other steady between her shoulders. This was quieter. Deeper. A suspension that happened somewhere behind his sternum when her weight settled fully against him and the entire living room seemed to shrink to the warmth beneath the blanket. Her fingers rested in his shirt. Her breath moved against his neck. The couch, the open window, the abandoned morning light, the delivery order waiting somewhere out in the city—all of it blurred at the edges until there was only the soft pressure of her body against his and the sentence she had left there for him like something impossibly fragile.

Safe.

The word did not feel small in him.

It opened too many doors at once.

He remembered too clearly every version of himself that had not been this. The man onstage with lights in his eyes and noise moving like weather over thousands of strangers. The man who had loved her so much and still somehow made his life a place she had to leave in order to breathe. The man who used to think wanting her was enough, then learned the hard way that love without shelter could still exhaust someone. He had spent so long being loud in the world that hearing her locate safety in the curve of his body, under a blanket on a couch after vomiting before breakfast, nearly broke him open with gratitude and grief all at once.

His throat tightened until words felt dangerous.

The first things that came to him were too large anyway. Reckless things. Forever-shaped things. Promises with sharp edges because they were made by a man who wanted to control every mile of the future and couldn’t. He wanted to tell her he would never let anything reach her. That the world could try, but he would put himself between her and every hard surface, every bad smell, every cold bathroom floor, every lonely appointment, every city that tried to take him too far from her. But he knew better now than to confuse devotion with impossible architecture. He could not promise a life without fear. He could not promise not to leave for work. He could not promise her body would be kinder tomorrow than it had been today.

So he lowered his cheek against her hair and chose something true enough to survive daylight.

“Then I’ll stay right here for a while,” he murmured.

His voice came out rough from lack of sleep and everything he was trying not to pour into it. He hoped she could hear what lived underneath anyway. Not the temporary shape of it—the couch, the blanket, the nest waiting for vanilla ice cream with no personality—but the larger vow hidden inside the smaller one. I heard you. I won’t make you earn this. I won’t turn safety into a performance and call it love. I will learn where to put my hands, my voice, my worry, my silence. I will keep becoming someone your body can rest beside.

He shifted carefully, adjusting his shoulder beneath her without disturbing the place she had found. The movement was small, mostly in his ribs and the bend of his arm, but it let him curve around her more naturally. He kept one hand resting along her back through the blanket, broad and warm, moving only when he felt her breathing change. The other stayed low near her side, close enough to her stomach that the awareness of Sage lived constantly beneath his palm even when he wasn’t directly touching. He was exhausted—he could feel it now in the dull ache behind his eyes, the heavy drag in his limbs, the strange floating edge that came after too little sleep and too much feeling—but being tired did not make him less present. If anything, it stripped him down to the simplest version of himself. Less clever. Less armored. More honest.

His eyes drifted to the coffee table over the rise of the blanket. The bowl was still close. The water, too. The damp cloth lay folded within reach like a small white flag from the war they had not won so much as survived in rounds. He studied the arrangement with sleepy, serious satisfaction and nudged the glass a fraction closer with the side of his knuckle, careful not to jostle her. Then he let his hand return to her, because she had asked for safety without asking for management, and he was learning the difference even in the places where his instincts wanted to overachieve.

“I’m not going to say the enormous version of what I’m thinking,” he added after a quiet minute, his mouth brushing faintly against her hair as he spoke. “Because it’s morning, and you’ve been sick, and I have had one bite of cracker and maybe two hours of sleep, so my internal speechwriter is compromised.”

The faintest smile touched his mouth, too tired to become a full joke.

“But I am thinking it.”

He let that rest where it was, unnamed but not hidden. There were some things he could feel more clearly by not forcing them into language. The warmth of her against him. The slow settling of her breath. The way his heart had stopped trying to sprint and had adjusted itself to the quieter rhythm of being needed without being asked to perform. It was terrifying, how much he wanted this version of care. Not the sickness. Never that. But the intimacy of it. The unglamorous access. The trust of being allowed near her when she was raw and furious at her own body and unable to turn any of it into something pretty.

His fingers traced a small, absent path over the blanket at her shoulder.

“You keep talking about not feeling brave,” he whispered, softer now, less because he wanted a response and more because the thought had been sitting in him since the bathroom. “And I get why it doesn’t feel like that. I do. Nothing about throwing up on a bathroom floor feels like a heroic montage. It mostly feels like porcelain and betrayal.”

His eyes burned when he blinked, and he closed them for a moment, breathing in the clean thread of laundry soap in her hair, the faint mint, the warm human scent of sleep and survival.

“But letting me be here?” he continued. “Letting me see the parts you’d rather hide, letting me stay close when everything in you wants to make it easier on me by being alone—that is not nothing.”

His hand stilled.

“I know trust costs you something.”

That was the truest thing he could name.

He knew it because he had watched her give it to him in pieces over months, sometimes with her hand in his, sometimes with a joke, sometimes by not stepping away when the old fear told her to. He knew it because the first time she let him back into her studio, surrounded by the drawings she had made of him when loving him hurt too much to say aloud, he had understood that being trusted by Cleo was not a passive gift. It was chosen. It was worked for. It was terrifyingly precious because it came from someone who knew exactly what it meant to survive without it.

He swallowed and pressed his lips lightly to the top of her head.

“So I’m going to keep earning it,” he said. “Not in a dramatic way. Not in a look-at-me-I-bought-every-vanilla-in-Los-Angeles way, though, for transparency, that may already be happening.”

His mouth curved a little more.

“In the normal ways. The boring ways. Water. Crackers. Moving toast into witness protection. Answering the phone from parking lots. Showing up on bathroom floors. Learning what kind of silence helps and what kind makes you feel alone.”

The apartment gave a soft wooden creak around them, as if the building itself had shifted under the growing warmth of morning. Somewhere outside, a voice passed beneath the open window and faded. Ben kept his cheek against her hair, feeling his body begin to recognize rest now that the emergency had receded. It would have been easy to drift. The exhaustion tugged at him in heavy, persuasive waves, inviting him to close his eyes and trust the cocoon they had made. But he did not let himself fall too far. Not yet. The vanilla was coming. Her stomach was unpredictable. The morning had taught him not to assume peace meant permanence.

Still, he let himself soften.

Just enough.

The phone on the coffee table buzzed once against the wood, a muted little sound that instantly sharpened his awareness. He did not reach for it quickly. No sudden movements. No breaking the cocoon. He opened one eye, tilted his head enough to see the screen lighting faintly, and read the delivery update upside down like a man deciphering state secrets from inside a blanket fort.

“Vanilla has entered the timeline,” he murmured. “Estimated arrival is… soon enough that I’m not moving unless absolutely required.”

His hand settled more securely over her back.

“Which, to be clear, means I will move. When the sacred boring cargo arrives. But until then, I’m unavailable to all non-ice-cream entities.”

He let the phone go dark again.

For another stretch of quiet, he simply held her. Not too tightly. Not like he was trying to keep the world out by force. More like he was agreeing with her body that rest was allowed here, that the couch could be a shoreline and the blanket could be walls and his chest could be something steady enough to return to when the morning tilted. He could feel her heartbeat faintly where she pressed against him, not distinct enough to count, but alive beneath the warmth. He thought of Sage tucked inside her, invisible and already rewriting them. He thought of the future tour, of empty hotel rooms and phone calls and the ache that would come later. Then he let it pass. Not erased. Just not invited into the cocoon.

Not this minute.

This minute belonged to her breathing.

To the aftertaste of fear fading from the room.

To the strange, holy mundanity of being the place she named safe.

Ben’s voice, when it came again, was barely louder than the hum of the refrigerator.

“I love you too,” he whispered, because he had not said it yet and the words had been waiting in his chest, patient but insistent. “So much that I’m trying very hard not to become embarrassing about it before ten in the morning.”

He pulled back only enough to look down at her, his eyes tired and soft, the pillow crease still faint on his cheek, his hair still hopeless in a way he had stopped pretending to manage.

“I’m failing,” he admitted. “But with dignity.”

His thumb moved along the edge of the blanket near her shoulder, slow and warm.

“You can stay exactly like this as long as you want,” he said. “No points system. No committee vote. No productivity requirement. Just you. Me. Tiny Sage on probation. And the least sophisticated vanilla ice cream available for legal purchase.”

His expression softened around the humor until nothing guarded remained.

“And if you need the safest place again later,” he murmured, “I’ll make it again.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo felt him go quiet before he spoke.

There was a particular kind of silence that belonged only to Ben, one she’d learned slowly over the course of loving him. It wasn’t absence. It wasn’t uncertainty. It was the sound of someone refusing to speak until his heart had caught up with what his mouth wanted to say. She remained tucked against him, her cheek resting where his heartbeat lived, listening to the rhythm beneath her ear gradually settle into something slower than it had been a few minutes earlier. The blanket had turned the edges of the morning soft, muting the apartment into little more than filtered light and distant city noise. She could feel the warmth of his body surrounding hers, the steady rise of his chest beneath her temple, the careful way he held himself as though he wanted to give her somewhere to rest without ever making her feel confined.

When he finally answered her—not with something enormous, but with the promise that he would stay right here for a while—she closed her eyes.

It wasn’t a smaller promise.

That was what made it so powerful.

Months ago, she might have believed the biggest declarations were the safest ones. Forever. Always. Never. The kinds of promises people reached for because they sounded large enough to overpower fear. Somewhere between losing him, finding him again, and building something steadier from the pieces, she’d learned that love rarely lived inside the grand architecture of impossible vows. It lived here instead. In someone choosing the truth they could actually keep. In someone saying I’ll stay right here and meaning every word because they understood exactly what “here” required.

She breathed him in slowly, her nose brushing lightly against the fabric of his shirt.

“You always know when not to promise me the impossible,” she murmured. “I think… I trust the small promises more.”

The words settled quietly between them before she fell silent again, listening to the subtle adjustments of his body as he shifted beneath her. She felt the careful movement of his shoulder, the way he curved around her without disturbing the place she’d found against him, his hand broad and warm through the blanket as it rose and fell almost imperceptibly with her breathing. There was something deeply intimate about being cared for by someone who paid attention without hovering. Even now, she could feel the restraint in him. The instinct to fix everything still existed—she knew him well enough to recognize it—but he had been learning, all morning, how to love her without trying to outrun what neither of them could control.

She loved him a little more for every time he chose that restraint.

His voice found her again, admitting there was a larger version of what he wanted to say but refusing to force it into the room simply because it existed. A smile touched her mouth before she could stop it. She could almost see the thoughts lined up behind his eyes, impatient and oversized and aching to become language. Once upon a time, he might have spoken all of them. Once upon a time, she might have needed him to.

Now she found herself grateful for what he held back.

Not because she didn’t want to hear those words someday.

Because she knew they would still be true tomorrow.

She turned her face just enough to press a small, absent kiss against the fabric covering his chest.

“I think,” she said softly, “your compromised speechwriter is making very responsible editorial decisions.”

The smile lingered against his shirt for another moment before fading into something quieter as he spoke about bravery.

She didn’t interrupt him.

She simply listened.

The bathroom returned in fragments she hadn’t invited back: the cold porcelain beneath her palms, the humiliation she’d expected to feel, the unexpected relief of finding his hand exactly where she’d needed it when she’d finally looked up. She remembered touching his face because she’d needed to know he was real, that the gentleness she was experiencing wasn’t something she’d imagined in the middle of feeling so profoundly unlike herself.

Then he named the cost of trust.

Her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly where they rested against him.

No one had ever said it quite like that before.

Most people talked about trust as though it were a personality trait. Something naturally given or naturally withheld.

He spoke about it as though it were labor.

As though he understood it had been built from choices she’d had to make while afraid.

The realization reached somewhere old enough that she couldn’t immediately find words for it.

She stayed quiet for a long time.

When she finally spoke, her voice was softer than she’d expected.

“My whole life…” She paused, not because she was uncertain, but because she wanted to tell the truth carefully. “I thought trust was supposed to feel like certainty.”

Her thumb drifted slowly across the fabric of his shirt, tracing an absent line she wasn’t consciously following.

“So every time I felt scared…” A small breath escaped her. “I assumed it meant I wasn’t really trusting.”

She shook her head almost imperceptibly against him.

“But I think…” Another pause, this one accompanied by a quiet, almost disbelieving smile. “I think trust might actually be choosing someone while you’re still scared.”

The words surprised even her.

She hadn’t known she believed them until she’d heard herself say them.

She let them exist for a while before continuing.

“And if that’s true…” Her hand slid upward until her fingers rested lightly against the side of his ribs beneath his shirt. “Then I’ve been trusting you for a long time.”

Emotion tightened unexpectedly behind her ribs.

She laughed once under her breath, mostly at herself.

“I just kept waiting for it to stop feeling brave enough to count.”

His promise to keep earning that trust undid something inside her with such quiet precision that she felt her eyes sting again.

Not because she thought she would stop trusting him if he didn’t.

Because he’d understood something she’d never wanted to ask for.

Trust wasn’t maintained through grand gestures.

It was accumulated.

Bathroom floors.

Parking lot phone calls.

Water glasses.

Remembering which vanilla looked least suspicious.

Thousands of ordinary moments that eventually became a life.

She lifted her head just enough to look at him properly, her expression warm with a kind of affection that had moved beyond excitement into recognition.

“You know what I love most about you?” she asked quietly.

She didn’t wait long enough for him to answer.

“You’ve never made ordinary feel disappointing.”

Her fingertips brushed lightly along the line of his jaw.

“You make it feel…” She searched for the right word, her eyes never leaving his. “…sacred.”

A faint buzzing interrupted the quiet.

She felt his attention shift toward the coffee table without feeling him leave her, and the small distinction made her smile again. Even reaching for information, he seemed reluctant to disturb the cocoon they’d built.

Then came the solemn announcement.

Vanilla has entered the timeline.

The laugh that escaped her this time was fuller than any she’d managed all morning.

It loosened something in her chest she hadn’t realized was still tight.

“I’m very relieved,” she murmured gravely. “I’d hate for international relations to deteriorate after all the diplomatic work we’ve done.”

The apartment settled around them again after that, quieter than before. She listened to the refrigerator humming in the kitchen, to the distant traffic beyond the open window, to the soft rhythm of his breathing beneath her ear. The world beyond the blanket still existed. The tour still existed. Tomorrow still existed.

But none of it seemed impatient anymore.

When he finally said he loved her, the words didn’t arrive like a revelation.

They arrived like another blanket laid gently over both of them.

Warm.

Familiar.

Necessary.

She smiled before he even finished teasing himself about becoming embarrassing before ten in the morning.

“I think,” she whispered, “ten in the morning is actually a perfectly acceptable time to be embarrassing.”

Her eyes lifted to meet his when he pulled back just enough for her to see his face. The pillow crease along his cheek, his hopeless hair, the exhaustion he’d stopped trying to disguise—it all made him look wonderfully, unmistakably human.

She loved him most like this.

Not because he was imperfect.

Because he no longer believed he had to hide the imperfections from her.

Her hand found his face almost absentmindedly, her fingertips resting lightly against the stubble along his jaw.

“I don’t think you have to make the safest place again,” she said, her voice barely louder than the hum surrounding them.

She smiled, small and certain.

“I think…” Her thumb brushed gently across his cheek. “You’ve been building it for a very long time.”

She leaned forward the final inch separating them, kissing him slowly—not with urgency or hunger, but with the quiet certainty that had slowly replaced so much of her fear. It lingered only a few seconds before she rested her forehead against his again, her eyes closing as another tired breath left her.

“I’m very glad,” she whispered into the small space between them, “that I came home.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

For a few seconds, Ben couldn’t answer.

The kiss had been too quiet to give him anything dramatic to hide behind. There was no rush in it, no heat urgent enough to disguise what it meant. It arrived soft and certain, carrying the weight of every difficult thing she had just handed him—the truth about trust, the fear that had lived inside her need, the way ordinary had become something sacred between them without either of them noticing until this morning. He stayed still beneath it, not because he didn’t want to respond, but because something in him recognized that moving too quickly would make it smaller. His eyes closed, and for that brief pocket of time, the whole apartment seemed to hold itself around them: the muted traffic beyond the open window, the faint coolness slipping in from the kitchen, the sunlight pressing against the blanket like the morning had finally learned how to knock before entering.

When she settled close again, when the words reached him in that near-whisper and found the place in him that had never fully healed from losing her the first time, his breath left him unevenly. Home. It was such a simple word until she put herself inside it. Then it became the studio floor and the childhood bedroom and the cabin in Truckee. It became every place they had hidden from the noise long enough to find each other again. It became the booth with the sonogram, the bathroom tile, the couch nest, the folded cloth within reach, the future arriving in symptoms and cravings and tiny acts of logistical devotion. He had spent so much of his life leaving places that mattered, telling himself return was the romantic part. But this—her choosing to come back, not just once, but again and again, through fear and sickness and old hurt—felt less like return and more like mercy.

“Yeah,” he said at last, voice low and unsteady around the edges. “Me too.”

It was not enough. It was also the only thing he could say first without making the room collapse under something too large. His hand moved up slowly beneath the blanket, tracing the line of her back through the fabric until his palm settled between her shoulders, exactly where it had gone in the bathroom, but gentler now. Not bracing her through sickness. Just learning the shape of her at rest. The exhaustion sat heavy in him, an ache behind his eyes and a looseness in his limbs that made the couch feel dangerously persuasive, but his mind was awake in all the places that mattered. Every word she had given him was still alive inside him, turning over, rearranging pieces of what he thought he understood about being loved by her.

He had always known trust mattered to Cleo. Of course he had. But he had not always understood the texture of it, the labor involved, the courage required to move toward someone before fear had cleared the room. Hearing her name it that way made him look back over them and see the whole story differently. Not as sudden breakthroughs or single grand returns, but as a series of small, trembling choices she had made while some part of her was still ready to step back. Her hand in his after hard conversations. Her studio open to him. Her body curled against his in Truckee. Her voice on the bathroom floor, raw and miserable, still reaching for him instead of away. She had been trusting him long before either of them had dared to treat it like a settled thing.

“I didn’t know,” he murmured, thumb moving once against her shoulder. “Not really. I mean, I knew you were letting me in. I knew it mattered. But I don’t think I understood how much courage it took to do it while part of you was still scared.”

His mouth pressed briefly into her hair, the contact soft enough to be more breath than kiss.

“I think I kept waiting for trust to look peaceful too. Like if we got it right, it would stop shaking.” A faint, tired smile touched his mouth, though there was no humor in his eyes. “Which is probably very convenient for me, emotionally, because then I’d only have to be worth trusting when everything felt easy.”

That thought landed unpleasantly, but honestly. He let it. He had earned worse truths than that. He had lived inside the consequences of confusing love with intensity, of thinking the depth of feeling could somehow make up for the instability around it. He didn’t want to make that mistake again with softer language. He didn’t want to call himself a safe place and then build it out of declarations too broad to stand on.

His hand slowed against her back, then rested there.

“But I want to be worth trusting when it doesn’t feel easy,” he said. “When you’re scared. When you’re sick. When you’re mad at me. When the bus is an enemy nation and toast has betrayed the household. I want to be the person you can choose before the fear goes away.”

The words came out quieter than he expected, perhaps because they frightened him too. Not in a way that made him want to retreat. In a way that made him feel the seriousness of what he was offering. Being chosen by Cleo while she was afraid meant he had to keep meeting that choice with care. Not perfection. He was too tired and too human and too prone to badly timed jokes for perfection. But attention. Consistency. The kind of steadiness that did not vanish when the moment stopped being pretty.

The line of her earlier touch still seemed to burn along his jaw. He could feel it like an imprint, her fingers reading his face with that gentle recognition that always made him feel seen in ways fame never had. She had looked at his sleep-creased, exhausted face as if there was nothing lacking in it. As if the ordinary, unpolished version of him was not a disappointment but the version she trusted most. The thought made his chest ache with something embarrassingly close to relief.

“You saying that about ordinary,” he whispered after a moment, eyes lowering toward the blanket between them, “is maybe one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”

He let out a quiet breath that almost became a laugh, but didn’t quite have the strength.

“I know that sounds insane. I’ve had people say big things. Loud things. The kind that come with lights and signs and too much screaming.” His fingers curled lightly into the blanket near her shoulder, anchoring himself. “But ordinary with you is the thing I was afraid I didn’t know how to keep. I knew how to chase. I knew how to want. I knew how to miss you so badly I turned into the least functional man in several zip codes. But keeping ordinary safe? Making breakfast boring enough? Knowing when to move the toast without making a speech about toast?”

His mouth softened, and he looked back down at her with an affection so full it nearly erased the fatigue from his face.

“That’s the part I want to be good at.”

Outside, the city shifted into a brighter pitch. A car passed too fast below the window, tires hissing over pavement still cool from night. Somewhere in the building, a pipe knocked once and settled. The refrigerator hummed on, indifferent and dependable, while the phone on the coffee table sat face down with the future of vanilla hidden inside it. Ben found himself cataloging the room again, not out of anxiety this time, but wonder. The bowl near enough. The water close. The exiled toast out of sight. Cleo tucked against him beneath a blanket they had turned into shelter. None of it looked like the kind of romance people wrote songs about.

Which meant, naturally, that he was already writing one in his head.

Not a polished version. Not the wedding song, though some part of him felt the quiet thread of that too, the melody that kept changing shape every time she taught him what love actually required. This was smaller. A progression no one else would recognize, built out of fan hum and morning traffic and a half-whispered request for plain vanilla ice cream. He could hear the rhythm of it beneath her breathing. Something gentle. Something unfinished. Something that didn’t try to make the morning prettier than it had been.

His hand drifted lower, stopping at the small of her back.

“And for what it’s worth,” he said, the corner of his mouth lifting, “I am going to be deeply embarrassing about the vanilla when it arrives. I’ll try to keep it tasteful, but I make no promises. The speechwriter remains compromised, and the Department of Boring Dairy has already radicalized me.”

The humor felt easier now, not because the serious things had passed, but because they had been held properly enough to let air back into the room. He tipped his head until his temple rested lightly against hers, keeping his voice soft in the close space between them.

“But I’m glad Sage chose it too.”

His hand shifted carefully beneath the blanket until it rested low, near where the baby remained hidden and disruptive and beloved. There was still nothing to feel. No curve he could read with his palm, no movement, no proof beyond the exhaustion in Cleo’s body and the tenderness expanding painfully through his own. But he stayed there anyway, reverent in a way that had nothing to do with visibility.

“You’ve got excellent taste in emotionally neutral desserts,” he murmured toward the tiny life with grave sincerity. “Questionable timing. Strong opinions about vanilla bean. But we can work with that.”

Then he went quiet again, because he could feel Cleo settling, and because he didn’t want to pull her back into more conversation if silence was finally doing what sleep had failed to. He held her the way she had asked him to hold her earlier—normally, fully, without treating her body like a fragile object or his own care like something that needed applause. His chest rose against her cheek. His fingers rested warm and still. The cocoon held.

A minute passed. Maybe more.

Ben’s eyes fell half-closed, though he stayed aware of the phone, the bowl, the water, the slight changes in her breathing. Tiredness moved through him again, slower now, less urgent than before. It no longer felt like being dragged under. It felt like sinking into something he trusted. The apartment, the morning, the woman in his arms, the baby making every plan more complicated and more precious by the hour.

He swallowed around the last tight place in his throat.

“You coming home,” he whispered, almost too quietly, “is the best thing that ever happened to my life.”

The sentence was enormous despite his attempt to make it small. He knew that. He also knew it was true in a way that did not ask anything from her. It was not a proposal. Not a demand. Not a vow too large for the morning. Just a fact he could lay beside her in the nest, ordinary and sacred at once.

He pressed another kiss into her hair and let his mouth linger there.

“And I’m going to spend a very long time making sure you never regret it.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo listened without interrupting.

She had begun to understand that silence did different work with Ben than it did with most people. Silence had once frightened her because it had so often been the space where disappointment arrived. It was where people reconsidered, where affection cooled, where patience quietly expired before anyone admitted it had. With him, silence had slowly become something else entirely. It had become the place where he sorted through his heart before offering her anything from it. Even now, curled against him beneath the blanket with her cheek resting over the steady rhythm of his heartbeat, she could hear the difference. His voice reached her only after it had already traveled through his chest, softened by breath and bone until every sentence felt less like conversation and more like something entrusted to her care. She stayed still, listening to him discover truths about them almost as he spoke them aloud, and felt a quiet ache spread through her at the realization that they were both still learning the shape of the same love.

When he admitted he hadn’t understood how much courage trust had required from her, she smiled against his shirt before she even realized she was doing it. There wasn’t disappointment in the admission. There couldn’t be, because she hadn’t understood it either until this morning. For years she had imagined trust as a destination waiting somewhere beyond enough healing, enough time, enough certainty. She had believed one day she would wake up and discover that loving someone no longer required effort, that fear would simply fail to arrive and leave behind only confidence. Instead, the bathroom floor had taught her something gentler and far more difficult. Trust hadn’t waited politely for fear to leave the room. It had existed beside it the whole time. Every phone call she’d answered when retreat would have been easier. Every conversation she’d stayed inside instead of disappearing into herself. Every drawing she’d let him see. Every ordinary afternoon she’d allowed to become ordinary again because some quiet part of her had already decided he was worth reaching toward before she felt completely safe.

Her hand slipped slowly upward until it rested over his heart, feeling the measured rhythm beneath her palm. She wasn’t checking that it was still there. She simply wanted to place her hand where the words had come from. “You already are,” she murmured, her voice soft enough that it barely disturbed the cocoon they’d built around themselves. “You keep saying you want to be the person I can trust when I’m scared.” Her thumb moved once against the fabric of his shirt, following the quiet rise and fall beneath it. “Ben… I’ve been choosing you while I was scared. I just didn’t understand that was what I was doing.” Saying it aloud rearranged something inside her. Looking backward, she could suddenly see the entire story differently—not as a series of dramatic reconciliations, but as hundreds of trembling choices she’d made while fear was still standing beside her, each one small enough to overlook until they accumulated into a life.

His confession about ordinary reached her even more deeply than she expected. She lifted her head just enough to see his face as he spoke, watching exhaustion soften every familiar feature until he looked wonderfully unlike the man strangers imagined they knew. He spoke about breakfast, about boring mornings, about wanting to become someone who knew when to move toast without turning it into a declaration of love, and her chest filled with an affection so profound it almost made her laugh. People had spent years loving the spectacular version of him. They’d fallen in love with songs, stages, photographs, interviews, moments polished brightly enough to survive being shared with the world. She had fallen in love with the man who quietly folded damp washcloths without being asked. The man who noticed when her eyes avoided the abandoned toast plate and moved it without announcing the kindness. The man who kept learning her, not because he expected mastery, but because paying attention had become one of the ways he loved.

She reached up and brushed an unruly piece of hair back from his forehead with absent fingertips, smiling as she studied him. “I think people have spent a long time loving the version of you that could fill arenas,” she said quietly. “I fell in love with the man who folds washcloths.” Her fingers drifted down the side of his face, lingering lightly against the warmth of his jaw. “The one who quietly moves breakfast out of my line of sight because he notices I’m pretending not to look at it. The one who keeps learning me.” She smiled a little wider then, something fond and quietly amused warming her expression. “No one else gets enough ordinary mornings to meet him.” The thought didn’t make her feel possessive. It made her feel impossibly lucky.

His solemn speech about the Department of Boring Dairy finally pulled a fuller laugh from her, one that seemed to loosen the last tight thread of the morning inside her chest. The sound surprised even her. It no longer felt like laughter trying to rescue either of them from difficult feelings. It simply belonged there now, living comfortably beside tears and tenderness instead of replacing them. “I’ll support your campaign,” she murmured. “As long as your platform remains aggressively uncomplicated.”

When his hand settled low beneath the blanket, resting where Sage remained invisible but already deeply present, her own hand found his without conscious thought. Their fingers overlapped there naturally, both of them touching a future they couldn’t yet see, a tiny life that had somehow already developed fiercely specific opinions about grocery-store vanilla. She listened to him address their baby with complete sincerity, discussing emotionally neutral desserts as though he were negotiating with a tiny diplomat, and warmth spread through her so gently it almost felt like relief. “You’ve already got your dad completely wrapped around your finger,” she whispered toward her stomach with a sleepy smile. “You don’t even have fingers big enough yet.”

For the first time since the positive test, motherhood didn’t arrive in her imagination carrying only responsibility and fear. It arrived carrying this instead: one blanket pulled over two tired people, his hand beneath hers, a bowl within reach, ordinary vanilla making its determined way across Los Angeles, and the quiet certainty that neither of them was facing any of it alone.

Then he told her that coming home had been the best thing that had ever happened to his life.

She felt the sentence before she heard it.

His chest tightened beneath her cheek in that tiny way she’d begun recognizing whenever something important found its way into words. He had tried to make the thought small enough to fit inside the morning, but it remained enormous anyway, not because it demanded anything from her, but because it carried nothing except truth. She lifted her head slowly until she could see him again, her eyes searching his face with the tenderness reserved for things too precious to rush past. Moisture gathered along her lashes, though it no longer carried the sharp sting of grief. These tears belonged somewhere gentler.

“I don’t think I understood until today,” she whispered after a long moment, her fingertips resting lightly against the side of his neck, “that coming home wasn’t something only I did.”

She smiled then, slow and luminous despite the exhaustion still written across her face.

“I always thought I was the one finding my way back to you.”

Her thumb brushed once beneath his ear.

“But somewhere along the way…” She paused, watching him as the realization settled fully inside her. “You came home too.”

Not to a place.

To a life.

She could see it now with startling clarity. The man holding her would still leave for tours. Music would always ask him to walk away for a while. There would still be buses and airports and stages and crowds singing words he’d written long before this morning. None of that had disappeared. But somewhere in the years between losing each other and finding each other again, he had quietly stopped measuring love by intensity and started measuring it by attention. By whether she’d had enough water. Whether the blanket had slipped from her shoulder. Whether vanilla bean looked suspicious. Whether silence or conversation would make her feel less alone. He had come home every bit as completely as she had.

She leaned forward until their foreheads rested together once more, closing her eyes as a tired smile settled across her face.

“So I guess…” she whispered, the words almost disappearing into the warmth between them, “…we’re both home.”

She kissed him again, slowly and without urgency, letting gratitude speak where language finally became too small. When she settled back against his chest, her body seemed to release the last of its vigilance all at once, melting naturally into the place she’d chosen without thinking. Neither of them spoke again. They didn’t need to. The apartment breathed quietly around them, traffic drifted past beneath the open window, and somewhere out in the city the least sophisticated vanilla ice cream either of them had ever loved continued making its way toward the little cocoon they’d built together. Inside it, wrapped in one blanket, with exhaustion, laughter, fear, and hope all resting peacefully beside one another, home no longer felt like somewhere either of them needed to search for.

It was already holding them both.

Cleo stayed where she was after the last kiss, making no effort to move again. It felt as though the morning had finally spent itself. The fear that had been living beneath her ribs since she’d opened her eyes had quieted into something gentler, no longer gone but no longer demanding all of her attention. In its place was a heaviness that had nothing to do with sadness. It settled through her limbs with the unmistakable insistence of exhaustion, the kind that followed being sick and crying and feeling too much before breakfast. She could feel it pulling at her eyes, softening the edges of her thoughts until they drifted instead of marched. Beneath her cheek, Ben’s heartbeat remained slow and reassuring, his breathing gradually matching her own. Wrapped together beneath the blanket, they had somehow turned an ordinary couch into the safest bed she’d ever known.

She let her fingertips wander lazily across the front of his shirt, tracing meaningless little patterns she wasn’t consciously drawing. The fabric was warm from his body. Every so often she would become aware of his hand resting against her back or low beneath the blanket near Sage, and each time it happened another small knot inside her seemed to loosen without permission. Her body was still sore in the strange, invisible way pregnancy seemed to accomplish, her stomach still uncertain enough that she knew the morning wasn’t necessarily finished surprising them. But for the first time all day she wasn’t waiting for the next wave with her shoulders already braced. Rest had finally become imaginable.

A sleepy smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

“I think…” she murmured, her voice already blurred by the drowsiness settling over her, “…I’m about five minutes away from accidentally taking a nap.”

The admission came with something almost sheepish, as though she still hadn’t entirely broken herself of apologizing for what her body needed. She caught herself before the apology arrived, smiled faintly at the habit she’d nearly repeated, and instead tucked herself a fraction closer, her nose brushing lightly against his shirt.

Her eyelids grew heavier.

She could hear the apartment breathing around them now—the distant hum of the refrigerator, the occasional muted car outside, the quiet creak of the building settling into the warmth of the morning. Somewhere out there, painfully ordinary vanilla ice cream was making its way toward them with all the gravity of a state visit. The thought made her smile again without opening her eyes.

“If I fall asleep before…” she whispered, her words growing slower between little pauses, “…before the Department of Boring Dairy arrives…”

Her fingers curled loosely into his shirt.

“…wake me when the ice cream gets here.”

The sentence carried the last of her wakefulness with it.

She let out one long, contented sigh, her body melting completely against his as the effort of holding herself even slightly alert quietly disappeared. Trust, she realized in the final clear moment before sleep began claiming the edges of her mind, had another shape she’d never understood before today.

Sometimes it looked like believing someone would wake you for vanilla ice cream.

She smiled into his chest.

Then, wrapped safely inside the cocoon they’d made together, she let herself drift.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben knew the exact moment sleep began taking her.

It wasn’t dramatic. There was no sudden drop, no clear threshold where consciousness left and rest arrived. It happened in increments against him: the weight of her body surrendering a little more fully into his chest, the lazy path of her fingers gradually losing its pattern against his shirt, the small softening in her breath where words stopped needing to organize themselves. He stayed perfectly still beneath all of it, one arm curved around her under the blanket, his other hand resting lightly near the low place where Sage had already rearranged the whole architecture of the morning. The couch was not built for this kind of stillness. His hip had started to protest. One of his feet was trapped at an angle that would eventually become a problem. The back of his neck held the ache of too little sleep and too much adrenaline. He did not move.

“Yeah,” he whispered, so quietly it barely rose above the hum of the refrigerator. “I’ll wake you.”

The promise was small enough to fit inside the cocoon, which meant it mattered. After all the enormous things they had been careful not to say too loudly, after the way she had named trust and home and ordinary like she was handing him pieces of their life one by one, this was the one he could hold without fear of breaking it. He could wake her for ice cream. He could keep track of the delivery. He could guard the couch nest against suspicious toast, aggressive garlic, philosophical vanilla, and whatever other ridiculous enemy pregnancy appointed before noon. He could make the world gentle in increments, which was better than making sweeping vows to the ceiling fan like a man who had learned nothing.

His eyes drifted down to her face as much as the angle allowed. She was turned into him, hidden mostly beneath the blanket, the last trace of a smile still softening her mouth. Exhaustion had blurred the tension from her features, leaving behind the version of Cleo sleep sometimes revealed to him when her guard finally let go: younger somehow, not childish, but unarmed. The sight reached into him with a tenderness so complete it almost frightened him. He thought of the bathroom floor again—her trembling hand finding his wrist, the raw scrape of her voice, the way she had looked at him as though he was proof of something she needed in order to stay present inside her own body. Then he looked at her now, asleep against his chest in a blanket cocoon while plain vanilla traveled toward them through Los Angeles, and he felt the morning arrange itself into a truth he would probably spend years trying to write well enough.

This was love too.

Not the part anyone applauded. Not the part that made sense in interviews or songs people screamed back at him under stage lights. This was quieter and stranger and somehow more sacred: knowing where the bowl was without looking, keeping his breathing steady so hers could stay slow, letting one arm go numb because moving it might wake her before the ice cream did. He had spent so long being recognized for volume that this kind of devotion felt almost secret in his hands. No one would know he had ordered three containers of the most boring vanilla available because the woman carrying his child had developed an immediate moral objection to visible vanilla bean. No one would see the way he angled his shoulder so her neck stayed comfortable, or the way he watched her mouth every few minutes for any sign that nausea was coming back. No one else needed to.

That was the point, maybe.

His phone buzzed once against the coffee table, and every muscle in him went alert before he stopped himself from reaching too quickly. Cleo didn’t stir, but he felt the instinctive tightening in his own chest anyway, the fear that even the smallest sound might drag her back into a body that had been cruel to her all morning. Carefully, with an absurd amount of choreography for a man retrieving a phone from twelve inches away, he stretched his fingers toward it and turned the screen toward himself. The delivery update glowed at him with cheerful indifference. Nearby. Not here. He exhaled through his nose, placed the phone face down again, and settled his hand back over the blanket before the air he’d displaced had time to cool.

“False alarm,” he breathed, mostly to himself. “Diplomatic envoy still en route.”

He smiled despite the exhaustion pressing behind his eyes. The phrase would have been unbearable if he’d said it at full volume. At a whisper, with her asleep on him and the apartment holding its breath, it felt like one more little charm against the morning’s sharp edges. He let his head rest back against the couch cushion and closed his eyes halfway, not fully enough to sleep. Sleep tempted him, though. It moved in slow waves through his body, heavier now that the crisis had passed and the warmth under the blanket had become its own weather. His heartbeat had settled to match the calm weight of her. His mind, finally stripped of emergency, kept circling the same images in softer focus: her hand over his heart, her voice saying things he would remember badly if he tried to memorize them too hard, the way she had understood home as something both of them had returned to.

He had come home too.

The realization sat in him differently when she was sleeping. Without her eyes on him, without the need to answer carefully, he could feel the full force of it move through him. She was right. Of course she was. He had thought home meant finding his way back to her, but somewhere along the way it had become the practice of staying reachable. Of letting himself be known in the unflattering hours. Of allowing ordinary to become the thing he protected instead of the thing fame constantly interrupted. A part of him still belonged to motion—stages, airports, the strange suspended life of touring—but the center had shifted. The compass had. He could leave and still be oriented toward this couch, this woman, this tiny hidden life currently on probation for crimes against breakfast.

The next buzz was different.

He felt it before he looked, the vibration slightly longer, more insistent. His eyes opened. Cleo’s breathing remained slow against him. The screen lit again, and this time the message made his tired brain sharpen into immediate purpose. He stared at it for a second, caught between obedience and mercy. She had asked him to wake her. Explicitly. With the kind of sleepy seriousness that deserved respect. But she was so deeply settled now, so warm and safe against him, that waking her felt nearly criminal.

Ben looked down at her and felt the ridiculous weight of the decision.

“Okay,” he murmured under his breath. “This is how democracies collapse.”

He did not wake her yet. First, he needed the cargo in hand. He eased his arm from behind her with the concentration of a man defusing something unstable, replacing the support of his body with a folded pillow tucked carefully near her shoulder. When she made the smallest sound, he froze completely, one hand hovering over the blanket, his own breath held hostage in his lungs. She settled again. He waited two extra seconds before moving. Only then did he slip from the couch, muscles complaining as he stood, and pad quietly to the door.

The hallway outside felt too bright, too exposed, too far from the nest. He opened the door only wide enough to retrieve the bag from the floor, nodding once to no one because the delivery person had already disappeared. The cold of the carton seeped through the paper handles into his fingers, and relief moved through him with an intensity wildly disproportionate to frozen dairy. There it was. The boring vanilla. The state visit. The first successful diplomatic mission of the day, assuming the government did not collapse upon presentation.

He carried it to the kitchen like sacred contraband.

The freezer door opened with a soft seal-breaking sigh. He checked the container immediately, because after everything they had endured that morning, discovering surprise vanilla bean flecks would have radicalized him beyond repair. The label was plain. The picture was plain. The ingredient list was blessedly uninteresting. He opened the lid and inspected the surface.

No flecks.

Ben actually whispered, “Thank God.”

He got the smallest bowl they owned, then changed his mind and chose a mug instead because a mug would be easier for her to hold if she wanted it close under the blanket. A small spoon followed. He scooped carefully, not too much, because too much might look like pressure and he had become a man who understood that portion size could have emotional consequences. The ice cream curled pale and soft-edged against the inside of the mug, ordinary in the most perfect possible way. He let it sit on the counter for a minute while he washed his hands again and put the rest into the freezer, then returned to the living room with the offering in one hand and a renewed sense that fatherhood was going to involve many more moments where victory looked like not messing up dessert.

Cleo was still asleep.

The sight stopped him all over again.

He stood beside the couch for a moment with the mug in his hand and let himself feel the full ache of wanting to keep both promises at once: let her rest, wake her for the thing she asked not to miss. The sunlight had shifted while he was gone, touching the edge of the blanket now, making a soft glow of the worn fibers around her shoulder. Her face was turned slightly toward the place he had been, as if some sleeping part of her had tracked the absence and trusted it to return.

That decided him.

He lowered himself back onto the couch as carefully as before, setting the mug on the coffee table within sight but not close enough for the smell—or lack of smell, really—to become an ambush. Then he slid one hand under the blanket and found her fingers, warming them gently beneath his own.

“Cleo,” he whispered.

Not urgent. Not loud. A thread of sound drawn carefully through the quiet.

He waited, watching her face. His thumb brushed once over her knuckles.

“Hey, sweetheart.”

The endearment came out before he could dress it in humor, warm and sleep-rough and entirely unplanned. He leaned down and pressed his mouth to her hair, letting the kiss linger there because waking her with touch felt kinder than pulling her upward with words alone.

“The Department has arrived,” he murmured against her temple. “I inspected it for suspicious flecks. We’re clear.”

His mouth curved faintly, but his eyes stayed soft as he looked down at her, ready to abandon the whole mission the second her body voted against it.

“I’ve got a tiny amount in a mug,” he said. “No pressure. You can take one bite, no bites, smell it and declare it politically unacceptable, whatever you want.”

He slid his arm back around her, reassembling the safest place as gently as he knew how, then reached for the mug with his free hand. The spoon made the faintest sound against the ceramic, small and bright in the quiet living room.

“I promised I’d wake you,” he whispered.

There it was. The reason. The little vow kept.

His thumb moved slowly along her shoulder through the blanket.

“And I am a very serious man when it comes to aggressively boring vanilla.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo surfaced slowly, the way someone drifted upward through warm water rather than waking all at once.

Sleep lingered around the edges of her awareness, reluctant to surrender her completely. The first thing she recognized wasn’t the apartment or the light filtering through the windows. It was him. The familiar warmth beneath her cheek had shifted only enough for her to notice the absence and then, sometime while she’d been asleep, returned exactly where she’d expected it to be. Before she understood why she was waking, she felt the quiet pressure of his fingers around hers beneath the blanket and the gentle sweep of his thumb across her knuckles. His voice followed, low enough that it barely disturbed the silence cocooning the room, and she instinctively leaned toward it before she’d even opened her eyes. The kiss pressed into her hair arrived a heartbeat later, soft enough to feel less like being awakened than being welcomed back.

Her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks before finally lifting.

Everything remained pleasantly heavy.

The exhaustion hadn’t disappeared during her nap; it had simply settled somewhere kinder inside her body. Her muscles still carried the strange weight pregnancy seemed determined to lend them, but it no longer felt like something she had to fight. For one quiet moment she simply looked at him through the haze of sleep, taking in the faint crease still pressed into his cheek from the couch cushion, the messy collapse of his hair, the tiredness he’d made absolutely no attempt to hide from her. Then her eyes drifted past him to the mug waiting patiently on the coffee table, and memory returned in one gentle wave.

Bathroom floor.

Toast.

The blanket nest.

Plain vanilla.

A sleepy smile spread slowly across her face.

“You woke me,” she murmured, her voice rough with sleep and softened by something far warmer than surprise. The words lingered between them because she realized, almost immediately, that the ice cream itself wasn’t what had made her smile. It was the promise. She had asked him to remember something small enough that most people would have laughed about it later or quietly forgotten altogether. She had trusted him with an almost ridiculous little request made halfway into sleep, and somewhere between inspecting ice cream for suspicious flecks and rearranging pillows so she wouldn’t wake too soon, he had carried that promise all the way to its ending. The realization warmed her more thoroughly than the blanket ever could.

She reached toward him without thinking, her fingers slipping into his hair to smooth back the stubborn piece that had fallen across his forehead. The gesture carried no urgency, only the absent affection that had become increasingly natural between them whenever they forgot to be self-conscious. Up close she could see the faint shadows beneath his eyes, the heaviness sleep hadn’t managed to erase, the tiny signs that he had spent the time she’d been resting making sure she could continue doing exactly that.

“You look exhausted,” she whispered, studying him with quiet concern that no longer carried the sharp edge of guilt. Earlier that morning she would have apologized for every minute he’d spent caring for her, convinced she had stolen something from him simply by needing him. Now the feeling was different. Softer. She hated that he was tired, but she no longer hated herself for being the reason. “You should’ve closed your eyes too.” A tiny smile tugged at her mouth before it grew into something more openly affectionate. “Although…” She glanced toward the mug waiting nearby, amusement brightening her sleepy expression. “I’m guessing my very brave dairy inspector had national security concerns.”

The thought of him standing in the kitchen, solemnly opening containers of ice cream to search for contraband vanilla bean, became so vivid that she laughed quietly to herself. The sound was small and drowsy, more breath than voice, but it filled the room anyway.

“I really did pick the right person for the job.”

Only then did she let her attention settle fully on the mug.

The choice made her smile before she’d even touched it.

She accepted it carefully with both hands, immediately appreciating the warmth of the ceramic against her palms despite the cold hidden inside. A bowl would have required balancing. A mug could disappear beneath the blanket if she wanted it to. A mug could be held close to her chest while she sat tucked against him. Somewhere along the way he had started thinking several steps ahead without turning those thoughts into performances, and she found herself looking at the simple white mug with an affection wildly disproportionate to kitchenware.

“You picked a mug,” she said softly, turning it slightly between her hands as though she were examining some unexpectedly thoughtful gift. Her thumb traced the smooth curve of the handle while she looked back up at him, wonder settling quietly across her face. “That’s… actually really clever.” She smiled, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. “You think about things like that now.” The observation wasn’t meant as praise. It was recognition. She had watched kindness stop being something he consciously reached for and become something his hands simply did before he’d even realized he was making a choice.

She looked down at the ice cream waiting patiently inside the mug.

It was almost comically plain.

No caramel.

No chocolate.

No cookie pieces.

No visible vanilla bean waiting to betray her.

Just pale, uncomplicated vanilla.

Exactly what she’d wanted.

She dipped the spoon in cautiously, taking only the smallest possible bite before bringing it toward her mouth. The cold landed first, followed by the familiar sweetness, simple enough that it almost seemed impossible this was the food her body had been demanding with such unreasonable conviction. She let it melt slowly across her tongue instead of rushing to swallow, her eyes drifting closed as she waited for the inevitable negotiation with her stomach. Pregnancy had taught her not to celebrate too early. Everything required a pause now. Every bite deserved a vote.

Several quiet seconds passed.

She listened.

Her stomach answered not with protest but with silence.

A good silence.

The kind that invited another breath instead of another sprint toward the bathroom.

She opened her eyes again, looking at him with sleepy amazement that slowly gave way to relief so genuine it almost hurt.

“I think…” she whispered, another smile spreading gradually across her face as her shoulders finally relaxed against the couch, “…the Department may have just completed its first successful diplomatic mission.”

She looked down at the spoon in her hand again, then back at him, her expression impossibly fond.

“I think…” she said, laughing softly now because the sentence felt wonderfully absurd after everything the morning had been, “…I might actually want another bite.”

Cleo looked down at the mug again, almost suspicious now that the first bite had remained peacefully where it belonged. It sat nestled between her hands, cold against the ceramic while her fingers slowly warmed the outside, and she found herself smiling at the absurdity of treating vanilla ice cream like an experiment requiring observation and peer review. Ten years ago she would have laughed if someone had told her there would come a morning when the emotional center of her life involved cautiously evaluating frozen dairy while tucked beneath a blanket with the man she loved. Then again, ten years ago she hadn’t known Ben. She hadn’t known Sage. She hadn’t known that happiness was often embarrassingly ordinary when it finally arrived.

She scooped another small bite, still resisting the instinct to rush simply because the first had gone well. Pregnancy had humbled her enough to understand that victory didn’t guarantee repetition. Every bite deserved its own chance to succeed or fail. She let the spoon linger against her tongue before swallowing, her attention turning inward almost automatically as she waited for her stomach to cast another vote. The familiar anxiety tried to arrive, but it didn’t land with the same force it had earlier. Instead, she felt… quiet. Not perfect. Not magically cured. Just quiet enough to notice that the ice cream tasted exactly like she’d hoped it would. Cold. Sweet. Comfortingly uncomplicated.

Her shoulders eased another fraction, and she let out a slow breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

“I think my body’s confused,” she admitted softly, still looking into the mug as though it might contain the answer. “It’s been saying absolutely not to everything for days.” A sleepy little smile curved at the corner of her mouth. “Now it’s just sitting there going…” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “‘Honestly? This is acceptable.’” The thought amused her more than it should have, and a quiet laugh escaped before she looked back at him. “Tiny Sage has incredibly specific standards.”

She studied his face for another long moment, her gaze lingering on the tiredness he’d been unable to hide from her. It was different seeing it now. Earlier she would have translated every shadow beneath his eyes into evidence that she’d become too much. Now she saw something else entirely. She saw the cost of showing up, yes, but she also saw that he had paid it willingly, without resentment, without keeping score. The exhaustion belonged to a morning they had survived together, not to a burden he wished he could put down. That distinction settled somewhere deep inside her, warm enough to make her chest ache.

She reached for him before she realized she’d decided to.

The mug stayed balanced carefully in one hand while the other found his cheek, her fingertips resting lightly against the familiar roughness of his stubble. She stroked her thumb across his skin once, slowly, simply because she wanted to touch him.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

The words carried far more than the ice cream.

Thank you for the bathroom floor.

For remembering.

For not trying to fix what couldn’t be fixed.

For staying anyway.

She didn’t try to explain any of that aloud. Somehow she thought he’d hear it regardless.

Her hand slipped from his cheek to the back of his neck, and she leaned forward until her forehead rested briefly against his. The movement was slow, careful not to jostle the mug or disturb the fragile peace that had finally settled over the apartment. She smiled there in the small space between them, her eyes closing for just a second.

“I know I’ve said it already today,” she murmured, “but…” She paused, feeling the truth settle before she spoke it. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this looked after before.”

The admission surprised her with its own simplicity.

She hadn’t meant physically.

Or even emotionally.

It was something larger than either of those and somehow made entirely from little things. The washcloth. The crackers. The mug instead of a bowl. The way he’d inspected vanilla like the outcome genuinely mattered. None of it was spectacular on its own. Together, it had become something so profound that she wasn’t sure there was a better word for it than loved.

She opened her eyes again and smiled at him, tired and peaceful in equal measure.

“I hope,” she said quietly, “that when you’re exhausted someday… or scared… or the world decides to be cruel to you instead…” Her fingers gently squeezed the back of his neck. “I hope I make you feel this looked after too.”

She meant it with her whole heart.

Not because she believed love had to be repaid.

Because she wanted him to know what this felt like from the inside.

She wanted to become this kind of home for him, too.

Cleo looked at him for another quiet second, the spoon still resting loosely between her fingers.

There wasn’t another thought that needed to be spoken. No declaration waiting patiently behind her teeth. They had somehow managed to say almost everything that morning, and the apartment felt pleasantly full because of it. She simply studied his face—the tired eyes, the crooked strand of hair that refused to stay where she’d smoothed it, the softness that had settled over him since she’d woken—and felt the familiar, uncomplicated affection that had slowly become the background rhythm of her life. It didn’t announce itself anymore. It simply existed.

Without saying a word, she leaned toward him.

The kiss was brief.

Gentle.

Almost absentminded.

The kind that belonged to people who no longer felt they had to make every touch carry the weight of the universe. Her lips lingered only a heartbeat before she drew back, her nose brushing lightly against his on the way, a sleepy smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as though she’d simply remembered something pleasant.

Then, just as naturally, she settled back into the curve of his side.

She adjusted the blanket over her lap with one hand, balanced the mug comfortably against her knee, and scooped another small spoonful of vanilla. This time she didn’t watch him while she tasted it. She watched the spoon instead, considering it with the same quiet seriousness someone else might have reserved for a morning cup of coffee or the first bite of toast. She smiled faintly to herself when her stomach remained peaceful again and took another slow bite a minute later, entirely content to let the silence stretch comfortably between them.

The apartment carried on around them.

The refrigerator hummed.

A car rolled past outside.

Sunlight continued creeping across the hardwood floor toward the coffee table, catching the edge of the mug for just a moment before sliding onward.

Cleo leaned a little more of her weight against him without thinking about it.

It felt wonderfully ordinary.

Like kissing him, eating vanilla ice cream beneath a shared blanket, and quietly existing together in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable morning had simply become one more thing they did.

She hoped, with surprising certainty, that one day it would.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben watched the first bite stay down with the kind of reverence he once would have reserved for a sold-out room going silent at the exact right lyric.

It was absurd. He knew it was absurd. There was nothing inherently miraculous about plain vanilla ice cream in a white mug, except pregnancy had taken the scale of ordinary life and broken it over its knee. A successful spoonful now carried the emotional significance of weather turning, of a storm passing just far enough offshore that the windows stopped rattling. He could feel himself trying not to look too relieved, trying not to turn one tolerated bite into a public holiday, because the last thing she needed was pressure disguised as celebration. Still, his shoulders eased before he could stop them. The tightness that had been living under his ribs since she froze over the toast loosened by a degree, and the breath he let out was quieter than a sigh, almost private. He kept his gaze soft, not fixed too sharply on the mug, not too visibly tracking each swallow, but the truth was that every cell in his body was paying attention.

When her gratitude reached him, his first instinct was to deflect. Not because he didn’t want it. Because he wanted it too much, and wanting praise for basic care felt suspicious to him, like his ego was trying to sneak into a room where it had no business being. He had not done anything extraordinary. He had woken up. He had ordered ice cream. He had chosen a mug because she was tucked beneath a blanket and a bowl seemed one degree too precarious. He had inspected for flecks like a man with a sworn duty to protect the nation from vanilla bean propaganda. Small things. Obvious things, once you loved someone enough to notice them. But the way she looked at him made those small things feel less like competence and more like devotion she could actually hold. That undid him more completely than grand gratitude ever could have. His mouth softened, and for a second he could only rest his hand over the blanket near her knee, grounding himself in the texture of worn fabric and the quiet chill radiating from the mug.

“You don’t have to thank me like I did something heroic,” he murmured, voice still rough from the long night and the nap he hadn’t quite taken. Then, because he could already hear the flaw in that sentence, because it sounded dangerously close to pushing away something she had offered with care, he corrected himself before the habit could harden. “Actually, no. That came out wrong. You can thank me. I’m going to accept it like a normal person with emotional range.”

A tired smile tugged at his mouth, faint but real.

“So… you’re welcome.”

The words landed more gently than he expected. He let them. He let himself be the kind of man who could receive tenderness without turning it into a joke fast enough that it couldn’t touch him. The couch held both of them in its quiet indentation, blanket gathered around their legs, the morning light now high enough to make the coffee table glow at the edges. The exiled toast remained out of immediate view, which he considered one of his better diplomatic accomplishments. The bowl sat nearby in respectful silence. The apartment smelled like cool air from the open window, faint mint, laundry-warmed cotton, and almost nothing else. He had never been so grateful for almost nothing.

Her hope for him—the one she spoke with her fingers at his neck and that careful seriousness in her eyes—hit somewhere lower than his ribs. For a moment he looked away, not because he didn’t want her to see him, but because the suddenness of feeling seen still embarrassed him sometimes. He could stand onstage in front of thousands of people and be looked at from every possible angle, but this was different. Cleo didn’t look at the outline. She found the soft, tired, unguarded places underneath and put her hands there like they belonged to her. Maybe they did. Maybe they had for a long time.

“You do,” he said quietly.

He looked back at her then, because if he said it while looking at the floor, she might not understand the size of it.

“You already do.”

The answer felt too simple for what he meant, so he stayed with it until more truth found its way up. His hand slid beneath the edge of the blanket to find hers, warm fingers closing loosely, careful not to disturb the mug or the fragile peace her body had agreed to for now. His thumb moved over her knuckle once, then stilled. He didn’t want to fidget his way through this. He wanted to give it to her clean.

“You keep thinking looked after means…” He paused, searching for the shape of it rather than reaching for the nearest easy line. “I don’t know. Towels and water and crisis snacks and dairy inspections. And yeah, I’m obviously building an impressive résumé in those areas. But you make me feel looked after in ways I don’t think I knew I needed.”

His eyes moved over her face, the sleep-softness still there, the exhaustion, the quiet aftershock of the morning, and underneath all of it the unmistakable Cleo-ness he had tried so hard to name for her earlier. She was tucked beside him with a mug of vanilla ice cream like this was the most natural place in the world to be, and it occurred to him that maybe that was exactly what care had become between them: not always rescue, not always effort made visible, but permission to exist without bracing for performance.

“You tell me the truth,” he said. “Even when it’s messy. Even when you’d rather make it smaller. You call me on things when I’m being noble in the dumbest possible way. You make me slow down long enough to notice when I’m trying to outrun my own feelings and pretending it’s maturity.”

A small breath left him, almost a laugh.

“You make me come back to myself. Which is inconvenient, honestly. Very disruptive to my whole haunted-boy-with-a-guitar brand.”

The humor softened before it could cover too much. He leaned his temple lightly against the back cushion, keeping his face turned toward her, his body curved around the nest because leaving even a few inches of unnecessary distance suddenly felt wrong. He could still feel the ghost of her mouth on his, the kind of kiss that asked for nothing and somehow gave him everything. It had been ordinary in the way she loved, brief and easy, folded into the morning like another small domestic act: spoon, blanket, kiss, breath. That kind of touch made him ache more than urgent ones sometimes. It told him she expected him there. It told him he belonged close enough for affection to happen without ceremony.

“And you see me,” he continued, quieter. “Not the stage version. Not the version people think they know because they’ve heard me scream-sing my feelings into a microphone while wearing pants that probably had too many zippers.”

His mouth twitched.

“You see me like this. Wrecked hair. Couch crease. Deeply overcommitted to grocery-store vanilla. And you don’t look disappointed.”

The last sentence left him more vulnerable than he intended. He felt it as soon as it entered the room, how nakedly it revealed an old fear he rarely spoke aloud because it sounded so ungrateful from the outside. Plenty of people wanted him, admired him, projected light onto him and called it knowing. But being wanted for spectacle had never answered the smaller question that followed him home: what happened when he was tired, quiet, unuseful, no longer thrilling anyone? Cleo had answered it again and again without announcing she was answering. She made room on a couch. She smoothed his impossible hair. She trusted the ordinary version of him with her most unguarded hours and made him feel, somehow, like he had not failed to become someone worth staying with.

“That looks after me,” he said, voice low. “More than you probably realize.”

He reached for the water glass with his free hand and nudged it closer to the mug, mostly to give himself one small motion before the sincerity swallowed him whole. His eyes burned, partly from exhaustion, partly from the emotional weather system that had decided to live permanently in their living room. He blinked it back and let out a slow breath through his nose.

“And when the world is cruel to me,” he added, “because it will be, eventually, in whatever stupid way it chooses—bad shows, bad headlines, travel disasters, my own brain becoming a haunted vending machine—you already are the place I want to come back to.”

His hand tightened gently around hers.

“That’s not hypothetical. That’s been true.”

The admission settled between them with the quiet density of something long known but rarely said so plainly. He thought of past years, of the ache of missing her before he had earned the right to call it missing without also acknowledging what he’d broken. He thought of all the times noise had crowded around him and he had found himself thinking not of applause, not of success, not even of escape exactly, but of the particular quiet that existed around Cleo when she felt safe enough not to fill it. He had wanted that quiet long before he understood that wanting it meant he needed to become someone who would not disturb it just to prove he was there.

His gaze dropped to the mug again, and the sight of the small spoon resting inside the plain vanilla pulled him back toward the morning with gentle absurdity. She was still eating, slowly, carefully, giving each bite the solemn consideration it apparently deserved. He loved her so much in that moment that it nearly hurt to stay quiet. So he didn’t.

“For the record,” he said, softer but warmer now, “I am also extremely proud of your body for accepting the vanilla proposal. Cautiously. No pressure on continued diplomatic relations, obviously. But this is a promising development.”

He glanced down toward the blanket where Sage remained hidden inside all of this, then narrowed his eyes with playful gravity.

“And you. Tiny negotiator. I see what you’re doing. Rejecting toast, endorsing ice cream, taking a hard moral stance against visible bean flecks. It’s early, but there’s a brand emerging.”

His palm drifted low for a moment, settling lightly near Cleo’s stomach through the blanket, not taking over the space, simply acknowledging the third person in the room who had somehow turned the entire morning into a treaty negotiation. The touch filled him with that same astonished tenderness every time. Nothing to feel yet. Everything changed anyway.

“Your mother has excellent taste,” he murmured. “So I’m going to assume this is inherited wisdom and not chaos.”

A beat.

“Though the evidence is mixed.”

He let the smile stay this time, because the room could hold it now. The fear had not disappeared. The tour still waited somewhere beyond the reach of morning. The nausea might return in five minutes or an hour or tomorrow before sunrise. But the ice cream was staying down. Cleo was leaning against him without apology. He was exhausted enough that his thoughts had gone soft at the edges, but not so exhausted he missed the enormity of what they had been given in this ordinary stretch of time.

He eased back a fraction into the couch and drew her closer with the slow pressure of his arm, careful of the mug, careful of her body, careful of all the invisible weather still moving through her. Not fragile. Cherished. There was a difference he was trying to learn by touch.

“Keep eating if it feels good,” he said quietly. “Stop the second it doesn’t. I won’t make it a thing either way.”

His mouth brushed her hair because she was close enough and because he had become incapable of resisting small contact when small contact was allowed.

“And after that, if the government remains stable, I vote for more nothing.”

He looked toward the sunlit floor, the quiet canvases, the guitar waiting in the corner. A whole day existed beyond them, full of things they could do and things they probably wouldn’t. He felt the shape of his own tiredness again, the deep bodily plea for rest now that every crisis had been answered for the moment. But for once, the exhaustion did not feel like depletion. It felt earned in the way an ordinary morning could earn you: by asking for every ounce of attention and returning it as closeness.

“No major decisions,” he murmured. “No productivity. No pretending survival mode needs to look impressive. We can just be profoundly boring people under a blanket.”

His thumb stroked once along the side of her hand.

“Which, honestly, might be my finest work.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo felt herself smiling before she meant to.

Not because of the ice cream, though the cold sweetness continued to settle more kindly than anything else had managed that morning. Not even because of his increasingly elaborate diplomatic language surrounding dairy products, which had somehow become an entire government department while she’d been asleep on his chest. It was him. The way he kept trying to make room for both sincerity and humor without letting either one erase the other. The way he corrected himself in real time instead of pretending he’d gotten everything right on the first attempt. She loved that about him more than she thought he’d ever fully understand.

She rested the mug carefully against her thigh beneath the blanket, one hand still curled around its warmth-cold contradiction, while the other remained folded inside his. Her thumb drifted over the back of his hand as he spoke, not absentmindedly, but with quiet attention, as though every small pass of her skin was answering something he hadn’t realized he’d asked. By the time he admitted that she already made him feel looked after, something inside her had gone wonderfully still. She had spent so much of her life believing care only counted when it was visible, when it solved something tangible, when it arrived with bandages or meals or grand gestures. Hearing him describe it instead as truth, as honesty, as being allowed to come back to himself around her, rearranged something she’d never thought to question.

“I don’t think I ever knew I was doing that,” she admitted softly, her eyes never leaving his. “None of it ever felt… intentional. I wasn’t thinking about taking care of you. I was just…” A tiny shrug lifted one shoulder beneath the blanket before settling again. “…loving you. That’s all it ever felt like.”

She smiled then, the expression slow and tired and unmistakably genuine. “I guess that’s probably how it’s supposed to feel.”

His description of the ordinary version of himself pulled another smile from her, one touched with something gentler than amusement. She lifted her free hand and reached for him almost automatically, brushing the unruly lock of hair away from his forehead again despite knowing perfectly well it had already won that argument once. It immediately threatened to fall back into place, stubborn as ever, and she laughed under her breath.

“I know people love that version of you,” she said quietly. “The one under lights. The one who walks onstage and somehow makes an entire room feel like he’s singing directly to them. I know why they do.” Her fingertips lingered briefly against his temple before drifting down the side of his face. “But that’s never been the version I was afraid of losing.”

Her hand settled lightly against his jaw.

“I missed this one.”

Her thumb moved once across the light stubble there.

“The one who falls asleep halfway through movies because tour caught up with him. The one who forgets where he put his phone while he’s holding it. The one who reorganizes the kitchen because he’s anxious and then pretends it was always supposed to look like that. The one who spends fifteen minutes trying to decide whether a mug is emotionally safer than a bowl.”

The corner of her mouth lifted again.

“I fell in love with the ordinary man first. The rest of the world just happened to know the loud one.”

She let the silence settle naturally after that, comfortable enough not to rush toward filling it. Another small spoonful of vanilla disappeared, and she waited again, listening to her own body with cautious optimism. Still nothing. No tightening beneath her ribs. No warning wave creeping back through her stomach. It almost felt too good to trust, but she found herself taking another bite anyway, slower this time, her shoulders easing another fraction when it stayed exactly where it belonged.

His praise for her body caught her unexpectedly.

She looked down into the mug for a second before a soft, almost disbelieving laugh escaped her.

“I don’t think anybody’s ever congratulated my digestive system before.”

Her nose wrinkled.

“I’ll pass along your compliments, though. Maybe it’ll encourage continued cooperation.”

When he addressed Sage with complete seriousness, her gaze dropped instinctively beneath the blanket, to the place that still looked no different than it had a month ago and yet had already rewritten every conversation they had. His hand rested there so gently it barely disturbed the fabric, reverent without making a ceremony of it, and the sight filled her chest with an emotion too layered to untangle. Wonder lived there. Fear did too. Gratitude. A strange protectiveness toward someone they had never met.

“Our kid is going to think we’re both ridiculous,” she murmured.

She looked back up at him with unmistakable affection.

“And they’ll be right.”

The thought should have embarrassed her.

Instead, it made her happier than she knew how to explain.

She shifted closer beneath the blanket without thinking about it, fitting herself naturally against his side until there wasn’t really any space left between them except the mug balanced carefully in her lap. His arm adjusted around her in response, never intrusive, simply accommodating the movement as though he’d been expecting it all along. Outside, another car rolled past below the apartment, the sound fading into the steady hum of the city beginning its day, but inside their little cocoon time seemed content to move more slowly.

When he suggested more nothing, she tipped her head back just enough to look at him again.

“I think nothing’s been unfairly underrated.”

The words came out thoughtful rather than playful.

“I used to think every day had to become something. Paint something. Go somewhere. Make something worth remembering.” She glanced down at the mug resting between her hands before looking back at him. “But I’m probably going to remember sitting under this blanket eating grocery-store vanilla with you longer than half the exhibitions I’ve done.”

She shook her head faintly, smiling at the absurdity of it.

“I don’t know if that’s pregnancy or perspective.”

“Maybe both.”

The apartment settled quietly around them again. The canvases remained untouched where they leaned against the wall. His guitar stood in its corner, patient enough not to demand attention. Morning continued spilling across the floorboards one slow inch at a time while cool air drifted through the open window and stirred the edge of the blanket over their legs.

Cleo finished another small spoonful before setting the mug carefully onto the coffee table within easy reach. Then, without saying anything at all, she turned back toward him, lifted one hand to the side of his face, and leaned across the small distance between them to kiss him. It wasn’t meant to interrupt the conversation or reward anything he’d said. It carried no dramatic declaration behind it. It was brief, familiar, and completely unselfconscious, the kind of kiss that belonged to people who had stopped treating affection like an event.

When she settled back again, she reached immediately for her mug, tucked herself against his shoulder as comfortably as before, and took another bite of her ice cream as though kissing him and continuing breakfast belonged to exactly the same ordinary morning.

Cleo let the spoon drift lazily through the melting ice cream, watching the pale swirls fold into themselves before she finally looked up at him again. She had been trying to answer everything he’d just given her, but every time she thought she’d found the right place to begin, another memory quietly nudged its way to the front instead. It made her smile, not because all of those memories were happy, but because she no longer had to be afraid of looking at them. They belonged to a version of them that had survived long enough to become history instead of prediction.

“You know what I’ve been thinking about?” she asked softly. “Those years when we weren’t together.” She laughed under her breath, shaking her head as if she still couldn’t quite believe either of them. “You’d come home for somebody’s birthday, or Christmas, or one of those random weekends where everybody suddenly decided we were all having a barbecue or sitting around someone’s firepit until two in the morning. I’d spend the entire week beforehand talking myself into behaving like a completely normal person.” Her smile widened with quiet amusement. “I’d tell myself we’d hug, catch up, make each other laugh for a while, and then we’d go home separately like two emotionally healthy adults. And somehow…” She looked at him over the rim of the mug. “…we almost always ended up sleeping together anyway.”

She couldn’t help laughing then, the sound warm with affection rather than embarrassment. “It was actually ridiculous when I think about it. We would spend months apart pretending we’d figured out how to move on, and then you’d be home for forty-eight hours and we’d completely forget whatever rules we’d made for ourselves.” Her thumb traced the handle of the mug while she spoke, remembering it all with surprising gentleness. “The hardest part wasn’t even when you left again. It was that every single time I would think, ‘Maybe this changes everything,’ and every single time I’d wake up the next morning already trying to convince myself not to hope too much.”

The smile slowly softened. She leaned a little more comfortably against him, letting the blanket settle around them while morning continued brightening the apartment beyond their little cocoon. “I honestly never thought we’d end up back together,” she admitted after a quiet pause. “Not because I stopped loving you. That part never changed. I just thought we’d become one of those stories people tell about the person they almost built a life with. I thought we’d always love each other a little, always have too much history to become strangers, and always somehow manage to find each other whenever you came home… but never actually figure it out.”

Her eyes stayed on his now, steady and open. “The thing that scared me was never you. It was your life. I loved you enough to picture having babies with you before we ever even talked about it, but I couldn’t picture where I belonged inside everything else. The touring, the airports, the buses, the constant movement… it all felt so much bigger than me that I convinced myself loving you meant eventually getting left behind by it. Looking back now, I don’t even think that was really your fault. I don’t think either of us knew how to separate your career from our relationship yet. They felt like the same thing, and I couldn’t figure out how to be brave enough for both.”

She smiled again, this time with unmistakable fondness. “You were the one who finally refused to let me keep believing that. I still remember you looking at me like I was making everything much harder than it had to be, and you kept saying the same thing in different ways until it finally got through my stubborn head. Your life could be chaotic without us becoming chaotic too.” She laughed quietly, lowering her eyes for a second. “I remember thinking you were being impossibly optimistic. It annoyed me a little, honestly, because I wanted to argue with you.”

She looked back up, her expression glowing with quiet certainty.

“You were right.”

The words came without hesitation.

“The last six months…” She shook her head slowly, almost in disbelief. “They haven’t been perfect. We’ve had hard conversations. We’ve both been scared. We’ve had to untangle old habits that probably should’ve stayed buried years ago. But none of it has felt unstable.” Her fingers found his beneath the blanket again, weaving naturally through his. “Being with you has been… easy. Not because we don’t have problems. Because we actually solve them together now instead of standing on opposite sides wondering if the relationship is strong enough to survive them.”

Her free hand drifted instinctively to her stomach, her smile changing all over again.

“And now I’m pregnant.”

She said it with the same quiet wonder she had every time the reality caught up to her.

“I know I’ve spent all morning throwing up and crying over tour buses, and I know this isn’t exactly the glamorous version of early pregnancy they put in movies…” She laughed softly. “…but I’m so happy.” Her palm rested gently where Sage remained hidden beneath her sweatshirt. “I really am. I don’t even know how to explain it properly. Every miserable part of this morning has somehow existed alongside the happiest feeling I’ve ever had.”

She looked down for a moment before lifting her eyes back to him.

“I really thought being a mom wasn’t going to happen for me. People would ask if I wanted kids someday, and I’d always smile and say, ‘Maybe.’ But the truth was…” She exhaled slowly. “The only person I ever wanted to have children with was you. Once I convinced myself we were never going to find our way back to each other, I quietly started letting go of that whole future too. I never really admitted it to anybody, not even myself most days, but somewhere along the way I just accepted that maybe motherhood wasn’t going to be part of my life.”

Her fingers tightened gently around his.

“I didn’t stop wanting it. I just stopped believing it was mine.”

The apartment felt impossibly peaceful around them. Sunlight stretched farther across the floor, the canvases near the wall catching the warm glow while the breeze stirred the edge of the blanket over their knees. She took another small spoonful of vanilla, waited a beat to make sure her stomach still approved, and smiled when it remained quiet.

“I’m still scared sometimes,” she admitted, settling back into his shoulder. “Your schedule still scares me. The distance still scares me. I don’t think those feelings are ever going to disappear completely, because they’re part of the reality of your job.” She turned her face toward his with a softness that reached all the way into her eyes. “But I’m handling it so much better this time. I don’t spiral the way I used to. I don’t automatically assume the worst every time something changes. I trust you now, and I trust us, and those turned out to be two completely different things.”

Her thumb stroked lazily across the back of his hand.

“And when the time is right…” She smiled, almost shy despite everything they’d already shared that morning. “I really can’t wait to marry you. Not because I need a wedding to prove anything. I don’t. I already know where home is.” Her gaze lingered on him for another quiet second before the smile widened just a little. “I just like the idea of spending the rest of my life introducing you as my husband. It feels… peaceful.”

She leaned over then, resting her forehead lightly against his before closing her eyes for a moment.

“I think we’re going to have a beautiful life,” she whispered. “Not because it’ll always be easy, and definitely not because it’ll always go according to plan.” A sleepy little laugh escaped her. “I just think we’ve finally learned that your life can stay a little chaotic without ours having to be. And after everything we’ve put each other through to get here…” She opened her eyes again, smiling at him with quiet certainty. “…I don’t think I’ve ever wanted anything more than this wonderfully ordinary future we’re building together.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben had been listening with his whole body.

It happened without his permission, the way every part of him seemed to organize itself around her when she started telling the truth carefully. His hand went still beneath the blanket, not because he meant to stop touching her, but because movement suddenly felt too crude for the amount of feeling moving through him. The mug of vanilla rested near them with its small domestic gravity, the spoon faintly wet against the ceramic, and the sunlight had crept far enough across the floor that the whole apartment looked warmer than it had an hour ago. He noticed all of it too sharply: the open window breathing cool air through the room, the guitar waiting quietly in the corner, the canvases catching gold along their edges, the blanket pulled around both of them like they had built a room inside the room. Ordinary things. Sacred things. The exact things she had just told him she wanted, the exact things he had once been so afraid he didn’t know how to keep.

For a while he didn’t trust himself to speak. Not because he didn’t have anything to say. Because he had too much, and the first wave of it arrived without shape—memory, ache, relief, grief, gratitude, all colliding somewhere behind his ribs until breathing through it felt like work. He remembered those years with a clarity that felt almost unfair now. Coming home for a weekend and telling himself he would behave. That he would hug her once, lightly, like people did when they had survived each other. That he would laugh at the right distance. That he would not look at her for too long across somebody’s backyard or kitchen or smoky late-night firepit. And then, every time, the distance would collapse as if it had only ever been theater. He would find himself near her again, close enough to smell her hair, close enough to remember that all his discipline was decorative, and by morning he would already be grieving a loss he had participated in creating.

His fingers tightened around hers before he realized they had moved.

“God,” he breathed, the word leaving him almost silently.

It was not an answer. Not really. It was the first thing that escaped the wreckage of being seen that completely.

He turned his face toward her, and for a second all the humor was gone from him. Not dead. Just unable to stand in front of this. His eyes searched hers with a tenderness that bordered on pain, taking in the quiet certainty in her expression, the tired softness still left by the morning, the strange peacefulness underneath the weight of everything she had just handed him. He felt exhausted enough to be transparent. There wasn’t enough energy left in him to arrange his face into anything safer than the truth.

“I remember all of it,” he said quietly. “Those weekends. Those nights. Telling myself I was going to be normal about you and then failing in record time.”

A small, helpless laugh moved through him, but it broke apart before becoming a joke. His thumb shifted against her hand, slow and absent, as though touch was the only way he could keep the past from taking over the room completely.

“I used to leave after those and feel like I’d been split open,” he admitted. “And the worst part was that I’d still be happy. That was the part that made me feel insane. I’d have forty-eight hours of you, or one night, or some stupid half-accidental almost-normal version of us, and then I’d go back to everything else feeling like I’d stolen something from the future and punished myself with it.”

The confession sat there between them, rougher than he intended. He let it stay. He owed her the unpolished version. He owed himself that too, maybe.

Back then, he had thought missing her was proof of love. He hadn’t known what to do with the fact that proof could still be useless if nothing changed around it. Loving her had been easy in the private, desperate sense. Wanting her had been embarrassingly simple. But building a life that didn’t require her to keep bracing herself against his movement—that had been the language he hadn’t yet learned. And because he hadn’t known it, he had sometimes let the chaos remain unnamed between them, as if naming it would make it stronger, when really the silence had only taught her to prepare for being swallowed by it.

His jaw tightened once, not in anger, but in the effort of holding regret without letting it become the center of the morning.

“You weren’t wrong to be scared of my life,” he said. “I need you to know I understand that now. I think there was a long time when I wanted so badly for the music not to be the thing that hurt us that I couldn’t look directly at how much it did. Not because the work was bad. Not because loving it was wrong. But because I didn’t know how to stop letting it take up all the oxygen around us.”

His gaze dropped for a moment to where their hands disappeared beneath the blanket, then lifted again.

“And you shouldn’t have had to be brave enough for both. That was never fair.”

The words came gently, but they carried weight. He felt them land inside himself as much as he offered them to her. There were so many places in their history where he wanted to go back and put different language into his younger mouth. To say, I love you, but I also understand this is too loud. To say, I don’t know how to fix the shape of my life yet, but I know asking you to disappear inside it isn’t love. To say, please don’t confuse my leaving with not wanting to stay. Instead, he had often made longing do the work of clarity, and longing, however sincere, had never been a home.

The apartment around them remained quiet, mercifully quiet. He could hear the faint scrape of leaves outside the open window, the low hum from the refrigerator, the softened rhythm of her breathing close beside him. His body wanted sleep in dull, insistent waves, but his heart was awake with a force that made tiredness irrelevant. He looked at her and let the next truth form slowly enough that it didn’t bruise either of them on the way out.

“I wanted children with you too,” he said.

His voice changed on the sentence, thinning slightly at the edges. He swallowed, but it didn’t quite clear the emotion. He hadn’t expected that confession to feel so exposed. Maybe because wanting a baby with her had lived in him for years as something too tender to touch directly, a future he carried in glances and almost-thoughts and then tried to bury whenever reality reminded him they were not together.

“I didn’t let myself think about it clearly most of the time,” he continued. “Because it felt cruel. Like standing outside a house I didn’t have the key to anymore and imagining where the crib would go.”

His mouth trembled toward a smile that didn’t fully arrive.

“Which is a dramatic metaphor. I know. The compromised speechwriter is apparently awake again.”

He breathed out, then let his hand drift low through the blanket until it rested near the hidden place where Sage had made all of those impossible futures suddenly, terrifyingly real.

“But there was never anyone else in that picture for me,” he said, softer. “Even when I tried not to look at it. Even when I thought we had missed it. It was you.”

The room blurred slightly for a second, and he blinked hard, looking down as if checking on the blanket gave him something dignified to do with the sudden pressure behind his eyes. It didn’t help much. He was too tired to pretend his feelings were behaving. Maybe that was all right. She had cried into his shirt over transportation and future distance and vanilla-based diplomacy. He could let his eyes shine a little over the fact that the life he thought he’d lost was sitting under a blanket beside him, eating ice cream because their baby had made toast offensive.

His hand spread over the blanket, reverent but easy, like the gesture belonged to their morning now.

“And now you’re pregnant,” he murmured, the wonder in his voice undoing whatever steadiness he had left. “And I know today has been… objectively rude. Very rude. First trimester is behaving like it has unresolved issues and no manager.” His eyes returned to hers, warm and wet and completely unguarded. “But I’m happy too. I don’t know if I’ve said that enough in the middle of worrying. I am so happy, Cleo. Not in a shiny way. Not in a way that cancels out how miserable you feel or how scared we both get. Just underneath all of it. Like a current.”

He leaned closer, his shoulder pressing more fully against hers, the blanket shifting with the movement.

“I wake up and remember, and it happens all over again.”

There was a pause, not empty but full. He could feel the shape of the baby’s name in the room, still not entirely official and yet already used so naturally that some part of him had accepted it as belonging to them. Sage. A tiny life with no visible proof yet except havoc and a heartbeat and a sonogram photo that had changed the axis of the world. He thought about the nursery she wanted to paint, the memory box, the receipt from HomeState, the wedding song unfinished somewhere in his notes, waiting for him to stop trying to capture forever and tell the truth about five minutes.

Maybe this morning would end up in it too.

Not the vomiting. Not directly. But the feeling of it: choosing ordinary, again and again, until ordinary became holy.

Her mention of marriage reached him last, or maybe it had been waiting in him the whole time for a quieter place to land. The idea of her introducing him that way was so simple it nearly knocked the air out of him. Not a headline. Not a spectacle. Not a dramatic proof of finally making it. Just a word she could use in grocery stores, at doctor’s offices, in half-asleep conversations with strangers who didn’t know what it had taken them to arrive there.

Husband.

His throat worked around it.

He smiled slowly, not because it was light, but because the happiness of it was too deep to do anything else.

“I want that too,” he said. “So much.”

His hand lifted from the blanket and found the side of her face, his fingertips careful against her cheek, his thumb brushing lightly where earlier tears had dried. He held her that way for a moment, letting himself look at the woman he had loved in so many versions that it no longer felt like one lifetime could contain all of them.

“And when I ask you,” he continued, voice low, “it won’t be because I need to make this real. It already is. It won’t be because of the baby, or because we’re trying to fix the past, or because I need the world to understand what you are to me.”

His thumb stilled against her skin.

“It’ll be because I want the ordinary version too. The paperwork. The introductions. The emergency contact forms. The boring legal stuff that somehow makes me want to lie down on the floor and stare at the ceiling.”

A quiet laugh left him, breathless and disbelieving.

“I want you calling me your husband in the most unglamorous places imaginable. DMV. Pharmacy. Dentist waiting room. Some grocery aisle where I am inevitably buying the wrong kind of crackers.”

His eyes softened further.

“I want peaceful with you.”

That was the word she had given him, and he understood instantly why it mattered. Peaceful did not mean still. It did not mean easy in the cheap sense, without tension or fear or future complications. It meant the chaos no longer got to define the core. It meant he could leave for a show and still belong here. It meant she could be scared and still trust them. It meant problems came inside the house to be solved together instead of standing at opposite doors, each of them wondering who would leave first.

He tilted his forehead gently against hers, letting the closeness hold what language couldn’t.

“I think we’re going to have a beautiful life too,” he whispered. “Messy. Probably very weird. Full of suspicious foods and tiny socks and me Googling whether babies are supposed to make that noise at three in the morning. Full of me being gone sometimes, and hating that I’m gone, and coming back like my whole body knows where north is.”

His hand slid from her cheek to the back of her neck, warm and steady.

“But beautiful.”

The single word settled between them, quiet as sunlight.

He drew back only enough to see her face again. The exhaustion there made him ache, but the certainty did too. She looked tired and pregnant and recovering from a morning that had treated her unfairly; she also looked happier than he had ever seen her in a way that did not need to be loud. It radiated from somewhere steady and low, beneath the symptoms, beneath the fear. He wanted to spend the rest of his life proving that happiness had been safe to choose.

“I’m not going to say I was right,” he murmured, a faint smile returning because some corner of him still knew how to tease. “Even though I heard a very attractive woman say it a minute ago, and I will be replaying that privately for morale.”

His thumb brushed lightly beneath her jaw.

“But I think maybe we both learned the thing. Finally. Your life doesn’t have to shrink to fit mine. Mine doesn’t have to stop being mine to make room for you. We just have to keep refusing to let either one swallow the other.”

He glanced toward the coffee table where the mug waited, the plain vanilla melting slightly around the edges.

“And we need to maintain strong freezer inventory.”

The humor softened almost immediately into tenderness.

He reached for the mug, checking with a glance before moving it closer again, not pressing it into her hands but making sure it remained within reach if she wanted it. Then he settled back against the couch, drawing her with him in the slow, natural way that had become the grammar of their morning. His arm curved around her. His hand returned low beneath the blanket, not to claim the space but to belong to it.

For a while, he let himself simply hold them both in that quiet. The woman who had come home. The baby they thought might never be theirs to imagine. The future that still frightened them, still complicated everything, still waited with tour dates and doctor appointments and unknowns neither of them could solve before noon.

And underneath all of it, the thing she had named.

Ordinary.

Wonderfully ordinary.

His mouth brushed her hair, lingering there.

“I’ve never wanted anything more either,” he said, almost against her skin. “Not the best show, not the loudest room, not any of the things I used to think were proof I’d made a life.”

He closed his eyes for a second, breathing her in.

“This. You under a blanket. Our kid rejecting toast with extreme prejudice. Vanilla melting in a mug. A future where I get to come home to you, and someday you call me your husband like it’s the easiest word in the world.”

His voice roughened, but he did not hide it.

“That’s the life.”

He held her closer, careful of the mug, careful of her body, not careful at all with his heart anymore.

“That’s the one I want.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo felt her heart squeeze so tightly she thought, for one impossible second, that it might actually hurt.

Not in the frightening way the nausea had hurt all morning, or in the old way loving him had once hurt, when every goodbye had felt like watching the tide pull something precious farther out than she could swim. This was different. Softer. Almost overwhelming in its gentleness. She sat quietly while he spoke, the mug warming her palms despite the ice cream inside it, her thumb absently tracing the curve of the ceramic as though it gave the emotion somewhere safe to go. Every sentence he offered seemed to settle beside another memory she had spent years trying to pack away neatly. Instead of reopening old wounds, though, they stitched them together. For the first time, those years no longer felt like proof they had failed. They felt like the road that had taught both of them what home actually required.

She smiled when he admitted he had never been able to behave around her either, her eyes dropping for a moment as she laughed quietly to herself. “You really couldn’t,” she murmured, the amusement warm and affectionate instead of teasing. “Neither of us could.” She shook her head, still smiling. “I’d spend the whole week before you came home promising myself that this time I’d keep my distance. I’d be sensible. I’d let you enjoy being home without making everything complicated.” Her smile widened with sleepy disbelief. “Then you’d walk through somebody’s front door, look at me for about three seconds, and every speech I’d rehearsed disappeared.”

Her gaze drifted toward the window for a moment, following the slow movement of the curtains in the breeze before returning to him. “I remember driving home after those weekends too. I’d be so ridiculously happy for a little while that I’d almost convince myself everything was okay. I’d replay every conversation, every stupid joke, every time you touched my hand without thinking, and I’d smile the entire drive.” Her expression softened. “Then I’d pull into my driveway, turn the engine off, and remember that Monday was coming. You’d be gone again. We’d go back to pretending we weren’t still completely in love with each other.” She let out a quiet breath through her nose. “I started being afraid of the happy part because I knew exactly how much the quiet afterward was going to hurt.”

She listened to him speak about finally understanding why she had been afraid, and she reached for his hand before she even realized she was moving. Their fingers fit together so naturally it still amazed her sometimes, as though every separation they had ever endured had only taught their hands how to find each other faster. “Thank you,” she said softly, her thumb brushing slowly across his knuckles. “Not for apologizing… I don’t think I needed that. But for understanding.” She looked directly into his eyes. “For a long time I wanted so badly for you to see that I wasn’t asking you to choose between me and music. I just needed to know there was a way for us to exist without one always swallowing the other.” A small smile returned, steady and peaceful. “You figured it out. We both did.”

When he admitted he had wanted children with her all those years ago, she felt something inside her give way completely. The image of him standing outside a house he believed no longer belonged to him lodged itself in her chest with heartbreaking clarity, and before she could think about it she was setting the mug carefully on the coffee table and turning fully toward him. Both of her hands rose to cradle his face, her fingertips resting lightly against the familiar warmth of his skin. “You should’ve been inside that house,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. “You should’ve been dreaming about nurseries and names and where the crib would go. I hate that you thought those dreams were something you had to bury because you believed I’d never come back.” Her thumbs brushed gently beneath his eyes, her smile trembling through the sadness. “I’m so sorry we lost that time.”

She leaned forward and kissed him with quiet certainty, lingering only long enough for him to feel everything she couldn’t fit into words before settling back against him again. Her forehead rested lightly beside his for a moment, and when she smiled this time, it carried more relief than grief. “I’m really glad we finally ran out of reasons to stay apart,” she whispered. “We were unbelievably stubborn, weren’t we?” A tiny laugh escaped her. “Looking back now, it almost seems ridiculous how determined we both were to make ourselves miserable for reasons that don’t even exist anymore.”

His thoughts about marriage made her laugh again, brighter this time, and she tucked herself comfortably back beneath his arm as though discussing future DMV visits beneath a blanket after surviving morning sickness was the most natural conversation in the world. “I cannot wait to introduce you as my husband in the least romantic places imaginable,” she admitted, her eyes sparkling. “The pharmacy. The dentist. Some poor woman at the DMV who’s already having a terrible day.” She grinned at the picture. “You’ll probably have filled out the wrong form, and I’ll apologize to her before fixing it while you insist you were only one box away from being correct.” She nudged him lightly with her shoulder. “You’ll absolutely buy the wrong crackers too, by the way. I already know that’s going to happen.”

The laughter faded naturally into something quieter, leaving behind a happiness that felt settled instead of excited. “That’s the life I want,” she said, her voice gentle as she reached for the mug again. She took another careful spoonful, waited instinctively to see how her stomach responded, then smiled when everything remained peaceful. “Not because it’s boring. Because it’s ours.” She looked at him over the rim of the mug. “I don’t need extraordinary anymore, Ben. I’ve already lived through enough extraordinary for two lifetimes. I want Tuesday mornings. I want grocery lists on the refrigerator. I want folding laundry while you absentmindedly hum songs you’re pretending you aren’t writing. I want to argue over whose turn it is to buy toilet paper and watch you wander around the grocery store trying to remember whether I asked for parsley or cilantro.” Her smile grew softer. “I want to spend the rest of my life collecting tiny, forgettable days with you until one morning we wake up old and realize those little days were the whole beautiful thing.”

Almost without thinking, her free hand settled over the gentle curve of her stomach beneath the blanket. The gesture had become instinctive already, not protective so much as acknowledging the tiny person quietly rearranging both of their futures. She looked down at her hand for a second before lifting her eyes back to his, and there was nothing uncertain in her expression anymore.

She reached up and brushed a piece of hair back from his forehead, smiling affectionately at how hopelessly rumpled it still was.

“Because for the last six months…” She shook her head with quiet wonder. “It’s just been easy.” Her voice was almost disbelieving. “Not because nothing’s happened. We’ve had plenty happen. But us?” She squeezed his hand gently. “Us has been easy.” She laughed under her breath. “I didn’t know relationships were allowed to feel like this. I thought if you loved someone enough it was always supposed to hurt a little.” Her eyes filled with quiet affection. “Turns out it’s actually supposed to feel like this. Like coming home.”

She leaned against him again, fitting herself naturally beneath his arm, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing beneath her cheek. The apartment remained wrapped in its late-morning stillness, sunlight warming the floor, the vanilla slowly softening in the mug between spoonfuls, the guitar waiting untouched in the corner while the rest of the world continued without them.

“I can’t wait to marry you,” she said softly, not with urgency, but with complete certainty. “Not tomorrow. Not because we have to. Whenever it’s the right time.” She smiled to herself. “I can’t wait to stand there and promise you all the boring little things we’ve already been practicing anyway. I can’t wait for you to be my husband.” Her fingers found his again beneath the blanket, intertwining with his as naturally as breathing. “And I really, really can’t wait to watch you become Sage’s dad.” She laughed quietly, lifting another spoonful of plain vanilla. “Although…” she added with a thoughtful glance toward her stomach, “…I do think we should prepare ourselves for the very real possibility that they may inherited both of our stubbornness.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben’s first reaction was a laugh that never quite made it out of his chest.

It rose there, warm and disbelieving, then caught on something much softer before it could become sound. She had just handed him years of their life in the gentlest possible pieces—old weekends, old ache, the fragile relief of no longer needing to keep making themselves miserable—and then, because she was Cleo, because she had always known exactly how to walk him to the edge of emotional ruin and then hand him a joke like a rope, she ended on the possibility that their child might inherit both of their stubbornness. His mouth curved despite the pressure gathering behind his eyes. The mug of melting vanilla sat between them like evidence that the morning had become completely ungovernable, and her hand was low beneath the blanket again, resting over the place where their baby existed more as disruption and wonder than shape. Ben looked down at it for a second, then back at her face, and felt something inside him go so tender it almost scared him.

“Oh, we’re doomed,” he said softly, with all the gravity of a man delivering medical results. “There is no version of this where Sage comes out reasonable. Not with our combined genetic commitment to making things emotionally complicated and then pretending we’re being totally normal about it.”

His hand slid carefully over hers beneath the blanket, covering the small, instinctive curve of her palm without pressing. Every time he touched that place, even through fabric, even with nothing visible yet, his body seemed to pause around the enormity of it. He could still hear the heartbeat from the appointment if he let himself—the impossibly fast flicker of sound that had rearranged the world in one sterile room before lunch. Now that same tiny life was somewhere under their hands, apparently rejecting toast, approving ice cream, and inheriting the full catastrophic force of two people who had taken years to admit they were each other’s home. The thought should have been terrifying. It was terrifying. But beneath the terror, something bright and aching spread through him.

“They’re going to argue with both of us before they can form full sentences,” he murmured toward the hidden baby, his thumb brushing lightly over Cleo’s knuckles. “They’re going to have your face when they’re right and my face when they think they’re charming enough to escape consequences, and we are going to be powerless. Absolutely no institutional stability in this household.”

He glanced back up at Cleo, and the humor in his expression softened almost immediately into something more exposed. She looked so tired and so peaceful at once, tucked beneath the blanket with the mug balanced near her and the late-morning light warming the room around them. Her hair was slightly mussed from the couch, her cheeks still faintly marked by the morning’s tears, her eyes softer than they had been in the bathroom but no less open. He could feel the echo of everything she had just said moving through him, not as separate sentences but as one long strand connecting every version of them: the girl who rehearsed distance before he came home, the woman who thought motherhood had slipped out of reach with him, the person sitting beside him now, pregnant and exhausted and eating vanilla from a mug while telling him she wanted tiny, forgettable days.

He had thought, for so long, that the tragedy of them had been timing. Distance. Work. Noise. All the external things big enough to blame. But listening to her now, he understood again that the deeper wound had been the way both of them had mistaken pain for proof. Proof of love. Proof of impossibility. Proof that if something hurt that much, maybe it was because it was never meant to become easy. He wished he could reach back through the years and take both of them by the shoulders—him with his suitcase and his stupid hope, her with her rehearsed normal-person speeches and her heart already bracing for Monday—and tell them that loving each other did not have to remain a bruise to be real.

His throat worked before he trusted himself to speak.

“I hate that you were afraid of the happy part,” he said, his voice lower now, stripped of most of the joke. “Not because I don’t understand it. I do. That’s the worst part. I understand exactly why you were. I remember leaving and feeling like the good part had become evidence against us. Like every time we got it right for one night, it just made it more obvious that we were getting the rest of it wrong.”

His gaze dropped to their joined hands. He could feel the warmth of her fingers, the slight chill from the mug still lingering in her skin, the way she held on without desperation now. That alone nearly undid him. For years, wanting her had felt like standing too close to something he couldn’t keep warm. Now she was here, and the warmth was ordinary, and he had never been more afraid of taking anything for granted.

“I think I used to tell myself that as long as we still loved each other, we hadn’t really failed,” he admitted. “Which was comforting in a very stupid, tragic-person-with-a-guitar way. But love sitting there hurting both of us because we didn’t know what to build around it… that wasn’t enough. It was real. It mattered. But it wasn’t enough.”

He let the words settle, not in shame exactly, but in recognition. Shame had eaten enough of their past already. He didn’t want to feed it more. He wanted to understand it, name it, let it become part of the road instead of a verdict.

His hand shifted from hers to her cheek, his fingers light along the side of her face where her skin was still warm from the blanket and the slow return of calm. He looked at her with the full force of everything her ordinary future had done to him—the grocery lists, the laundry, the wrong crackers, the cilantro-parsley disaster he was almost certainly destined to commit. It should have been funny, and it was, but it also felt like she had described heaven in the most domestically humiliating terms imaginable. Tuesday mornings. Toilet paper arguments. Him humming melodies he would deny composing. A life made from moments small enough to be missed unless you were lucky enough to understand they were the whole point.

“That thing you said,” he murmured. “About waking up old and realizing the little days were the whole beautiful thing.”

He stopped, because repeating it even indirectly made his chest tighten again. His mouth curved faintly, almost apologetic.

“I’m going to steal that. Not today, because you are recovering and I do have some ethical boundaries, but eventually. That’s going in something. Your song, probably. Maybe all of them. I don’t know. You can’t just say something like that under a blanket with vanilla ice cream and expect the songwriter in the room to behave.”

His thumb brushed softly near the corner of her mouth before his hand fell back to rest over the blanket. He wanted to kiss her again, but he also wanted to keep looking at her. He wanted to memorize this exact version—the sleep-soft happiness, the fragile return of appetite, the ease that had settled over them after a morning sharp enough to cut through every pretense they had left. She had said their relationship had become easy, and the word kept circling him because he knew exactly what she meant. Not simple. Not effortless in the sense of nothing going wrong. Easy in the body. Easy in the nervous system. Easy because the floor no longer disappeared every time something hard entered the room.

“Us feels easy to me too,” he said. “Which is maybe the wildest thing, considering we have been historically terrible at making anything simple.”

A quiet breath of laughter moved through him, but his expression stayed serious underneath it.

“But it does. Even today. And today has involved vomiting, crying, abandoned toast, a nap tribunal, and a craving so legally specific it required inspection protocols.” His eyes softened. “Still easy. Not because any of that is easy for you. I know it isn’t. But because I don’t feel like I have to guess where I belong anymore. I’m not standing outside your life trying to prove I should be let back in. I’m in it. I’m under the blanket. I’m being accused of future cracker incompetence. I’m already part of the problem and the solution.”

He smiled, tired and crooked.

“Which feels very married of us, frankly.”

The word lingered between them, and he felt the familiar, dangerous urge bloom in his chest—the one that wanted to ruin all his careful planning by asking too soon, too quietly, too imperfectly, right here with ice cream melting and her body still recovering from sickness. It would be easy. Terrifyingly easy. The shape of the question lived on his tongue some days like a lyric he knew by heart but hadn’t yet found the right key for. He could imagine it: her face going still, the blanket gathered around her, the mug abandoned between them. He could imagine saying it because the room already felt holy enough.

But she had said not tomorrow. Whenever it was right. And he wanted to honor that—not because her yes needed cleaner conditions, but because their marriage deserved its own room in their story, not squeezed into the aftermath of nausea and crisis simply because his heart had gotten loud.

So he breathed carefully and let the want become reverence instead of impulse.

“I’m not asking you right now,” he said softly, because he knew she would feel the moment shift in him if he didn’t name it. “Just so the Department doesn’t need to prepare emergency paperwork.”

His smile flickered, then softened.

“But when I do, God, Cleo… I’m going to be asking for exactly that life. The Tuesday mornings. The grocery lists. The wrong crackers and the right vanilla. The forms I almost fill out correctly. The little days. I’m not asking for some shiny version where we finally become people who never get scared or tired or difficult. I’m asking for this. Us, as we actually are.”

His eyes burned again, and he let them. There had been enough tears in the apartment today that his pride had no place left to stand.

“And I can’t wait to be your husband,” he said, the words quiet but certain. “Not in theory. Not someday as an abstract romantic concept. I mean I can’t wait to be standing in a pharmacy while you say it like it’s obvious, and I have to act normal even though I’m probably going to get emotionally compromised in front of a display of prenatal vitamins.”

His hand drifted low again, resting over the blanket near their baby.

“And I can’t wait to be their dad.”

That sentence changed the room for him every time it came close. Dad. It was still too large for his body, somehow. Too ordinary and too impossible at once. He had been called so many things by strangers, had heard his name shouted in so many places, but none of it came close to the quiet terror of that word waiting for him in the future. Their child would not care about stage lights. Their child would care whether he came when they cried, whether he knew how to cut grapes, whether he could make the house feel steady when the world became too big. Their child would inherit stubbornness and tenderness and probably an alarming capacity for dramatic food opinions. Their child would know him first not as a public person, but as the man on the kitchen floor, the man at bedtime, the man learning lullabies he hadn’t written yet because the old ones weren’t theirs.

He looked at Cleo, and the feeling in him became almost unbearable.

“I’m scared too,” he admitted. “Not of them. Not exactly. Just of how much I already love them when they’re still basically a tiny manager with bad timing and strong dessert preferences. I keep thinking about all the ways I’m going to get it wrong. Because I will. I’m going to be tired and impatient sometimes. I’m going to overthink stupid things and underthink important ones. I’m going to buy the wrong diapers or put a onesie on backward or become the kind of man who googles every sound a baby makes and then has to be talked down from five separate forums.”

His mouth curved, but the vulnerability stayed in his eyes.

“But I want to learn. I want the boring parts of that too. Especially those. I want the nights and the bottles and the tiny socks that disappear into another dimension. I want the first time they fall asleep on me and I’m too afraid to move even though my arm has gone numb and I need to pee. I want watching you become their mom. I want them to know, from the beginning, that love in this house doesn’t make them earn a place. It just keeps making room.”

His hand covered hers more fully over her stomach, and for a moment he could not distinguish between the promise he was making to her and the one he was making to the hidden life beneath their hands. Maybe there was no difference anymore. Maybe love had braided them together that completely.

The mug shifted slightly in her lap as the ice cream softened, and the sight pulled him back just enough to smile. He reached for the spoon, not taking it from her, only nudging the handle so it wouldn’t slide too far against the rim. Even that felt like part of the life she had described: tiny adjustments, wordless maintenance, care so small it could disappear if they weren’t paying attention.

“And yes,” he added, the humor returning gently, “we should prepare for catastrophic stubbornness. Possibly advanced stubbornness. Our child is going to come out with a tiny clipboard and a list of grievances.”

He lowered his voice toward the blanket.

“Which, to be clear, we will read. Respectfully. But there will be boundaries.”

A beat.

“Probably.”

He glanced back at Cleo, and the love in his face made the joke almost irrelevant.

“They’re going to be so loved,” he whispered. “That’s the part I keep coming back to when everything else scares me. Schedules, travel, money, doctors, all the weird equipment babies apparently need, whether I’m going to assemble a crib wrong and create modern art instead of furniture—fine. Terrifying. We’ll deal with it. But loved? That part is already done.”

His thumb moved slowly over the back of her hand.

“They’re already loved.”

He leaned in then, pressing his forehead lightly to hers, letting the closeness make the words even smaller.

“And so are you.”

The sentence was not meant to reassure her out of anything. It was simply the foundation beneath everything else. She could be sick and scared, happy and hormonal, furious at transportation, deeply suspicious of vanilla bean, uncertain about tour, certain about him. She could want ordinary and still grieve what changed. She could be all of it at once, and his love did not need any version of her to stand alone in better lighting.

He brushed his nose lightly against hers before drawing back just enough to look at her.

“I don’t want extraordinary either,” he said. “Not if extraordinary means always moving so fast we can’t hear each other. I still want the music. I still want the shows. I’m not going to pretend that part of me disappeared because that wouldn’t be honest and you’d hate it anyway.”

His smile softened.

“But I don’t want to build my life around being impressive anymore. I want to build it around coming home.”

He let that sit, quiet and sure.

Then his gaze flicked to the mug.

“And apparently home currently requires monitoring the melt rate of vanilla ice cream.”

He reached for the mug carefully, tilting it just enough to check the contents without taking it away from her.

“Still structurally sound,” he reported under his breath. “Softening, but bravely. Much like the rest of us.”

He settled back into her again, the blanket shifting around their joined bodies, the morning continuing around them in all its gentle indifference. The world had not stopped. Somewhere, messages were probably waiting on his phone. Work existed. Tour existed. Rehearsals and calendars and logistical complications existed. But none of them could enter yet. Not while she was beside him, not while Sage was under his hand, not while the ordinary future they had both thought they’d lost was sitting right there in the living room, disguised as a tired woman, a rumpled man, and a mug of plain vanilla.

His voice, when it came again, was almost a whisper.

“I love this life already,” he said. “And it’s barely started.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo felt the smile come before she had decided whether she was amused or overwhelmed, which was how most of that morning seemed to work now. One feeling arrived carrying three others inside it, and by the time she understood what had touched her first, Ben had already moved on to the next truth. She stayed turned toward him beneath the blanket, the mug balanced carefully against her thigh while the vanilla softened into a glossy pool around the remaining scoop. His hand covered hers low against her stomach, warm and broad and impossibly gentle, and she found herself looking down at their fingers instead of his face because it was easier to absorb the idea of their child inheriting both of them in pieces: his charm when cornered, her refusal to surrender an argument she believed mattered, his tendency to turn emotion into humor until it became safe enough to touch, her habit of pretending she had no expectations while privately carrying entire futures. “They’re going to be exhausting,” she said at last, a sleepy laugh folded into the words. “Not badly exhausting. Just the kind where we’re sitting across from each other at dinner trying not to laugh because our four-year-old has built a completely unreasonable case and somehow believes volume counts as supporting evidence.” She glanced down toward the hidden baby with open affection. “And we’re going to deserve every second of it.”

The old weekends returned as he spoke about them, but they no longer arrived sharpened by regret. They came back warm around the edges, almost tender despite how badly the mornings after had hurt. She could see him appearing in somebody’s doorway with travel still clinging to him, looking tired and too familiar, and feel the immediate collapse of every sensible boundary she had constructed beforehand. What had once embarrassed her now seemed almost inevitable. They had kept trying to behave like the love between them could be reduced to poor judgment committed at parties, as though waking in the same bed again and again had been an accident neither of them possessed enough information to prevent. Hearing him admit that the happiness had hurt him too quieted one of the oldest, smallest cruelties she had carried from those years: the suspicion that the aftermath belonged mostly to her, that he stepped back into motion while she remained behind with the emotional debris. Her fingers tightened beneath his, not desperately, only enough to answer the years between then and now. “I thought the good part was evidence against us too,” she said, keeping the thought together instead of breaking it apart before she could finish. “Every time we found our way back to each other so easily, I’d think that should mean something, and then nothing changed afterward, so I started treating the happiness like a trap. I told myself the nights didn’t count because counting them would mean admitting I still wanted a life around them.” Her mouth curved faintly, sadness and fondness balanced together. “I think we both kept accepting scraps because the scraps proved the whole thing was still alive, and neither of us knew how to ask for more without risking losing even that.”

She watched his face while he acknowledged what the music had cost them, and the absence of defensiveness mattered more than any apology could have. Cleo had never wanted him ashamed of the work. She had loved his music even when the life surrounding it frightened her, loved the way something restless and difficult inside him found shape when he wrote, loved watching him become larger onstage without believing that larger version was the only real one. What she had feared was erasure, the slow process of adjusting herself to his movement until there was no room left to know whether she was happy. Now, with his hand still holding hers and the guitar waiting silently in the corner like one more piece of furniture rather than a rival, she understood how much had changed. “You don’t have to keep punishing yourself for not knowing then what we know now,” she said gently, lifting her eyes to his. “We were trying to solve the wrong problem. I thought I had to become brave enough for your entire life, and you thought loving me hard enough would make the chaos harmless. Neither of those things was possible.” Her thumb moved slowly beneath his palm, tracing the side of one finger. “What you finally did was stop asking me to live inside the chaos with you. You built something separate for us, somewhere the tour could be difficult without our relationship becoming difficult too. That’s what changed everything.”

The confession about children reached her differently now that he had said it twice, not with less force but with greater clarity. The first time, all she had felt was grief for the life they had both imagined alone. This time she could see the private years inside it: Ben suppressing thoughts about cribs and names because indulging them felt cruel, Cleo answering questions about children with an evasive maybe because telling the truth would have meant saying there was only one father she could picture and she no longer believed he belonged to her future. His hand resting near Sage made that old absence feel almost impossible to reconcile with the present. Their baby was not theoretical anymore. Their baby had a heartbeat, a grainy photograph, a working campaign against toast, and a father already worrying about backward onesies and online forums before the first trimester had finished introducing itself. Cleo’s eyes stung, though the tears gathering there felt too warm to be painful. “I wish we could give those versions of us one afternoon,” she murmured. “Not to change anything, because I don’t know whether we could have become this without getting it wrong first, but just to let them see where it ends. You could show yourself the nursery wall before I paint it, and I could tell myself that saying maybe wasn’t the same thing as giving up forever.” She turned her hand beneath his until their palms met fully over her stomach. “Mostly, I’d tell her she wasn’t ridiculous for only being able to imagine this with you. She was just early.”

His happiness moved through her with a force she had not known she needed. She had never doubted that he wanted the baby, but worry had occupied so much of his care lately that joy sometimes appeared only in flashes before responsibility closed over it again. Hearing him name the current beneath everything allowed her to recognize the same thing inside herself. She could be nauseated, frightened of the tour, tired enough to cry over transportation, and still feel an unbroken happiness beneath all of it. The symptoms did not disprove the joy; they simply existed beside it. “I’m glad you said that,” she admitted, her voice thickening slightly as she held his gaze. “I know you’re happy. I’ve known it every time you look at the sonogram or start planning something six months too early and pretend it’s practical. But I think I needed to hear that worrying hasn’t swallowed the good part for you.” She smiled then, small and almost embarrassed by the size of what she felt. “It hasn’t swallowed mine either. I can hate throwing up and still be happier than I’ve ever been. Apparently those things are allowed to live in the same body, which feels unfairly complicated, but here we are.”

When he spoke about marriage, the certainty in him calmed her more than any grand proposal could have. She had felt the shift earlier, the almost-question gathering in the room, and part of her had known he could ask right there and receive the answer without hesitation. Yet she loved him for not letting urgency decide the shape of it. Not because the morning was unworthy, and not because nausea somehow made their love less serious, but because he wanted the asking to have its own memory rather than become an emotional reaction to everything else. His fingertips at her cheek left a faint warmth behind even after his hand moved, and she turned her face slightly into the touch before answering. “You don’t have to reassure me every time that you’re not asking because of the baby,” she said, a little humor softening the honesty. “I know you wanted me before Sage existed. I also know this has made everything feel closer, and I don’t think that makes it less real.” Her smile grew as she imagined the future he described, stripped of spectacle and full of paperwork. “I want you to ask when you’re ready to ask, and then I want the pharmacy and the emergency forms and every deeply unromantic place where I get to say husband like it’s the most normal fact about me. You’ll probably cry the first time I do it in public, and I’m not promising to protect your dignity.”

She did laugh when he described fatherhood as a catalogue of anticipated errors, but the laughter softened almost immediately under the tenderness of watching him confront the fear honestly. He was already imagining failure because love had made the stakes visible, already treating imperfection like evidence he might not deserve the role rather than the unavoidable condition of being human. Cleo knew him well enough to understand that reassuring him he would be perfect would only feed the wrong fear. Instead, she kept her hand beneath his and let herself picture the real version: Ben tired at three in the morning, searching the internet with increasing panic because Sage had hiccups; Ben putting a onesie on backward and arguing that the design was objectively confusing; Ben trapped under a sleeping infant for forty minutes because moving felt morally unacceptable. “You’re going to get things wrong,” she said, her expression steady enough that he would hear the love rather than criticism. “So am I. We’re going to be tired and short with each other sometimes, and one of us will absolutely misunderstand what the baby needs while the other one is too exhausted to explain it kindly. That isn’t the part that scares me.” Her eyes dropped toward their hands over Sage. “The part that matters is that neither of us thinks getting it wrong means we stop trying. You’ll learn the diaper brand and the different cries and which song works at two in the morning. I’ll learn too. And when one of us is failing spectacularly, the other one will be there to say, very lovingly, that the onesie is backward.”

The idea that their child would never need to earn a place in the house settled into her more deeply than anything else he had said about fatherhood. She had spoken earlier about letting Sage be whoever they were, but this was the foundation beneath that freedom: love that did not increase when the child became easier to understand, more talented, more compliant, or more like their parents. Cleo’s fingers spread slightly beneath his as though she could hold that promise against her body and pass it through skin. “That’s what I want most,” she said quietly. “Not a perfect childhood. I don’t think we can give them one, and pretending we can would probably make us unbearable. I want them to know they can tell us the truth before they have all the words for it. I want them to come home angry or confused or completely different from the person we expected and never have to wonder whether love changes with the information.” Her gaze lifted back to his. “They can be difficult. They can disappoint us. They can decide music is annoying, painting is boring, and surfing is a personal attack. The rules can change around behavior, but not around belonging.”

She smiled when he returned to the melt rate of the ice cream, grateful for the way he could bring them back into the room without dismissing anything they had just shared. The vanilla had softened considerably, the remaining scoop losing its shape against the side of the mug, and she drew the spoon through it before taking another slow bite. It tasted almost like a milkshake now, colder than melted cream but no longer firm enough to require effort, and her stomach remained blessedly indifferent. She settled more completely against him while she swallowed, allowing his arm to take some of her weight and the blanket to hold the rest. “I love it too,” she said after a moment, her voice quieter because the truth no longer needed to travel far. “Even this part. Not being sick, obviously. That can resign immediately. But waking up and figuring it out with you, letting the whole day change because my body changed its mind, sitting here with nowhere more important to be than beside you.” She looked around the living room at the canvases, the guitar, the water glass, the bowl waiting without shame, and then returned her attention to him with a calm that felt more durable than happiness alone. “It barely started, and somehow it already feels like ours.”

Cleo leaned across the small distance and kissed him without warning, not to seal a promise or create a conclusion, but because his mouth was close and affection had become as ordinary between them as reaching for the spoon. She stayed there for only a few seconds, letting the kiss remain warm and familiar before settling back beneath his arm. Then she gathered another bite of softened vanilla and held it thoughtfully on her tongue, her expression turning faintly pleased when her stomach continued cooperating. “We should probably enjoy this brief display of institutional stability,” she murmured, nudging the mug closer to the center of her lap. “Sage may have inherited our stubbornness, but apparently they also inherited my ability to recognize when plain vanilla has made an excellent argument.”

Cleo stayed close after he finished, the softened vanilla forgotten again in her lap while the last of his words found their place inside her. She felt no need to answer each confession separately anymore. The morning had carried them past that kind of accounting, past the impulse to match every promise with one of equal weight so neither of them was left more exposed than the other. His hand covered hers beneath the blanket, both palms resting over the small, unchanged shape of her stomach, and that seemed to contain everything she might have said about trust, marriage, parenthood, and the strange relief of finally wanting the same life at the same time. She looked at him for several quiet seconds, taking in the exhaustion he had stopped trying to hide and the tenderness that had made his face softer throughout the morning, then let her thumb move once over the side of his hand. “I think we’ve said enough enormous things for one morning,” she murmured, her mouth curving with tired affection. “Not because I don’t want to hear them, or because I don’t mean everything I said. I just think if we keep going, we’re going to end up accidentally writing our vows on the couch while my ice cream turns into soup.”

The possibility amused her, but beneath the humor sat a contentment too settled to require protection from it. She lifted the mug and drew the spoon through what remained, gathering the softened vanilla before taking one more careful bite. Her stomach accepted it without argument, though the craving itself had begun to lose its urgency now that the cold sweetness had eased the rawness in her throat and given her body something it was willing to keep. That felt like enough. She did not need to finish the mug to prove the experiment had succeeded, and for once she did not hear an internal scorekeeper insisting that stopping meant failure. She placed the spoon inside, leaned forward carefully, and set the mug beside the water on the coffee table. “I think that’s all I want right now,” she said, settling back into him as the couch cushion shifted beneath their combined weight. “Which means the Department did excellent work, the government remains functional, and the rest can go back into the freezer before it develops ambitions.”

She pulled the blanket higher around them, closing the small gap that had opened near his shoulder, then tucked herself beneath his arm with the ease of someone no longer negotiating whether she deserved the space. Her body remained tired in a deep, unglamorous way, the kind of fatigue that had settled into her bones after the broken night and the morning’s repeated upheaval, but it no longer frightened her. Nothing needed to happen next. The studio could remain untouched, the canvases could wait in the sunlight, and every plan they might eventually need to make about the tour, the nursery, doctors, or marriage could stay outside the blanket for a few more hours. She rested her cheek against his chest and listened to the familiar rhythm there, letting the calm repetition replace the vigilance with which she had monitored her own stomach all morning. “I don’t want to talk about schedules today,” she said after a while, keeping the thought together as it formed. “Or figure out when you can come home between dates, or decide anything about the room, or look at another pregnancy app that compares Sage to a fruit and then tells me fifteen new things I should be worried about. I want to stay here until we’re hungry again, and then maybe we can order something incredibly plain and see whether our child approves.”

The edge of sleep had begun returning, gentler than before, but she resisted it long enough to lift her head and look at him once more. His promise that their child was already loved had settled more deeply than she could explain, not as reassurance but as something foundational she could begin building upon. There would be mistakes, distance, impatience, and days when neither of them felt capable of giving their best. She knew that, and the knowledge no longer made the future seem fragile. Their child would not need flawless parents; they would need parents who returned, repaired, listened, and allowed love to remain intact when behavior became difficult or expectations changed. Cleo could picture that life now without needing to make it beautiful in every frame. She could picture exhaustion and laughter existing in the same kitchen, an argument resolved after bedtime, Ben asleep upright beneath a baby while insisting he was comfortable, herself standing in a half-painted room wondering why she had believed a mural would be manageable during pregnancy. The details did not undermine the dream. They made it believable.

Her hand lifted to his face, not with the deliberate tenderness of their earlier confessions, but with the ordinary instinct to touch him while he was close. She brushed her fingertips along his jaw, leaned in, and kissed him slowly enough to feel him answer before letting the kiss end on its own. When she settled back, she left her palm against his chest and closed her eyes, a small smile remaining at the corner of her mouth. “I love this life too,” she said quietly. “Even unfinished. Even when it looks like this instead of whatever polished version we might’ve imagined years ago. I love you tired and worried and ordering an unreasonable amount of vanilla, and I love Sage when all they’ve done so far is make me sick and completely rearrange what I thought the future was going to be.” Her fingers curled lightly into his shirt as she relaxed against him. “We don’t have to make the rest happen today. We already got here.”

The apartment continued around them without demanding acknowledgment. Traffic passed beneath the open window, the refrigerator hummed steadily from the kitchen, and the sunlight moved far enough across the floor to leave the coffee table partly in shadow. Cleo let those sounds become the ending rather than searching for one more perfect sentence. She adjusted her legs beneath the blanket, drew Ben’s arm more securely around her, and allowed the weight of her body to settle fully into the couch. The morning had begun with her trying to be sick without waking him, convinced that love required making herself easier to care for. It ended with her resting against him, the bowl still nearby, the abandoned toast out of sight, and a half-finished mug of vanilla waiting to be put away whenever either of them finally chose to move.

She did not ask him to promise anything else. She only pressed one last kiss through his shirt over the place where his heart beat beneath her cheek, then let her breathing slow until the room softened around the edges. “Wake me if I need to drink some water,” she murmured, already drifting, “but otherwise I think we should be profoundly boring for the rest of the day.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben felt the kiss land through his shirt like the smallest possible amen.

It was barely anything in practical terms—warmth through cotton, a soft pressure over the place where his heart had already been doing far too much work that morning—but it moved through him with a force completely disproportionate to the gesture. He looked down at the top of her head, at the blanket tucked around them, at the quiet aftermath of everything they had somehow survived before the day had even properly begun, and felt the strange, humbled gratitude of a man who had been given permission not to solve the future for a few hours. No schedules. No apps. No fruit comparisons. No tour logistics waiting at the edge of the couch with a clipboard and poor timing. Just this: the woman he loved tucked against him, their baby hidden beneath her exhausted body, a mug of vanilla that had apparently fulfilled its civic duty, and the calm decision to let enough be enough.

“Profoundly boring,” he murmured, his voice low near her hair. “I can do profoundly boring.”

A pause.

“Honestly, I may be naturally gifted.”

The joke came softly, without expectation. He wasn’t trying to pull her back into conversation when sleep had already begun softening her. He only wanted the words to be there around her as she drifted, one more quiet shape of agreement, one more proof that he had heard her. His arm tightened by the smallest degree when she drew it closer around herself, and something in him eased at the plainness of being wanted that way. Not for the stage version, not for some heroic performance of caretaking, but for the weight of his arm, the warmth of his chest, the fact that he would stay close and not make the rest of the day explain itself.

The water request caught in him with an almost ridiculous tenderness.

Of course she would trust him with that too. Not a vow, not a future, not the whole architecture of parenthood or marriage. Water. Wake me if I need it. Let me rest otherwise. The simplicity of it felt enormous precisely because it wasn’t trying to be. His body was aching with exhaustion now, the adrenaline fully drained away and leaving him hollowed out behind the eyes, but his attention sharpened around the small task immediately. Water was possible. Water was kind. Water was exactly the sort of boring, necessary thing he could do without turning it into a speech.

“I’ve got it,” he whispered. “Hydration patrol, minimal interference.”

He stayed still for a few more breaths, waiting until he felt her weight settle more completely against him before he carefully began the slow negotiation of leaving the couch without disturbing the whole structure they had built. It required more concentration than any venue load-in he had ever witnessed. His arm slid out by degrees, his hand pausing at her back whenever her breathing shifted, and he replaced the small loss of himself with the tucked edge of the blanket so the cool air from the window wouldn’t reach the warm place he’d been holding. The mug went first, lifted gently from the coffee table with the seriousness of a completed treaty. He glanced inside and found the softened vanilla pooled pale and glossy at the bottom, still innocent, still free of ambition. “Excellent service,” he muttered under his breath as he stood. “Retire before you get weird.”

The kitchen felt too far away for the three steps it took to reach it.

Morning had fully settled there now, clear light across the counter, the open window letting in the faintest city breeze. He moved quietly, rinsing the spoon and setting the mug near the sink. Fresh water. Not the room-temperature glass that had been sitting out too long. He filled a clean one with ice first, then water, listening to the cubes crack softly as they settled. After a second, he made another glass too, because standby water apparently now required redundancy and he was not ashamed of who he had become.

He carried both back to the coffee table and arranged them within reach, one closer to her side, one slightly behind it in case the first glass somehow became politically unavailable. Then he added a napkin, because condensation had begun gathering immediately, and the idea of water rings on the table felt like exactly the kind of preventable inconvenience a profoundly boring man should handle. He set the bowl where it was still accessible but not demanding attention. The damp cloth remained folded on the couch arm. Everything was close enough. Nothing was dramatic.

That, he thought, was maybe the closest thing to competence he had ever managed.

When he lowered himself back onto the couch, he did it with the slow, careful weight of a man whose body had finally realized how tired it was. The cushion gave beneath him, welcoming and merciless, and a dull ache spread through his hips and back from the morning’s collection of strange positions: bathroom floor, crouched beside the couch, half-twisted under a blanket, holding still through emotional revelations and dairy diplomacy. He slipped back beneath the blanket and found her again with the kind of relief that felt physical. His arm returned around her, not hurried, not possessive, simply finding the place it had left and settling there as if the shape of him belonged to the shape of her rest.

“There,” he breathed, barely audible. “Water on standby. Ice cream contained. Government stable enough for a nap.”

His eyes were already heavier than they had been a minute ago. Not asleep yet—some stubborn internal monitor refused to fully power down while her stomach still had a record of betrayal—but close enough that the edges of the room began to blur. He could see the canvases leaning in sunlight, the guitar in the corner, the coffee table with its little arrangement of survival tools. It all looked impossibly ordinary. A room after a hard morning. A room holding its breath around two people and the tiny third person who had turned vanilla into a matter of state.

Ben let his cheek settle against her hair.

For the first time all morning, he let his own body become heavy too.

Not careless. Not gone. Just no longer pretending he wasn’t worn through. His arm stayed warm around her, his palm resting lightly where he could feel the rise and fall of her breathing through the blanket. If she shifted wrong, he would wake. If she needed water, he would wake. If her body changed its mind again, he would be on the bathroom floor before the fear had time to find its shoes. But until then, he let himself obey the small mercy of doing nothing.

His last thought before closing his eyes was not about the tour or the nursery or the question he was saving for later.

It was the water on the table.

The blanket around them.

Her body finally resting against his without apology.

The unfinished life they already loved.

“Okay,” he whispered into the quiet, more to the room than to her, more prayer than answer. “Boring for the rest of the day.”

Then Ben closed his eyes with her, holding her carefully in the late-morning light, and let the apartment keep watch for a while.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo heard him moving without fully waking. The couch shifted beneath her, the blanket loosened briefly at her back, and the warmth she had been resting against disappeared by slow degrees rather than all at once. Some drowsy part of her registered the loss and objected, but not enough to open her eyes. She only curled deeper into the place he had left behind, trusting the quiet sounds from the kitchen—the faint rinse of ceramic, ice dropping into glass, the low murmur of his voice carrying words she could not quite separate—to mean he was still near. Her body had spent so much of the morning braced for the next demand that surrendering now felt almost unfamiliar. Still, she let the weight in her limbs hold her down, let the blanket protect the warmth he had tucked around her, and allowed herself to remain exactly where she was without checking whether he needed anything from her in return.

When the cushion dipped again, relief moved through her before consciousness could name it. His arm returned around her, fitting into the same place as though the brief absence had only been practical, never emotional, and she shifted toward him on instinct until the line of her back settled against his chest. The clean chill from the fresh water reached her faintly from the coffee table, mixing with the soft cotton smell of the blanket and the familiar warmth of his skin. She heard enough of his whispered inventory to understand that everything had been put in order—the ice cream saved, the water waiting, the small government of their morning apparently still intact—and a sleepy smile touched her mouth against his shirt.

“Good,” she murmured, the word blurred by exhaustion and barely loud enough to escape the cocoon. Her hand found his where it rested over the blanket and folded loosely around it, not needing to guide him anywhere, only confirming that he had returned. “You’re very good at boring.”

The teasing held no energy beyond affection, and she made no attempt to preserve the smile after it faded. His body finally softened behind her in a way it had not allowed itself to do all morning, the careful vigilance in his muscles easing until he was no longer merely holding her but resting too. Cleo felt the change immediately. It mattered that he had stopped pretending exhaustion was irrelevant simply because hers had been louder. She wanted him beside her, not stationed around her like a guard who had forgotten he was also allowed to need sleep. The thought remained only half-formed before she drew his hand closer against her middle and tucked herself more securely beneath his chin, making the adjustment without words because there was nothing left to negotiate.

The apartment settled around them as the morning continued beyond the blanket. A pipe clicked somewhere inside the wall, tires passed below the open window, and the refrigerator resumed its patient hum after accepting the rescued vanilla back into its care. None of it asked them to participate. The canvases could wait. His guitar could remain untouched. Their phones could collect whatever obligations believed themselves urgent while the two of them slept through them. Even Sage seemed temporarily satisfied, her stomach quiet beneath their joined hands, the violent insistence of earlier reduced to a lingering soreness and the strange comfort of something cold finally staying where it belonged.

Cleo’s breathing lengthened until each inhale pressed her more deeply into him. The last clear thought she managed was that this was what she had meant when she said home. Not a place where nothing difficult happened, but a place where difficulty was allowed to end. A place where she could be sick, frightened, hungry, contradictory, and then simply tired, without anyone asking her to turn the morning into evidence of strength. Ben’s arm remained around her, the water waited close enough for later, and the unfinished life they had spent years trying not to want held them without requiring another promise.

She pressed one final, absent kiss against his chest, too sleepy to know whether he felt it, then let her hand go slack over his. “Love you,” she breathed, the words nearly swallowed by the fabric between them.

After that, she stopped trying to stay awake. The room softened, his heartbeat steadied beneath her cheek, and the profoundly boring day they had chosen finally began with both of them asleep on the couch.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben heard her.

Barely. The words arrived more as warmth than sound, breathed through cotton and exhaustion, nearly lost beneath the quiet machinery of the apartment. But he heard them, because some part of him had stayed awake for exactly that kind of small thing all morning. Not alert in the anxious, sharp-edged way he had been on the bathroom floor. Not braced for the next wave of nausea or the next sudden movement toward the hallway. This was different. Softer. The kind of awareness that remained after crisis had finally loosened its grip, when love stopped standing guard with both hands up and simply kept watch from inside the body. His eyes were already closed, but the words found him anyway, slipping beneath his ribs and settling there with everything else she had given him since sunrise.

His first instinct was to answer in a way that matched the size of what he felt.

That instinct, fortunately, was exhausted.

He didn’t have the strength for another enormous declaration. Not after the morning had taken them through sickness, tour grief, plain vanilla diplomacy, the architecture of trust, the shape of marriage, and the quiet holiness of ordinary days. Every large truth in him had already been turned over and offered until there was nothing left but the simplest one. So he lowered his mouth to the top of her hair, the movement so slight it barely shifted the blanket, and let his reply fall there, low and sleep-worn and entirely unadorned.

“Love you too.”

Even that felt like more than speech. It felt like returning something she had placed carefully in his hands. His arm stayed curved around her, heavier now than it had been all morning because his body was finally beginning to believe it was allowed to rest. The water waited on the coffee table. The bowl remained close enough. The world had been arranged, as much as he could arrange it, into a small, survivable circle around them. He had done what he could. Not everything. Not the future. Not the tour. Not pregnancy. Not all the miles and mornings still coming for them. But this much. This room. This blanket. This woman tucked against him without apology. Their child quiet beneath his hand for the moment. Enough.

The thought moved through him slowly, blurred at the edges by fatigue: this was what he wanted to learn how to do for the rest of his life. Not only the dramatic things, not only the songs or the flights home or the future question he kept carefully waiting in the private place where he stored things that mattered too much to rush. This too. The unremarkable maintenance of peace. Remembering water. Moving a mug. Letting silence be restful instead of unresolved. Holding his own worry still enough that it didn’t become another thing she had to carry. Being the kind of tired that stayed kind.

His face rested against her hair, and his breathing gradually began to lengthen with hers. The apartment continued in its quiet, ordinary way around them, indifferent and generous all at once. A low sound from the street rose and faded. The refrigerator hummed. The open window let the morning breathe through the room. Sunlight warmed the floor in slow increments, reaching toward the coffee table where the evidence of their small survival remained gathered: water, napkin, bowl, the abandoned traces of vanilla. None of it looked like a milestone. None of it would announce itself later as the day everything changed. But Ben knew better now than to trust spectacle with meaning. Sometimes the whole life was hidden inside a morning no one else would ever see.

He let himself sink another fraction into the couch.

There was still a stubborn part of him that wanted to stay half-awake forever, tracking every shift in her breathing, every possible sign that her stomach might change its mind again. It had been a long morning. His body had learned vigilance too quickly, and love had a terrible habit of confusing rest with negligence when the person beside him had been hurting. But Cleo had asked for boring. She had asked for rest. She had asked, in a dozen ways, for him to stop standing outside the moment like a guard and come back inside it with her.

So he did.

His hand loosened over hers without letting go. His shoulders eased. The ache behind his eyes deepened into something warm and pulling. For once, he didn’t chase another thought to its conclusion. He didn’t rehearse future logistics or silently revise the list of foods that might work later. He didn’t write a line in his head, though he knew the morning would come back to him eventually in music whether he invited it or not. He only held the shape of them in the quiet and let it be unfinished.

Right before sleep took him, Ben had one clear impression of the life around him: not perfect, not polished, not even easy in the way people usually meant easy. But theirs. Soft where it needed to be. Strong in places neither of them used to know how to build. A little absurd. Deeply ordinary. Already loved.

His thumb made one last slow pass over her hand.

Then he finally let his eyes stay closed.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo had gotten good at filling the spaces Ben left behind. Not replacing him, because she had learned there was a difference, but refusing to let the month he had been gone become a stretch of time she merely endured until he came home. South America had taken him into the strange rhythm she was still learning how to exist alongside, different cities and hotels, performances and flights, calls squeezed into whatever overlapping hours they could find. Meanwhile, Cleo had kept living. She had painted more than she had in months, enough that the living room regularly looked more like an extension of her studio than somewhere anyone was supposed to sit. She had sold three pieces, including one she had nearly talked herself into keeping, and had felt the particular satisfaction of wrapping them, signing the backs, and sending something she had made out into the world. There had been doctor appointments and errands and ordinary responsibilities, and her sister had apparently made it a personal mission to ensure Cleo never had too many empty afternoons to herself. They had gone to lunch, wandered through shops neither of them needed anything from, eaten takeout on Cleo’s couch, and talked late enough into the evening that Cleo occasionally realized an entire day had passed without her organizing it around when Ben might call. She still missed him. Sometimes badly. But she was learning that missing him didn’t have to consume everything else.

That afternoon had belonged to painting. Cleo had been in the living room for hours, sitting near the canvas with one bare foot tucked beneath her, brushes and supplies scattered across the drop cloth around her. Her hair had been pulled up earlier and was gradually escaping around her face and neck, and there was paint along the side of one hand and another small streak across her cheek from touching her face without thinking. Music played quietly somewhere behind her, just loud enough to fill the apartment without interfering with the concentration that had narrowed her world to color, shape, and the section of canvas she had been trying to get right for the better part of twenty minutes.

The creak of the front door broke straight through it.

Cleo’s brush stopped. She remained completely still for a second, head turning toward the sound while her mind tried to place it. She wasn’t expecting anyone. Her sister hadn’t said she was coming over, and nobody else had any reason to be walking through her door. A flicker of unease had only just begun to move through her when the door opened farther and somebody stepped inside.

Ben.

For several seconds, Cleo simply stared at him.

He stood in the entryway with a duffel bag, looking so thoroughly wrecked by travel that under any other circumstances she probably would have laughed. His clothes were rumpled, his hair was an absolute disaster, and exhaustion sat plainly across his face. None of that registered properly at first. What registered was that he was there, standing inside her apartment when every piece of information Cleo possessed told her he was supposed to be thousands of miles away.

Her brush lowered slowly toward her lap. “Ben?”

His name came out almost cautiously, as though saying it too loudly might expose whatever trick her brain was playing on her. She blinked at him, looked at the duffel, then back at his face. “What are you doing here?”

She was already getting to her feet.

“No, seriously.” The brush slipped from her fingers onto the drop cloth, forgotten immediately. “What are you doing here?” Confusion and happiness collided so quickly that her face couldn’t seem to settle on either one. She took several steps toward him, staring as if proximity might provide an explanation. “You’re in South America. You’re supposed to be in South America.” A startled laugh escaped her as she reached him, her eyes moving over his face again. “Did something happen? Are you okay? Why are you here?”

She barely gave him enough space between the questions to answer any of them. Her attention caught on his face again, on the unmistakable reality of him standing directly in front of her instead of appearing inside the screen of her phone, and whatever part of Cleo had been attempting to understand the logistics simply gave up.

Her eyes filled.

“Oh my God.”

The first tear made her laugh in embarrassment, and then another followed it, and Cleo stopped pretending she had any control over the reaction. She closed the remaining distance between them at once, throwing both arms around his neck and pressing herself against him hard enough that the momentum carried straight through the embrace. Her face disappeared against the side of his neck, fingers curling into the back of his messy hair while she held him as though her body had spent the entire month waiting to do exactly this even while the rest of her had been getting perfectly good at functioning without him.

“I missed you.”

It came out muffled against his neck, much smaller than everything she had been feeling. Cleo tightened her arms around him, and a shaky laugh caught behind the next breath. “God, I missed you so much.”

The admission seemed to open something. She had been painting. She had sold work. She had gone to her appointments and spent time with her sister and kept the apartment running and made plans and filled her days with things that belonged entirely to her. She had proven to herself that Ben could leave and Cleo’s life wouldn’t simply stop until he returned. She was proud of that. None of it changed what happened inside her now that she could actually feel him beneath her hands again.

“I’ve been okay,” she murmured, drawing back just enough to look at him while keeping both arms around his neck. Tears had already made a mess of her face, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “I’ve been really okay. I’ve been painting like crazy. I sold three pieces while you’ve been gone. I’ve been going to my appointments, and my sister has basically decided she’s responsible for keeping me occupied, so I’ve seen her constantly.” Her smile wobbled as her eyes searched his face. “I’ve been doing everything I’m supposed to do. I’ve been living my life. I haven’t been sitting here miserable waiting for you.”

Her hand slid from behind his neck to his cheek, thumb moving over his skin almost absently as she absorbed the difference between remembering his face and actually touching it. “But I still missed you every single day.” Her voice softened around the confession. “Both things can apparently be true, which feels unfair.”

Cleo laughed through the last of her tears and leaned her forehead against his, finally allowing herself to stop trying to make sense of why he was there long enough to simply enjoy that he was. She still didn’t know how he’d managed it. She didn’t know how long he had, what flight he’d taken, when he’d slept last, or what possessed him to cross continents and show up at her door without warning. Those questions could wait until she had finished convincing herself that he wasn’t about to disappear when she blinked.

For now, her fingers slipped back into his hair, keeping him close as she smiled through damp lashes. “I’m really happy you’re here.”

Cleo stayed wrapped around him for another few seconds, unwilling to surrender the simple fact that she could. Her hand remained in his hair while the other rested at the back of his neck, and she let herself breathe him in until the first shock of finding him in her doorway began settling into something she could actually process. He was here. Not on her phone with hotel lighting behind him, not sending her a picture from an airport she had never been to, not reduced to a voice she had to carry around after the call ended. Here. Solid beneath her hands, exhausted and rumpled and so familiar that her chest still ached every time she looked at him.

She finally eased back enough to see his face properly, though she didn’t let go. Her arms loosened around his neck instead, one hand sliding down to his shoulder while the other stayed against his cheek. Cleo’s eyes moved over him again with the same disbelieving little smile she’d been unable to shake since he walked through the door, and her thumb brushed beneath one of his eyes as she took in just how tired he looked. “You really flew all the way back here,” she murmured, almost to herself. The reality of that was beginning to sink in now. Somewhere in the middle of a tour on another continent, Ben had gotten on a plane and crossed thousands of miles instead of spending whatever break he’d been given sleeping in a hotel room. He had come home. He had come to her.

The thought warmed her for approximately three seconds before another one followed directly behind it, and Cleo’s expression shifted. Her gaze dropped briefly toward the duffel bag before returning to him. She knew better than to interpret a bag as evidence of anything. Ben practically lived out of one when he was working. It could mean a night. It could mean several. She had no idea, and suddenly the answer mattered enough that she almost didn’t want to ask.

“Okay,” she said softly, drawing in a breath as her fingers moved absently along the edge of his collar. “I have one question, and I don’t know if I actually want the answer yet.” Her mouth curved faintly, but the emotion underneath it was impossible to hide. She had spent a month learning how to miss him without counting down every day until he returned, and now that he was unexpectedly standing in front of her, some greedy little part of her immediately wanted to know exactly how much of him she had been given.

Cleo looked up at him, her hand settling against the side of his neck. “How long do I get you home for?”

The word home slipped out naturally enough that she only noticed it after she’d said it. She didn’t correct herself. This was home, at least in the way that mattered to her right now, and Ben had come back to it. Her thumb moved once against his skin as her smile softened. “Because I need to know whether I’m allowed to get excited or whether you’re about to tell me you have a flight again in six hours and make me hate airports even more than I already do.”

She was teasing, but only barely. Cleo’s eyes stayed on his, searching his face while her fingers curled loosely behind his neck again. “A day?” she asked. “Two?” Then she stopped herself before she could keep guessing, shaking her head with another quiet laugh. “No. Just tell me. How long are you mine before I have to give you back?”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben had imagined this part during an unreasonable percentage of the trip home. Somewhere over one ocean or another, folded badly into an airplane seat with his hood pulled up and his neck at an angle he was going to regret tomorrow, he had pictured opening the apartment door and seeing Cleo. His imagination had supplied surprise, obviously, and probably some accusation about being an asshole for not warning her before crossing half the planet. He had imagined getting his arms around her. What he had not accounted for was the few seconds in which she simply stared at him, or how hearing his name in her voice—not through earbuds, not distorted slightly by hotel Wi-Fi, but from across their actual apartment—would make every mile he had traveled suddenly feel worth it.

The questions started before his exhausted brain had properly caught up with the first one. Ben's mouth twitched despite himself, amusement getting tangled with the immediate realization that he had scared her before he had managed to surprise her, and he shook his head quickly when concern entered her face. “Nothing happened. I’m okay, I swear.” He barely got that much out before she was closer, and whatever explanation he might have assembled disappeared completely. His duffel slipped from his shoulder and landed beside the entryway with the careless familiarity of a bag being dropped exactly where he had dropped it a hundred times before, among the ordinary evidence that he lived here too when the tour wasn't stealing him somewhere else.

Then he had her in his arms, and Ben stopped caring about everything except the fact that she was real.

His arm closed around her waist while the other swept securely across her back, catching her easily and pulling her closer when momentum brought her into him. There was a split second, barely conscious, when his hold adjusted—not tentative enough to ruin the embrace, just some newly embedded instinct reminding him that there were two people he loved contained in the body pressed against his. A breath left him somewhere between a laugh and something embarrassingly less controlled, and he buried his face against her hair before she could get a particularly good look at him. “Hey,” he breathed, because apparently he had flown thousands of miles and spent an entire month missing this woman only to arrive equipped with a vocabulary of approximately one syllable. His mouth pressed against her temple, then disappeared into her hair again as his eyes closed. “Hi.”

The tears he felt against his neck dismantled what remained of him. His palm spread over the middle of her back, fingers flexing against her shirt as his hold tightened almost involuntarily, and for several seconds Ben couldn't make himself loosen it. He had underestimated how much he had missed the physical reality of her. Calls had kept them connected, pictures had filled in pieces, and there had been nights when he'd fallen asleep with his phone still beside his face after talking to her, but none of it had given him this—the precise weight of her against him, her fingers in his hair, the familiar pressure of her body fitting into the space his had apparently been keeping empty for her. “I know,” he murmured when her confession reached him, his voice roughened by too many hours awake and something considerably more dangerous than exhaustion. He swallowed before adding, “Me too, Cleo. Every fucking day.”

He let himself stay there while she began telling him about the month he had missed, listening with his cheek against her hair and a tired smile gradually forming. The paintings caught his attention immediately, but three sales made him pull back enough to see her properly, eyebrows lifting as if she had buried a fairly significant piece of information halfway through a routine status report. “Hold on. Three?” Pride cut cleanly through the jet lag, bright and immediate. “You sold three paintings and you're just casually slipping that in between everything else?” His thumb moved along her back as he looked at her, the smile widening despite how thoroughly wrecked the rest of him looked. “That's fucking amazing.”

The rest mattered just as much, though differently. He listened to the appointments, her sister, the days she'd filled without arranging every hour around whatever continent he happened to be standing on, and relief moved through him alongside the pride. The mention of the appointments snagged a little more firmly than the others, because no matter how many updates she had given him afterward, there was still a particular guilt attached to knowing some of them had happened while he was thousands of miles away. He knew she could handle them without him; she had never needed him hovering over every part of the pregnancy to prove he cared. That did not stop him from wanting to be there, though, or from privately resenting every tour date that made him experience pieces of this through phone calls and pictures instead of beside her.

Ben had worried about her while he was gone, sometimes reasonably and sometimes because distance gave the imagination too much room to work. He had worried when nausea had hit at inconvenient hours, when food suddenly became unacceptable after being perfectly fine the day before, when exhaustion had flattened her harder than she wanted to admit. Mostly, he had worried because there was no useful way to reach through a phone and take any of it off her shoulders. Seeing her now with paint on her hand and cheek, surrounded by the evidence of a full afternoon she had built for herself, loosened something that had been sitting tight in his chest for weeks. She had missed him, but she hadn't disappeared into missing him.

“Good,” he said, and there was enough weight behind the word that it lost any possibility of sounding dismissive. His gaze stayed on hers while his hand settled comfortably at the small of her back. “I'm glad you've been good. Really.” His eyes moved over her face for another second before the concern he had been holding at bay inevitably won a little territory. “And you've actually been feeling okay? Not your version of okay where you conveniently leave out that you almost threw up because somebody opened a yogurt three rooms away?” A beat passed before the corner of his mouth lifted, taking some of the scrutiny out of it. “Because I've had a month to learn your reporting methods, and they're suspicious.”

Her hand against his face quieted him again. Ben leaned into the touch without thinking, eyelids lowering for half a second as her thumb moved over skin made dry by airplane cabins and neglect. He became vaguely aware of the state of himself through her scrutiny: rumpled clothes, dark hair that had lost an argument with several headrests, stubble he had stopped caring about somewhere around the first connection, exhaustion carved deeply enough beneath his eyes that no amount of pretending was going to disguise it. He should probably have wanted a shower before she touched him this much. Instead he turned his face slightly into her palm, because after a month without it, vanity ranked somewhere below international baggage regulations on his current list of concerns.

It was the word home that got him.

Ben didn't react quickly enough to hide it, though he doubted she was looking for a reaction in the first place. Something softened in his face before he could stop it, and for a moment his eyes simply moved over hers while the word settled into him. He had been living here with her between tour legs long enough that his things had migrated into drawers and cabinets, his shoes appeared beside hers, his charger had developed a permanent residence, and there were pieces of his life scattered through rooms that had once belonged entirely to Cleo. He no longer arrived with the careful temporaryness of somebody visiting. He came back, dumped his bag near the door, knew what was in the refrigerator, slept on his side of the bed, and inevitably left something stupid somewhere she would find it after he flew out again. Somewhere along the way, without either of them needing to formally declare it, her apartment had become the place his mind pictured when somebody told him he was finally going home.

And now there was another layer to it that still occasionally hit him sideways. Their baby existed here too, impossibly small and already capable of reorganizing entire sections of their lives. There were appointments on the calendar because of them, foods in the kitchen selected according to whatever Cleo could tolerate that particular week, conversations that began with practical things and somehow ended with the two of them lying awake discussing January. Ben had spent years thinking of home as somewhere he returned to. Lately, for the first time, it had begun to feel like something being built around him.

That was probably why he noticed the exact moment her happiness acquired an edge.

Her attention went toward the duffel, and Ben understood immediately. The bag itself told her nothing; she had watched him live out of one too many times for that. A month apart had taught both of them not to assume that an arrival meant permanence, and the machinery of touring had a particularly cruel way of putting an expiration date on reunions before they had properly begun. Ben's thumb traced once along her side while he watched the question gather behind her expression. He could have answered before she asked. He didn't, partly because he wanted to let her arrive at it herself and partly because the sleepy, selfish part of him wanted another few seconds before putting a number on something that felt infinitely better without one.

The airport threat made his mouth curve. Six hours was insulting after what he had just put his spine through, and his eyebrows lifted with tired disbelief as though she had personally questioned his intelligence. “Six hours?” he echoed. “Baby, if I did all that for six hours, don't even let me unpack. Take me directly to a neurologist.” His hand slid a little higher along her back, keeping her close while the guesses continued, and he felt his expression soften as quickly as the joke had come. She was trying to prepare herself for the answer. That realization took most of the fun out of making her wait.

Still, the particular way she finally asked nearly did him in.

Ben breathed out a quiet laugh, but it wasn't really because anything was funny. His eyes dropped briefly, and he rubbed his thumb once against her back while those words found somewhere inconveniently tender to lodge. Mine. Give you back. Tour had reduced so much of their relationship lately to borrowed stretches of time that he understood exactly what she meant. He had spent a month belonging to schedules, venues, flights, interviews, rehearsals, crowds, and everybody who needed something from him; the prospect of belonging only here for a little while sounded almost obscenely good.

“Seventy-two hours.”

He watched her face as he said it, not wanting to miss the reaction. Three days sounded both enormous and painfully small after a month, which was probably why he preferred hours. Seventy-two had weight to it. It contained three nights in their bed, three mornings that didn't begin with checking which city he had woken up in, and enough ordinary time between arrival and departure that they didn't have to immediately turn every second into something meaningful. More privately, it meant three days of being physically present for all the small things pregnancy had forced him to hear about secondhand lately. If she felt sick, he could get her something. If she fell asleep halfway through the afternoon, he could put a blanket over her instead of finding out afterward. If some inexplicable craving appeared at ten at night, he could be the idiot going out to find it.

“I leave again in three days,” he clarified, quieter now. “East Coast run.”

There it was: the unavoidable edge. Ben felt it himself the moment the next departure became something spoken aloud rather than an itinerary buried in his phone, but he refused to let it eat the arrival. He had spent too much time getting here for that. His hand moved slowly up her back until his palm rested between her shoulder blades, and he pulled her that fraction closer again, gaze steady on hers. “But not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not the day after that until somebody physically makes me go to the airport.” His smile returned, worn-out and crooked. “So you're allowed to get excited. Moderately. Don't embarrass yourself.”

The teasing bought him approximately two seconds before his attention caught on the streak of paint across her cheek. Ben's eyes narrowed slightly as he focused on it, and his thumb came up to investigate, brushing carefully over the mark only to smear it farther rather than remove it. He stared at his thumb, then back at her face, caught in the act of making the problem objectively worse. “Fixed it,” he decided, with the confidence of a man who clearly had not. Only then did he finally look past her toward the living room, taking in the easel near the windows, the drop cloth, the scattered brushes and supplies, and the unmistakable evidence that he had interrupted her halfway through working.

Something about it made him smile differently. This was the life that had continued while he was gone, and there was an intimacy in walking back into it mid-afternoon instead of receiving the edited version over a call later. “I wanna see everything,” he said, his attention returning to her. “What you were working on, what you finished, the three you sold. I want pictures if they're already gone.” He gave her a pointed look, fatigue doing absolutely nothing to lessen the sincerity beneath it. “And I'm gonna be annoying about the sales, just so we're clear. You've had a month without me here to brag about you in person. There's a backlog.”

His gaze dipped briefly, and this time it caught on something that had changed. The fitted tank she wore made the difference easier to see than it might otherwise have been, a small curve at her stomach that was still subtle enough that a stranger might not have thought twice about it. Ben wasn't a stranger. He knew the shape of her body too intimately for a month of gradual change to disappear into familiarity, and seeing four months of their baby in person after weeks of photographs and video calls landed differently than he had expected. For a second he simply looked, exhaustion and amusement falling away from his expression as the reality of what he'd missed became unexpectedly tangible.

His hand left her back and settled gently over the beginning of that curve, palm warm through the thin fabric of her tank. There was nothing tentative in the gesture, but there was wonder in it, quiet enough that Ben probably would have denied the word if anybody accused him of it aloud. His thumb moved once, tracing a small arc without any expectation that he would feel something in return, and his eyes lifted to hers before dropping again. “Okay,” he murmured, a faint, almost disbelieving smile appearing. “You definitely did that while I was gone.”

The month had not felt short while he was living it. Standing here, it suddenly seemed enormous. Cleo had looked like Cleo every time he'd seen her on a screen, and logically Ben had known her body was changing even while he wasn't there to witness each incremental difference, but seeing the evidence beneath his own hand made him acutely aware that the pregnancy had kept moving forward without waiting for his tour schedule to accommodate it. The feeling wasn't quite sadness and wasn't guilt either. It was something more complicated: amazement tangled with the sharp little ache of having missed the gradual becoming of something he could now see all at once.

His mouth curved again before the emotion could get too comfortable. “And hi to you too,” he murmured toward the small curve beneath his palm, affection pulling crookedly at his expression. “Sorry your dad's first move after crossing a continent was apparently ignoring you for ten minutes.” The absurdity of apologizing to someone who hadn't been born yet amused him enough that a tired laugh escaped, but his hand stayed where it was. He rubbed his thumb once more over Cleo's tank and looked back at her. “I've missed both of you,” he admitted, softer than the joke that had preceded it, and before the sentiment could sit exposed for too long, he added, “Although one of you has been significantly better about answering my calls.”

His body chose that moment to remind him that enthusiasm was not a substitute for sleep. The adrenaline that had carried him through customs, baggage claim, the ride home, and finally through their front door was draining fast, leaving his shoulders heavy and his eyes burning. Ben exhaled and leaned his forehead against hers, letting his eyes close as soon as they touched. He could smell paint faintly from her skin, something familiar from the apartment underneath it, and the combination was so aggressively domestic after weeks of hotels that his entire nervous system seemed to sag toward it. “I do need you to know,” he murmured, “that I am currently held together by caffeine, spite, and the knowledge that you were at the end of the flight.”

For several seconds he didn't move. There was no reason to. The music was still playing softly somewhere behind them, his bag could remain abandoned by the door, and whatever clothes were inside it had already survived this many airports without his supervision. Ben let himself stand there with her, breathing slowly while the last month finally began losing its grip on his body. Three days wasn't enough, but standing here thinking about the fourth would be an exceptionally stupid way to spend the first.

His eyes opened again, and this time the look he gave her held more mischief than emotion, as if he'd caught himself drifting dangerously close to sentimentality and needed to correct course. “Here's what I'm thinking,” he said, his hand returning to her waist. “I shower before you decide you've made a terrible mistake letting a man who smells like international air travel live here. Then food—whatever currently passes the pregnancy smell test. Then you show me the paintings and accept praise with dignity for once.” His thumb slipped beneath the hem at her side just enough to find warm skin, familiar and absent-minded rather than demanding anything from her. “After that, I intend to contribute absolutely nothing useful to society for the remainder of the evening.”

The plan sounded better with every word. No surprise dinner, no attempt to manufacture some grand reunion worthy of the distance he had traveled, no obligation to turn seventy-two hours into a highlight reel because the clock was already running. Ben wanted their couch. He wanted his toothbrush where he had left it and the stupid argument over what to watch and whatever food could be obtained without either of them dressing properly. He wanted to see which foods had appeared in the kitchen since he'd left and hear Cleo explain why something she'd loved two weeks ago was now apparently disgusting. He wanted to wake sometime tomorrow without an alarm and spend several confused seconds figuring out where he was before realizing Cleo was beside him. After a month of movement, the ordinary had become the luxury.

He tipped his head enough to press a slow kiss against her forehead, lingering there before easing back only far enough to see her again. Exhaustion had stripped away most of his ability to disguise what he felt, leaving affection plainly visible in the softened line of his mouth and the way he kept finding excuses not to take his hands off her. “Seventy-two hours,” he repeated, giving the number one last consideration before his expression shifted into mock seriousness. “Which means I have officially moved from long-distance boyfriend back to household nuisance.” His fingers tightened gently at her waist, and his eyes dipped once toward the subtle curve he'd only just gotten to meet in person before returning to hers. The smile that followed was small, exhausted, and unmistakably content. “I'm home.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo’s smile changed the second he said it. Seventy-two hours. Three days. Three nights. Long enough that she didn’t have to immediately start grieving the goodbye while he was still standing in front of her. Long enough for his shoes to end up wherever she would inevitably trip over them, for his charger to migrate back beside the bed, for him to leave a glass somewhere inexplicable and swear he was coming back for it. Long enough to wake beside him more than once. Her eyes closed for half a second as relief moved through her, and when they opened again, she was smiling so broadly she couldn’t have hidden it if she tried. “Seventy-two hours,” she repeated, almost testing the number for herself. “Okay. I can work with seventy-two hours.” The East Coast run could wait. She heard it, understood exactly what it meant, and deliberately refused to follow the thought any farther than that. Three days from now, she could hate the airport. Right now Ben was standing in their apartment looking like he had personally fought commercial aviation and narrowly survived, and she wasn’t wasting the first ten minutes of having him home preparing herself to lose him again. She slipped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. “And for the record, I’m going to get extremely excited. Possibly embarrassingly excited. You flew home from South America. You forfeited your right to pretend you’re too cool for my reaction.”

His attempt to wipe the paint from her cheek made her laugh, and she caught his wrist before he could smear it any farther. “Oh, good. Thank you. Very helpful. A month away and somehow you’ve gotten worse at this.” She glanced at the paint decorating his thumb and shook her head before threading her fingers through his. Hearing that he wanted to see everything she had been working on sent another little rush of pride through her, one she didn’t bother trying to hide. “You can. I took pictures of the sold ones before they went out because I knew you’d want to see them, and yes, you can be annoying about it. Within reason.” Her nose wrinkled as she looked at him. “I reserve the right to revoke bragging privileges if you become unbearable.” It was almost dizzying how quickly ordinary conversation returned between them. There was no screen, no slight delay before his laugh reached her, no awareness that either of them needed to check a clock because one was about to go onstage or the other needed to sleep. She could touch him while she talked. She could watch his attention wander around the apartment and know he was actually seeing the things she had been describing for the last month.

Then his gaze lowered, and Cleo knew exactly what had caught his attention before his hand ever settled against her stomach. Her own eyes followed his, and something softer replaced the teasing. She had watched the change happen incrementally, little enough from one morning to the next that she sometimes still forgot about it until a pair of jeans fit differently or she caught herself sideways in the mirror. Ben hadn’t gotten that gradual introduction. He had left one version of her and come home to another, and seeing the realization move across his face made the difference suddenly feel more significant to her too. Cleo laid her hand over his, fingers slipping naturally between his as she looked down at them together. “I know,” she murmured, smiling. “It’s weird, isn’t it? I keep looking at myself from the side like I’m checking whether it’s still there.” Her thumb moved slowly over the back of his hand before she looked up again. “Everything’s been good. Really good. The appointments have been boring, which apparently is exactly what you want pregnancy appointments to be. And before you interrogate me, yes, I’ve been eating, yes, I’m taking everything I’m supposed to take, and yes, I still occasionally want to throw up because food has committed the crime of having a smell. But your yogurt example was unnecessarily specific and defamatory.”

His little greeting toward the baby made her laugh, but the admission underneath it landed somewhere much deeper. Cleo kept her hand over his and let him have the moment without rushing him through it. She had been able to touch the small change whenever she wanted, had watched it emerge slowly enough to become part of her reflection before she quite realized it was happening, while he had been limited to photographs and video calls that could never really translate it. “We missed you too,” she said softly, then glanced down at herself as though reconsidering her authority to make that statement. “Well, I missed you. This one currently has no concept of international touring or fathers, so I’m taking some creative liberties.” Her gaze returned to his, affection warming her expression. “But I’m pretty sure you’ll be forgiven for the ten-minute delay.” She squeezed his hand beneath hers, letting the quiet linger for a moment because there was something almost surreal about standing in the middle of their apartment with Ben’s palm over the beginning of their baby after spending a month experiencing the pregnancy without his physical presence beside her.

The exhaustion became impossible to ignore once his forehead settled against hers. Cleo’s hands moved up over his shoulders, rubbing them slowly as she listened to his assessment of the caffeine, spite, and sheer determination apparently responsible for delivering him across continents. “That’s an incredibly reassuring list of vital nutrients. I’m especially glad spite made the trip.” She pressed a brief kiss to his mouth, soft enough that it asked nothing from him, and studied his face when she pulled back. “You look exhausted, baby.” She didn’t say it critically. If anything, seeing the evidence of the journey on him made the surprise feel even more enormous. He could have spent this break sleeping. He could have found a hotel and shut the curtains and disappeared for three days before the next run began. Instead, he had folded himself into airplane seats and crossed half the world to come back here, and Cleo wasn’t sure she could think about that for too long without crying again.

His proposed schedule earned her immediate approval right up until he reached the part about accepting praise with dignity. “You had me at shower and food, and then you got ambitious.” She let her hands travel down his arms until she could catch both of his. “But yes. Shower. Absolutely shower. I love you very much, and I am thrilled you’re home, but there are limits to what love can overcome, and apparently international air travel is one of them.” Her smile took any sting out of the words as she squeezed his hands. “I’ll figure out food while you’re in there. Something safe enough that neither your stomach nor mine stages a revolt, and then you can inspect the paintings and tell me I’m brilliant until I become uncomfortable.” She meant it, too. She didn’t want a reservation somewhere or some elaborate plan designed to justify the miles he had traveled. She wanted him clean and fed and barefoot in their living room. She wanted his head in her lap while she told him everything that had happened since he left and eventually wanted the weight of him on his side of their bed.

She still didn’t let him go immediately. The ordinary shape of what he was offering struck her harder than any grand reunion could have. A shower. Food. Paintings. Their couch. Their bed. Three mornings. She had once been so frightened that Ben’s life would never leave enough room for anything quiet that she had nearly convinced herself loving him from a distance was safer than trying to build something real beside him. Yet here he was, exhausted from the very life that had frightened her, wanting nothing more glamorous from the next seventy-two hours than to exist inside hers. When he pressed the kiss to her forehead and finally said, I’m home, Cleo felt her expression soften completely. “I know,” she whispered, bringing both hands back to his face. She leaned up and kissed him slowly, without the frantic relief of their first embrace because now she knew she had time. When she pulled away, she stayed close, thumbs resting against the scruff along his cheeks. “That’s my favorite part. Not the seventy-two hours. Not even the fact that you apparently lost your mind and crossed half the planet instead of sleeping like a normal person.” Her smile turned smaller, warmer. “It’s that you came home.”

Cleo kissed the corner of his mouth once more before finally stepping back, though she kept one hand wrapped around his because apparently total separation was still asking too much of her. Her gaze traveled over his destroyed hair, rumpled clothes, and exhausted face, and she gave his hand a gentle tug farther into the apartment. “Now go shower before I decide missing you has compromised my sense of smell. I’ll make us something to eat, and then you’re getting on that couch with me and doing absolutely nothing.” She managed two steps before glancing back at him, the thought of his caffeine-and-spite survival strategy making her reconsider the rest of her plan. “Actually, forget everything after the couch. You’re definitely going to fall asleep.” Her smile widened as she tugged him forward again, surrounded by the apartment she had kept living in while he was gone and suddenly absurdly happy to have him occupying it again. “But you’re doing it here, so I don’t care.”

Cleo kept hold of his hand until the distance between the kitchen and the hallway made it impossible without physically following him to the shower, and even then she let their fingers drag apart reluctantly. “Go,” she told him, pointing toward the bedroom with the authority of someone who had already decided she was in charge of the next hour. “Hot water. Clean clothes. I’m feeding you when you come back, and if you fall asleep standing up in there after flying all the way home to surprise me, I’m going to be incredibly annoyed.” She watched him go for another second longer than necessary, still wearing the stupidly happy smile that had apparently become permanent, and only when he disappeared from view did she turn toward the kitchen. The apartment felt different already. His duffel was still abandoned by the door, his shoes would undoubtedly become her problem within the hour, and somewhere down the hall she could hear the familiar sounds of him moving through a home he no longer needed directions around. Cleo stood there listening for a moment, letting the reality settle again before she shook herself out of it and went to find them something to eat.

The refrigerator presented the usual pregnancy-era negotiation between what technically constituted food and what Cleo’s stomach had arbitrarily decided was offensive this week. She opened it and stared inside, one hand settling unconsciously against the small curve of her stomach while she considered the possibilities. Anything heavily seasoned was immediately eliminated. The leftover takeout her sister had insisted she keep was questionable even before Cleo remembered how aggressively the garlic had announced itself when she’d opened the container yesterday. Eggs had been enemies for almost two weeks now, and she wasn’t prepared to test whether the ceasefire had begun. What remained was simple enough: chicken she’d cooked the day before, bread, cheese, some fruit, and the increasingly ridiculous collection of crackers and bland snacks that had taken over an entire shelf since pregnancy had apparently transformed her kitchen into the waiting room of a pediatrician’s office.

“Okay,” she murmured to herself as she started pulling things out. “We’re doing boring.”

Boring sounded perfect. Cleo set a skillet on the stove and built two grilled sandwiches, adding chicken to Ben’s and keeping hers simpler because she trusted melted cheese considerably more than she trusted her own digestive system. She sliced an apple and strawberries for the side, then added a handful of crackers to her plate after briefly considering whether that made the meal look depressing and deciding she no longer cared. Ben had eaten enough meals in airports and hotel rooms over the last month that warm bread and actual fruit probably qualified as luxury. She worked slowly, listening to the shower running down the hall while butter began to hiss quietly against the pan. Every so often her attention drifted toward the hallway for no reason beyond the strange comfort of knowing exactly what the sound meant. He was here. His shampoo would be wet in their shower again. He would leave a towel somewhere irritating. In a few minutes he would come back into the kitchen wearing something soft and clean, probably looking only marginally more awake, and none of it required a phone call or a time-zone calculation.

She flipped the sandwiches and leaned her hip against the counter while they browned, her eyes wandering toward the living room. Her abandoned brush was still lying on the drop cloth where she’d dropped it when she saw him. The canvas would need attention before the paint dried completely, but for once Cleo couldn’t make herself care about interrupting the work. She had spent the last month protecting that part of herself, refusing to make Ben’s absence the organizing principle of her life, and she was proud of what she’d accomplished because of it. Three paintings had sold. Another was taking shape ten feet away. She had kept appointments and spent time with her sister and discovered that she could love somebody whose career regularly carried him away without becoming a woman who merely waited for him to return. But independence, she was realizing, didn’t require pretending his presence wasn’t better. She could be perfectly capable of feeding herself, entertaining herself, building a career and filling her own days, and still feel absurdly happy because his duffel was on her floor again.

Cleo pulled the sandwiches from the pan before sentimentality could make her burn them, cut Ben’s diagonally and then paused over her own before cutting it the same way. “Fancy,” she muttered, amused with herself. She carried the plates to the small table, went back for water, and then reconsidered Ben’s caffeine intake and filled an extra glass for him before placing it beside his plate. Her own water came with the prenatal vitamin she’d forgotten to take earlier, which she swallowed immediately rather than risk Ben noticing and using it as evidence in his ongoing prosecution of her allegedly unreliable reporting methods. By the time she finished cleaning the skillet and wiping the counter, the shower had stopped, and anticipation fluttered embarrassingly through her stomach all over again.

She turned toward the hallway at the first sound of movement, leaning back against the counter with her arms loosely folded. She knew how ridiculous it was. He had been gone for perhaps fifteen minutes. She had survived an entire month without seeing him in person, and somehow the duration of one shower had been enough to make her wait for him to reappear. Cleo rolled her eyes at herself and reached for one of the strawberries from her plate, taking a bite as she called toward the hallway, “I made grilled cheese and chicken, which isn’t remotely impressive, but you look like you’ve eaten seventeen consecutive airport meals, so I’m assuming your standards are currently underground.”

Her smile returned before she even finished speaking. She glanced at the plates and then toward the hallway again, unable to resist adding, “Also, I cut them diagonally, so technically this is fine dining.” Cleo picked up the plates instead of waiting at the table and carried them toward the living room, setting them on the coffee table in front of the couch because she had already decided neither of them needed the formality of sitting upright for dinner. She gathered the scattered cushions into something comfortable, pulled the throw blanket down from the back of the couch, and tucked her legs beneath herself as she settled into the corner. The unfinished painting remained visible across the room, the evidence of her afternoon exactly where she’d left it, while Ben’s bag remained by the front door and the quiet sounds of him moving through the apartment filled the spaces between.

For the first time in a month, Cleo wasn’t wondering when his name would appear on her phone. She wasn’t wondering whether he was asleep, performing, boarding a flight, or waking somewhere she had to look up on a map. He was twenty feet away. He was going to eat the sandwich she’d just made, probably insist on seeing every painting before exhaustion won, and eventually fall asleep somewhere close enough for her to touch him. Seventy-two hours would begin shrinking whether she watched the clock or not, so Cleo decided she wasn’t going to. She reached for another strawberry and smiled toward the hallway when she heard him coming closer. “Come eat, baby,” she called, settling deeper into the couch. “You crossed a continent. I think you’ve earned grilled cheese.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Yes—I see what you mean. The previous version keeps visibly servicing the instructions: he won't sleep, he won't move, he only has seventy-two hours, he wants every minute, and after a while those points start sounding like themes Ben is consciously narrating instead of circumstances naturally shaping his behavior.

I'd make those things much quieter. He can simply be awake after the shower without repeatedly explaining why, stay beside her because that's naturally where he wants to be, and let the limited time surface once or twice rather than constantly measuring it. I'd also give the scene more room for Ben himself: curiosity about her month, playful commentary, his reaction to the food, the pregnancy, her paintings, little tour stories, physical affection that changes rather than defaulting repeatedly to his hand on her stomach. That should make the scene feel lived rather than instructed.

Here’s a more varied version:

The shower stripped away most of what the trip had left on him. By the time Ben came back down the hallway in a black T-shirt and gray sweats, his hair was damp and pushed loosely away from his face, his skin still carrying warmth from the water, and the particular misery of several airports had been reduced to a heaviness behind his eyes. He felt human again, or close enough to qualify. More importantly, the apartment smelled like toasted bread and butter, and after a month of catering trays, hotel breakfasts, backstage snacks, and meals selected according to whichever airport terminal he happened to be trapped in, it nearly stopped him in the doorway.

Her commentary from the other room pulled a laugh out of him before he even reached her. “My standards aren't underground,” he called back, voice clearer now that he'd showered. “They've become adaptable. That's different.” The distinction lasted until he saw the plates waiting on the coffee table and immediately abandoned any pretense of sophistication. He dropped into the open space beside her, looked down at the sandwich, fruit, and crackers with genuine appreciation, then added, “Although I did eat something twelve hours ago that had the structural integrity of a kitchen sponge, so maybe don't use me as your Michelin inspector tonight.”

The couch felt exactly as good as he'd been imagining it would. Ben settled back against the cushions and stretched one leg out, shoulder brushing hers before he deliberately crowded closer rather than correcting the overlap. He had spent a month surrounded by people and still somehow starved for uncomplicated contact; backstage hugs, handshakes, shoulders knocking together in vans, all the casual physicality of touring had done nothing to replace this. His knee rested against hers while he picked up his plate, and the first bite made his eyes close briefly for reasons that had very little to do with culinary complexity. “Fuck,” he said after swallowing, staring down at it. “Okay. You win. Diagonal grilled cheese is fine dining.”

He ate another bite almost immediately, considerably more interested in the food than dignity, and reached for a strawberry between bites. It was only after the first edge of hunger disappeared that he noticed the extra glass of water waiting for him. His eyes moved from it to Cleo, and a small smile tugged at his mouth before he picked it up. Of course she had noticed the caffeine situation and quietly countered it without turning hydration into a conversation. “Look at you,” he murmured, taking a long drink. “Keeping international recording artists alive. Very glamorous work.”

The apartment looked different from this angle after a month away. Not actually changed in any dramatic sense, but inhabited in ways video calls had never quite captured: a few things shifted on the shelves, art supplies claiming territory around the easel, the abandoned brush still lying where her afternoon had been interrupted. His gaze landed on the canvas and stayed there while he chewed. Even unfinished, it looked nothing like the flattened glimpses he'd caught through his phone, and Ben leaned slightly forward as if the extra foot of distance were responsible for everything he'd been missing. “Okay, that's annoying,” he said, nodding toward it. “It looks way better in person. Your camera has been committing crimes against you.”

There were questions he wanted to ask immediately, but he resisted turning her first meal with him home into an interrogation about technique. Instead, Ben reached for another strawberry and stole a cracker from her plate with the shameless confidence of somebody who technically lived here. “You said you photographed the three that sold, right?” His attention remained on the painting for another moment before returning to her. “I want those later. And I want to know which one you almost kept, because that part interests me more than whatever tasteful explanation you gave the buyer.” He took the cracker before permission could become relevant and added, “Also, your threat to revoke bragging privileges has been reviewed and rejected.”

He was halfway through the sandwich when his attention drifted downward again. It happened differently now than it had in the entryway, without that first startled realization; his eyes simply caught the small change in her silhouette where she sat beside him, and his expression softened before he could interfere with it. Four months had been information while he was away. Weeks on a calendar, appointment updates, pictures, questions asked over the phone from rooms thousands of miles from this one. Here, it was Cleo beside him on their couch, her body subtly different from the one he'd kissed goodbye a month earlier.

Ben set his plate down and rested his forearm along the back of the couch behind her instead of immediately reaching for her stomach again. His fingers found one of the loose strands of hair near her shoulder and absently caught it between them, his gaze still tracing the changes he was learning in person. “It's not weird,” he said eventually, returning to something she'd told him earlier. “I mean, it is. But not bad weird.” His mouth tilted as he searched for a description that didn't sound ridiculous. “It's more like I missed a few episodes and everybody else knows what happened.”

That was closer. He had known every important thing, but knowing wasn't the same as witnessing the incremental details. Ben had been told when the nausea eased and when it returned, had heard about appointments and symptoms and the increasingly bizarre politics governing acceptable smells, but he hadn't been there for the mornings when a waistband suddenly fit differently or the first time Cleo noticed a change in the mirror. He wasn't jealous of the time exactly. He just felt its absence more clearly now that he could see what it had done.

His fingers slipped from her hair to the back of her neck, thumb brushing once beneath it. “Boring appointments are my favorite kind,” he said, and there was no joke in that part. “You can give me four more months of doctors saying, ‘Yep, everything's normal,’ and I'll be thrilled every single time.” Then his expression shifted as the earlier accusation against him resurfaced in his mind. “And I stand by the yogurt example. Maybe not factually, but spiritually. You know what you've done.”

Ben's sandwich disappeared faster than he intended. He stared at the empty half of his plate with faint disappointment before finishing the fruit, then set everything on the coffee table and settled back without making any immediate effort to clear it. There would be dishes later. Right now, Cleo was warm against his side, the apartment was quiet, and his phone was blessedly absent enough that he couldn't even remember whether he'd left it in the bedroom or buried it in the clothes he'd changed out of. For somebody whose previous month had been dictated down to call times and departure minutes, not knowing where his phone was felt almost decadent.

He shifted until his arm could settle comfortably behind her shoulders, fingers resting loosely against her upper arm. The position brought her closer without arranging her anywhere, and Ben tipped his head against the couch as he looked across the room. “You know what I missed that nobody tells you you're gonna miss?” he asked. “Being bored with you.” A laugh slipped into his voice because it sounded terrible when phrased that way. “Not by you. Important distinction. I mean this. Sitting here with nowhere we're supposed to be.”

Tour was full of experiences worth remembering. There were nights he'd walked offstage vibrating with enough adrenaline that sleep seemed impossible, cities he'd barely had time to understand before leaving them, crowds whose noise seemed to stay inside his body hours afterward. He loved it. That was precisely why the contrast surprised him sometimes; loving that life had never prevented him from craving one that operated at a completely different volume. He could want thousands of people singing back at him one night and still spend the next week fantasizing about Cleo stealing half a blanket on this couch.

“I have stories, by the way,” he said, turning toward her with sudden purpose. “Nothing important enough that I was gonna waste our calls telling you, but now you're trapped.” The grin that followed was unmistakably pleased with this arrangement. “There was a hotel shower in Buenos Aires that only had two settings: glacier and lawsuit. I need you to understand that I spent twenty minutes trying to find a temperature between them and eventually accepted that the hotel wanted me dead.”

That led naturally into another memory, and Ben found himself laughing before he finished explaining it: a backstage translation mishap, a missing shoe that had somehow ended up in somebody else's equipment case, an argument over snacks that had become disproportionately serious at two in the morning. They were stupid stories, exactly the kind distance edited out because phone calls had always felt too precious to spend on nothing. Telling them now felt strangely intimate. He could stop halfway through one to steal another cracker, lose his train of thought because something on the television caught his peripheral vision, circle back three minutes later, and none of it had to fit inside the remaining battery percentage or a schedule.

Somewhere in the middle of it, his hand ended up loosely linked with hers between them. Ben didn't remember reaching for it. He only noticed when his thumb moved across her knuckles and found the faint trace of paint still clinging near one finger. He turned her hand over with quiet curiosity, examining the stubborn mark before looking toward the streak he'd made worse on her cheek earlier. “I did improve that, by the way,” he said. “Artistically. You were working with one paint smear, which was predictable. I introduced movement.”

The defense was indefensible and he knew it. His grin gave him away before he had finished speaking, and Ben lifted their joined hands to press an absent kiss against her knuckles. The gesture lingered for only a second before he lowered them again, affection moving easily rather than gathering into another grand declaration. That was what he had missed most, he thought—not necessarily kissing her or holding her, although God knew he'd missed those too, but the ability to touch her without the moment needing to mean anything because she was simply there.

His gaze eventually wandered back toward her middle, and this time Ben smiled to himself before reaching over. His palm rested lightly against the small curve for a few seconds, familiarizing himself with it rather than marveling at it. “I'm gonna have to update my mental picture,” he murmured. “I've apparently been walking around South America imagining an outdated Cleo.” He glanced up, amusement brightening his expression. “Very embarrassing for me. Bad boyfriend behavior.”

He left his hand there only briefly before letting it travel back to her side. There would be plenty of opportunities over the next few days to indulge the fascination without treating her stomach like a newly discovered landmark. Cleo was still Cleo, after all, and Ben had missed all of her—the sarcasm, the paintings, the way she could dismantle one of his arguments with a look before bothering to use words. Pregnancy had added something enormous to their lives without erasing the relationship that had existed first, and he didn't want his excitement about the baby to accidentally make her feel as though every interaction now had to orbit it.

“Also,” he said, remembering another matter requiring immediate investigation, “I want your month.” His fingers traced idly along her arm. “Not the stuff I already know. I know about appointments. I know about the paintings. I know your sister has apparently appointed herself Secretary of Keeping Cleo Busy.” His smile widened. “Give me the useless stuff. What did I miss that wasn't worth texting?”

That was the information distance never preserved. The weird person in line at the grocery store. Something her sister had said over lunch. A show Cleo had started and decided she hated. Whatever tiny domestic disaster had occurred and been fixed before Ben even knew about it. Those were the pieces of sharing a home that disappeared first when somebody left, and Ben found he wanted them with almost embarrassing intensity.

He tucked one foot beneath the opposite leg and turned a little more toward her, settling in rather than sprawling dramatically across the cushions. The travel fatigue had become background noise now—present in the heaviness of his limbs, but no longer important enough to command his attention. His mind felt awake, sharpened by food and the shower and the pleasure of finally being somewhere he wanted to remain. Sleep belonged to later, when it meant climbing into their bed together rather than surrendering part of an afternoon he'd only just gotten back.

A quiet beat passed while his eyes moved over her face. Ben had spent so much of the flight picturing the reunion that he'd never thought much beyond it; in his head, getting through the door had been the finish line. He hadn't imagined grilled cheese or damp hair or the unfinished painting across the room. He hadn't pictured Cleo four months pregnant beside him while he complained about hotel plumbing. Somehow those smaller things were better than anything he'd invented at thirty thousand feet.

“I'm glad you didn't stop,” he said eventually, gaze flicking toward the easel before returning to her. The thought had been sitting with him since she'd told him how full her month had been. “Painting, seeing your sister, doing your stuff. All of it.” His fingers tightened gently around hers. “I don't want you waiting around for me to show back up before your life starts again.”

The words weren't solemn, but he meant them. There was relief in knowing that while he'd been performing and traveling, Cleo had been making things, selling them, seeing people she loved, growing their baby, inhabiting days that were valuable even without him inside them. Ben wanted to be missed; he wasn't evolved enough to pretend otherwise. But he wanted to return to a woman with stories to tell him far more than he wanted proof that she'd spent a month counting down.

His mouth curved as another thought followed. “Although I do reserve the right to be extremely pleased that you're happy I'm back.” He leaned over and kissed her temple, then remained close enough that his cheek brushed her hair when he settled again. “Healthy independence is beautiful. So is being adored. I'm trying to support both.”

The afternoon light had shifted while they talked, warming the room differently than when he'd first walked in. Ben noticed it mostly because it caught the edge of the unfinished canvas, revealing texture he hadn't seen before, and he nodded toward it again. “Tell me about that,” he said. “Start wherever you want. I wanna know what I'm looking at before you show me the finished ones.” His attention returned to Cleo rather than the painting itself, because watching her explain something she cared about had always interested him almost as much as the thing.

He settled farther into the couch as he waited, shoulder comfortably against hers, their hands still loosely connected. There was food left on the table, dishes they would eventually deal with, a duffel still sitting somewhere near the front door and three days worth of clothes waiting to migrate into the apartment. None of it required attention yet. For now, Ben was clean, fed, home, and close enough to Cleo that he could feel the warmth of her beside him while she talked, which seemed like more than enough occupation for one evening.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo followed his glance toward the easel, and for a second she considered actually answering the question he had asked. She could have told him about the piece, about the afternoon she’d started it and the idea that had changed halfway through, about the section near the bottom she’d painted over three separate times because nothing had looked right. Instead, she found herself watching Ben settle farther into the couch with his damp hair and clean clothes, listening to him ask for all the pieces of her month he’d missed as though there were nothing in the world he’d rather hear. The painting suddenly seemed capable of waiting another five minutes. She shifted closer until her thigh rested fully against his and brought their joined hands into her lap. “You know what’s funny? I thought I was going to have so much to tell you when you came home. I’ve been mentally collecting things for a month, and now you’re actually sitting here and apparently my brain has decided none of them exist.”

She smiled and looked down at their hands, rubbing her thumb slowly over his before the memories began finding their way back in without being summoned. There had been plenty of useless things. Her sister had come over one afternoon with groceries and somehow stayed until nearly midnight because they’d started watching a terrible reality show neither of them liked enough to justify six consecutive episodes. Cleo had bought a plant for the kitchen windowsill and spent two weeks convinced she was killing it before discovering she’d simply been watering it too much. One morning she’d cried because the coffee shop had stopped carrying the pastry she’d wanted, which she still maintained had been a perfectly rational response under the circumstances. “Oh, and I reorganized the bathroom cabinet at two in the morning last week,” she remembered, turning toward him with complete seriousness. “I couldn’t sleep, and suddenly the fact that cold medicine was sharing a shelf with skincare became completely unacceptable. So if you can’t find anything anymore, that’s why. Everything has a system now. I don’t know what the system is, but there is one.”

Her smile widened as she watched him, enjoying the luxury of telling him something that absolutely did not matter. Those were exactly the stories their calls had lost. Whenever Ben had found an hour between soundcheck and a show or she’d caught him before bed, there had always been something more important to fit into it. How she felt. How the appointment went. How his show had gone. Whether he’d eaten. Whether she was sleeping. The little things had seemed too insignificant for limited time, and Cleo hadn’t realized how much she’d missed saying them until now. “I also started that crime show you told me I’d like. You were wrong. I made it through two episodes, hated everybody, and quit.” She nudged his leg with hers before he could defend himself. “And before you say I didn’t give it enough time, two hours is an enormous investment in people I actively wanted arrested by the end of episode one.”

The month had contained quieter things too, days when she had deliberately made herself leave the apartment even when staying home would have been easier. She had gone to lunch with her sister, wandered through galleries without any particular purpose, spent too much money in an art-supply store because she’d convinced herself three slightly different shades were essential, and taken herself to breakfast after one of her appointments rather than coming straight home to an empty apartment. None of it had been extraordinary, but that had been the point. She had wanted to prove to herself that missing Ben did not require suspending her own life until his returned to intersect with it. “I’ve actually gotten pretty good at being alone again,” she admitted, turning their hands over so his rested inside hers. “Not lonely. That’s different. I missed you constantly, but I stopped treating missing you like something I needed to fix every minute. Sometimes I just missed you and went grocery shopping anyway.” Her expression softened as she looked at him. “Which doesn’t sound impressive until you know how spectacularly bad I used to be at letting those two things exist at the same time.”

She knew he understood what she meant without requiring the history to be unpacked again. There had been a version of Cleo who experienced Ben leaving as something closer to abandonment even when she rationally knew it wasn’t. Distance had made everything louder then. Every missed call became evidence, every changed plan felt personal, and every reunion came with an expiration date she could already see stamped across it. This time had been different. Not painless, certainly, and there had been nights she’d wanted him badly enough that sleeping alone had made her angry at the entire concept of touring, but she hadn’t spent the month waiting for their relationship to become unstable simply because he was somewhere else. “I think this is the first time you’ve been gone this long where I didn’t spend part of it waiting for something between us to go wrong,” she said after a moment. “I missed you. I worried about you. I had days when I wanted to call and tell you to get on a plane immediately because I was tired and hormonal and irrationally offended that you weren’t here. But I never wondered whether we were okay.”

The distinction mattered enough that Cleo went quiet for a few seconds after saying it. Six months ago, she wasn’t sure she could have imagined that kind of security existing between them. Now it had become quiet enough that she sometimes forgot how hard they’d fought to reach it. She leaned her head against his shoulder and looked toward the unfinished canvas. “So yes, I kept painting. Partly because I love it, and partly because if I’d spent a month staring at your tour schedule, you would’ve come home to someone absolutely unbearable.” Her fingers tightened gently around his. “And I like having things to tell you. I like that you can go away and live this huge, ridiculous life and come back, and I’ve lived mine too. Then we sit here and trade them.”

Her attention finally returned to the canvas when he asked about it again. From the couch, Cleo could see all the places where the piece remained unresolved, but she could also see enough of what it was becoming that the instinct to criticize it had begun loosening. “That one started because I couldn’t sleep after you left,” she explained, nodding toward it. “Not the first night. Maybe four or five days later. I kept thinking about airports, which is extremely on brand for us and also deeply annoying, so I refused to paint an airport.” Her mouth curved as she shifted against him. “It’s supposed to be about the feeling right after somebody leaves. Not the dramatic part. Not crying at the gate or watching the plane take off. The weird quiet afterward, when you come home and everything looks exactly the same, but one person isn’t in it.”

She lifted her free hand toward the canvas, indicating the broad unfinished section without getting up. “That’s why that side is emptier. I kept trying to fill it, and every time I did, it stopped feeling right. Then I realized the empty space was basically the entire point.” Cleo glanced at him, almost sheepish now that she was explaining something she’d made directly from missing him. “Which is embarrassingly sentimental, so you’re forbidden from becoming smug about inspiring art while abroad. I have a reputation.”

Her gaze moved back to the painting, and she rested more fully against him. She had spent enough hours with the canvas that she knew every layer beneath the visible one, every color she’d changed, every mark she’d scraped away and rebuilt. The fact that somebody else might eventually buy it still felt strange. Selling the other three had been exhilarating, but each departure had carried a tiny grief she hadn’t anticipated, especially with the one she’d nearly kept. “The one I almost didn’t sell wasn’t this one,” she added, remembering his earlier question. “I’ll show you the picture. It was the smaller blue one I was working on when we talked that night you were in Santiago. I never showed you because I hated it then.” She gave him a look before he could comment. “And then I fixed it, so don’t start. Apparently somebody else liked it enough to pay actual money for it, which remains suspicious.”

She reached for her water and took a drink before settling back against him, her hand finding his again almost automatically. Ben had asked for the useless pieces of the month, but sitting beside him now made her realize none of them felt useless anymore. They were simply the parts of her life he hadn’t been standing beside her to witness, and telling him about them closed some tiny distance the flight itself hadn’t. “There were hard days too,” she admitted, quieter now. “Nothing scary. Just pregnancy days. Tired days. A couple mornings where I wanted you here so badly that I got mad at you for having a job you’ve had since before we got back together, which was very mature of me.” Her mouth twitched. “I didn’t call and pick a fight, though. Personal growth.”

Cleo lifted her head from his shoulder then, studying him with an expression that softened as soon as she caught the exhaustion still lingering around his eyes. She brought their joined hands up and kissed his knuckles, mirroring the absent affection he’d given her earlier. “But I did miss being bored with you,” she admitted. “I missed telling you things that don’t deserve a phone call. I missed sitting beside you without knowing somebody was going to knock on your hotel door in ten minutes because you had somewhere else to be. I missed touching you while I’m talking instead of looking at your face on a screen.” She lowered their hands but didn’t release him, leaning back into his side as naturally as if the month between them had collapsed into nothing. “And I really, really missed stealing food off your plate, which is unfortunate because you already inhaled everything.”

Her eyes dropped pointedly toward his empty plate before she reached across and stole the last strawberry from her own instead, biting into it with a little smile. “So that’s my month. I painted. I sold things. I spent an unreasonable amount of time with my sister. I reorganized cabinets nobody asked me to reorganize. I grew your baby a little more.” Her hand drifted briefly over the small curve of her stomach before returning to his. “And I missed you without falling apart about missing you. Which might actually be the thing I’m proudest of.”

She let that truth settle without turning it into anything heavier. The month had not proved she needed him less. If anything, seeing him here had made the depth of her attachment painfully obvious. It had simply proved that loving Ben no longer required Cleo to live frightened of the parts of his life she couldn’t control. He could leave. She could miss him. Her own days could continue. And eventually, whether after a month or seventy-two hours or some future stretch neither of them had encountered yet, he could open the door and come home.

Cleo looked at him for another moment before her expression brightened again. “Now you have two choices,” she said, settling her feet beneath the blanket and drawing it farther across both of them. “I can get my phone and show you the three paintings you missed, or you can put your head in my lap and pretend you’re not approximately seven minutes from passing out.” She brushed her fingers through the damp hair near his temple, already fairly certain which option his body was going to choose regardless of his opinion. “And before you get stubborn, the paintings will still exist when you wake up. You, on the other hand, currently look like you’re about to start hallucinating another airport.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben listened without interrupting, which became progressively harder once the bathroom cabinet entered the story. He could picture it too easily: Cleo awake at an hour when no reasonable person should be reorganizing anything, suddenly developing strong opinions about the moral incompatibility of cold medicine and skincare. His mouth pulled sideways as he looked toward the hallway, mentally reviewing the cabinet he'd used twenty minutes earlier without noticing anything except the location of his toothbrush. “That explains why I opened it and thought I'd suffered some kind of memory loss,” he said. “I found my stuff, so I decided not to investigate. Apparently that was the correct survival instinct.” The plant interested him almost as much, though, and his gaze shifted toward the kitchen as if he might somehow spot the victim from here. “And you didn't kill the plant. That's big. I leave for one month and everybody's thriving.”

The coffee-shop incident got him differently. Ben tried—genuinely tried—to maintain a sympathetic expression, but amusement gathered around his eyes until the effort became pointless. He knew better than to dismiss pregnancy crying after enough phone calls had taught him that Cleo herself could be simultaneously devastated by something and completely aware that the scale of the devastation made no sense. “I'm on your side,” he assured her, already sounding guilty of the opposite. “Discontinuing a pastry without consulting you first was reckless corporate behavior. Frankly, I'm surprised you didn't pursue damages.” His thumb swept slowly over the back of her hand while his grin escaped completely. “Tell me which one. If they have it somewhere else, I'll find it before I leave. I'm not saying I can solve everything, but baked goods are within my jurisdiction.”

The crime show, however, was an attack on his judgment, and Ben's eyebrows rose before she'd even finished condemning it. He opened his mouth, received the preemptive rejection of the defense he had been about to make, and closed it again with an offended little nod. “Wow. Okay.” He shifted enough to face her more directly, their legs still pressed together beneath the blanket. “First of all, they're supposed to be terrible. That's part of the experience. You're watching deeply dysfunctional people make increasingly bad decisions and then judging them from the safety of your couch.” He paused, considered his own argument, and conceded, “Actually, no, two episodes is probably enough. Episode three would've made you hate me personally for recommending it.”

He liked this more than he'd expected to. Not the stories themselves, exactly, although he wanted every one of them; it was the looseness with which they arrived. Nothing had to justify taking up airtime. He could hear about a plant, a pastry, a reorganized cabinet, and a television show she'd abandoned without either of them unconsciously calculating whether there was something more important they ought to discuss first. For a month, their conversations had been intimate but compressed, life distilled into whatever deserved reporting across several thousand miles. Sitting beside her reminded him how much of knowing someone lived below that threshold of importance.

His amusement quieted when the shape of the month changed beneath her words. Ben's thumb stopped moving for a moment against her hand, not because anything she'd said frightened him, but because he understood the significance of it well enough not to smother it beneath reassurance. There had been a time when distance seemed to activate every old fear between them. He remembered conversations where a delayed call carried weight wildly disproportionate to the actual delay, departures that began hurting before he'd packed, both of them trying to distinguish what was happening from what they were afraid might happen. He had learned to be careful around those fractures without treating Cleo as fragile, and she had learned things he knew he couldn't have learned on her behalf.

What she described now felt different in a way Ben could almost physically sense. Not indifference, not some cleaner version of love in which neither of them needed the other very much, but trust sturdy enough to tolerate absence without translating it into danger. She had been alone and hadn't mistaken that for being left. The distinction hit him harder than he expected, and his gaze dropped briefly to their hands before returning to her face. “That's... really fucking good, Cleo,” he said, the roughness in his voice making the simple words carry more than he intended. “Not that you got good at being without me. I'm not endorsing that part too enthusiastically.” A faint smile appeared, but it didn't erase the seriousness underneath. “That you knew we were okay even when it sucked. I knew we were too.”

He hadn't spent the month wondering whether they would survive it either. He had missed her badly, occasionally at ridiculous moments: turning toward an empty side of a hotel bed, seeing something in a shop window she would've liked, finishing a show and wanting her face among the first ones he saw afterward. But missing her had felt like evidence of attachment rather than evidence of instability. There had been no constant need to check the foundation underneath them. Ben hadn't recognized how profound that change was until Cleo gave it language.

Her pride in it made him squeeze her hand once. “You should be proud of that,” he said, and this time he resisted the instinct to joke immediately afterward. He knew the accomplishment wasn't that she'd managed grocery shopping while missing her boyfriend; stripped of history, that sounded almost comically ordinary. The accomplishment was everything she'd had to unlearn before an ordinary thing could remain ordinary. Ben understood enough of the road behind them to know the difference.

When she leaned into him, he shifted instinctively to accommodate her weight, his arm settling more comfortably around her. The idea of them leaving, living separately for a while, then returning with whole lives to exchange had something almost old-fashioned about it that pleased him. “I like that too,” he murmured. “I don't want to come back and find out your only news is that you watched my location move around on a map for four weeks. That would be deeply unsettling.” His mouth brushed lightly against the top of her head before he added, “I like getting to miss things. Not while I'm missing them, obviously. But this part. Finding out what you did when I wasn't here.”

The explanation of the painting pulled his attention fully across the room. Ben went quiet as he studied it again, now seeing intention where he'd previously only seen composition. The emptier side changed once she gave him the idea behind it. He could understand the impulse to keep filling space simply because emptiness looked unfinished, and the realization that removing something could communicate more than adding it struck him as annoyingly clever in precisely the way that made him proud of her.

Then he realized what the painting was actually about.

Ben slowly turned his head toward her. The expression he wore was insufferable for perhaps half a second before he visibly tried to suppress it, pressing his lips together as though physically containing the response might satisfy the prohibition. “I'm not smug,” he said, which would have been considerably more convincing without the smile threatening his mouth. “I'm being extremely normal about the fact that I apparently have a Blue Period now.” He looked back toward the canvas, nodded thoughtfully, and added, “International Muse Era. Very difficult burden, but I'll carry it privately.”

He lasted another second before laughing under his breath. The teasing didn't diminish what the piece did to him, though. If anything, it gave him somewhere to put the feeling. He had spent plenty of nights missing her from the other side of that departure, leaving a city with the knowledge that Cleo was returning to an apartment still containing his things but not him. Seeing that absence translated into something she could work on, fight with, repaint and eventually understand made him want to look at the canvas differently. “I really like it,” he said after the joke had settled. “And I don't mean because it's secretly about me. Although obviously that's helping enormously.”

His interest sharpened when she mentioned Santiago. Ben remembered the call, though not the painting; he could picture the hotel room more easily than he wanted to, the curtains he'd never figured out how to close completely and the light from a building across the street bleeding through them. “The blue one,” he repeated, searching backward through memory for anything she might have accidentally shown him. Nothing came. “You hid an entire painting from me because you hated it?” His brows rose with theatrical betrayal. “This is exactly the kind of information I'm talking about. I've been operating under incomplete intelligence.”

The warning stopped his next comment before it arrived. Ben lifted both hands slightly in surrender, though one remained linked with hers. “I didn't say anything.” His face said several things anyway. “I'm just interested in this mysterious person who paid actual money for something you had apparently sentenced to death. Sounds like excellent judgment on their part.” He settled back again, already impatient to see the photograph but content to let the conversation reach it in its own time.

The harder days brought a different stillness over him. Ben didn't tense or rush to apologize for having been gone; that would have turned her honesty into something she had to manage for him. He listened instead, fingertips moving slowly over her knuckles while she described the exhaustion and the irrational anger that had never become an argument. There was something almost endearing about knowing she'd occasionally resented him in absentia for continuing to possess the career he'd had all along. Not because he wanted her miserable, but because pregnancy had apparently found new and inventive ways to make both of them unreasonable.

“Thank you for not calling me solely to yell at me for employment,” he said solemnly. “I would've taken it, but I appreciate the restraint.” His expression softened before he continued. “You can be mad at me sometimes, though. Even when it's irrational. You don't have to become the world's most emotionally balanced pregnant woman because I'm on tour.” Ben knew there was a line between giving her room for difficult feelings and making himself the designated target for them, but that wasn't what he meant. He simply didn't want growth to become another standard she could fail by having a bad morning.

The kiss against his knuckles quieted whatever else he'd been preparing to say. His fingers curled instinctively around hers afterward, and Ben looked at her with an expression that had lost most of its teasing. Hearing her describe missing touch struck somewhere painfully familiar. He had spent a month wanting exactly this kind of contact—not necessarily anything dramatic, just her thigh against his, fingers intertwined, the ability to turn his head and find her within inches rather than pixels.

Her accusation about his empty plate restored his grin. Ben glanced toward it and then back at her with absolutely no remorse. “You had ample opportunity,” he said. “You knew who I was when you made the sandwich.” He watched the last strawberry disappear with narrowed eyes and added, “And now you're eating the evidence, so I don't think this case is going anywhere.”

But the list she gave him afterward settled differently. Painting. Her sister. Cabinets. Their baby. Missing him without coming undone. Ben listened until the last part, and something warm tightened beneath his ribs. There was no part of him that heard her increased security as decreased love. If anything, the fact that she could stand securely in her own life and still choose to make room for his felt more intimate than dependence ever could.

His gaze dropped briefly when her hand passed over the curve of her stomach. Four months still startled him when he let himself think about it too directly. The baby had grown while Cleo had been learning all these other things about herself, while he had been waking in hotels and going onstage and collecting ridiculous stories to bring home. Their lives hadn't paused for one another, and somehow they were still moving in the same direction.

“Yeah,” he said quietly, looking back at her. “I think you should be proudest of that too.” His thumb brushed once along her hand. “And selfishly, I like this version better. Not the version where you don't miss me. That sounds terrible and I reject it completely.” The familiar crookedness returned to his smile. “The version where I can leave and neither of us has to spend the whole time proving we're still here.”

The blanket shifting over his legs made the couch warmer, and Ben automatically adjusted it near his knee. He saw the choice she was building toward before she finished presenting it, and his expression changed almost immediately at the second option. Not because her lap sounded remotely unpleasant. It sounded dangerously good, actually. But the prediction attached to it earned a skeptical look from a man who had been accused of impending unconsciousness several times since arriving home and had yet to cooperate.

“Absolutely not,” he said, amusement roughening his voice. He turned farther toward her and propped one elbow against the back cushion, alert enough that the case against him was considerably weaker than she seemed to believe. “You keep trying to put me to sleep. It's getting suspicious.” His eyes narrowed playfully. “Did you invite someone over? Is there another boyfriend coming at eight? You need me unconscious before he gets here?”

Ben had slept on the flight. Not well enough to qualify as restorative by any sane standard, but enough that the shower and food had left him comfortable rather than drowsy. There was fatigue in his body, certainly; he could feel it in the pleasant heaviness of his shoulders and the way the couch seemed particularly persuasive beneath him. But his mind was clear, and the last thing he wanted was to close his eyes and skip over an evening he'd spent most of a month wanting.

He reached up and caught the hand near his hair before it could retreat, turning his head to press a kiss into the center of her palm. “I'm not going anywhere,” he murmured, and then seemed to hear the accidental weight of the sentence himself. His mouth tilted before it could become too solemn. “Including unconscious. At least not yet.” He lowered her hand but kept it captured loosely in his, rubbing his thumb over her wrist.

The paintings were tempting, but getting the phone would require movement from at least one of them, and Ben wasn't convinced the evidence needed immediate review. He glanced toward the unfinished canvas again, then toward Cleo, considering his options with exaggerated seriousness. “I choose secret option three.” He shifted until he could slide lower against the cushions, not into her lap but sideways enough that his shoulder tucked more comfortably against her and his head rested against the back of the couch near hers. “Nobody moves. You tell me more things.”

There was an entire month still between the broad strokes she'd already given him. Ben wanted the parts that would only emerge because one story reminded her of another, the things she had forgotten she meant to tell him until some random association dragged them forward. He wanted to hear about the galleries, what she'd bought at the art store, whether her sister had developed any new opinions about him while he'd been safely outside the country. The paintings could come when somebody eventually needed to stand up for another reason.

“And I want details about the two-in-the-morning cabinet incident,” he added. “Specifically what happened immediately before you decided pharmaceutical segregation was the emergency of the hour.” His grin widened as he settled his arm around her again. “Because nobody wakes up and just becomes passionate about shelf zoning. There's a story there.”

Ben tipped his head toward her, close enough now that he could see the tiny remnants of paint he'd failed to remove earlier. He resisted the urge to attempt another cleaning operation. The mark suited the afternoon too well, and there was something he liked about having arrived while she was in the middle of making something rather than after she'd cleaned herself and the room into a version prepared for his return.

His fingers idly traced the outside of her arm as he waited for whatever she would tell him next. No urgency accompanied the silence. He wasn't mentally calculating how much of the evening remained, wasn't thinking about the East Coast, and wasn't trying to cram a month of separation into a single conversation before exhaustion could interfere. Cleo was beside him, the painting waited across the room, and the last traces of daylight still warmed the apartment.

A smile appeared when he remembered one final item requiring correction. “Also, for the record, I do not look seven minutes from hallucinating an airport.” He paused and glanced toward the middle distance with exaggerated concern, as though checking the living room for imaginary departure boards. “Nine, minimum.” His eyes returned to hers, amusement settling comfortably into his expression as he squeezed her hand. “Plenty of time.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo stared at him for a second after the nine-minute correction, her expression caught somewhere between affection and the very specific irritation reserved for a man who had crossed continents, admitted he was exhausted, and was now attempting to litigate exactly how exhausted he was. The problem was that he did look better than when he’d first walked through the door. The shower had put some color back into his face, food had sharpened his eyes, and the longer he sat beside her, the more he seemed to settle into himself instead of looking like somebody whose body had arrived several hours ahead of his brain. She could still see the travel on him, though. She knew him too well not to. It lived in the faint heaviness around his eyes and the way his shoulders sank deeper into the couch whenever he stopped actively remembering to hold himself upright.

“Nine,” she repeated, accepting the amendment with a solemn little nod. “That’s reassuring. I was worried we were running out of time.” Her eyes followed his exaggerated inspection of the living room before she glanced toward the windows as though checking for herself. “No gates. No boarding groups. Nobody demanding your passport. I think we’re safe.” She squeezed his hand and settled more comfortably against him, letting her head find his shoulder again. “And there is no other boyfriend coming at eight. He comes at nine-thirty, so you’ve got loads of time.”

The joke lasted approximately as long as it took her to feel his fingers tighten around hers. Cleo smiled against his shoulder, entirely too pleased with herself, then turned her face enough to press a quick kiss through the cotton of his shirt before relaxing again. She liked him like this. Not exhausted, exactly—she could have done without the airports carved into his face—but loose. Showered and fed and beginning to understand that nobody was going to knock on the door with a schedule. There had been a time when Ben returning from somewhere carried so much emotional pressure that she could barely enjoy the arrival before anticipating the departure. Now his duffel was still abandoned by the door, he had seventy-two hours, and she could waste ten of those minutes making jokes about imaginary boyfriends without feeling as though she’d squandered something precious.

“Fine. Secret option three,” she conceded. “But when you fall asleep halfway through one of my stories, I reserve the right to take a picture and use it against you forever.” She tucked the blanket more securely across their legs, then considered his demand for the circumstances surrounding the cabinet incident. “And you’re going to be disappointed. There was no dramatic inciting event. I woke up because I had to pee, which happens approximately nine thousand times a night now, and then I couldn’t fall asleep again. I went into the bathroom for moisturizer, opened the cabinet, and saw your cold medicine sitting beside my vitamin C serum.”

Even now, remembering it produced a faint wrinkle between her brows. Cleo lifted her head enough to look at him with complete sincerity. “And suddenly it was disgusting to me. Not the medicine itself. The placement. It felt wrong.” She knew how absurd it sounded, which only made her more committed to explaining it properly. “Then I noticed the Band-Aids were mixed in with things that weren’t first aid, and once I’d seen that, obviously I couldn’t unknow it. So I took everything out.” Her mouth twitched. “All of it. At two-fifteen in the morning. I sat on the bathroom floor surrounded by everything we own and created categories.”

She could still picture herself there in pajamas with half the cabinet spread across the tile, becoming increasingly convinced that this was not merely reasonable but necessary. By three, she’d had labeled sections without labels, because actual labels would apparently have been crossing some invisible line into madness she believed she had not already crossed. “Medicine is together. First aid is together. Skincare has its own section. Your stuff is mostly where it was because I knew you’d come home eventually and accuse me of stealing things if you couldn’t find them.” Her voice softened almost imperceptibly around come home eventually, the phrase slipping out without thought because that was exactly how she’d approached the cabinet. His things hadn’t been clutter left behind by somebody absent. They had been things belonging to somebody who was coming back.

Cleo noticed it only after she’d said it, and her eyes moved toward his face for half a second before she smiled. “So technically, I reorganized around you. You’re welcome.” She settled her head back against him and let her fingers play idly with his where they rested between them. “The truly concerning part is that I felt incredible afterward. I got back into bed at three-thirty feeling like I’d accomplished something enormous. I was lying there thinking, yes, this is it. This is adulthood. Everything has a zone.”

Her sister had found considerably less dignity in the story when Cleo told her about it the next day. That memory brought another laugh from her. “My sister came over the next afternoon, opened the cabinet because she wanted ibuprofen, and asked whether I’d joined the military. Then she spent twenty minutes deliberately putting things in the wrong sections because apparently tormenting a pregnant woman is her love language.” Cleo’s eyes narrowed at the remembered offense. “She put toothpaste with first aid. On purpose. I watched her do it.”

That opened the door to everything else Ben had asked for, and once Cleo started, the stories arrived more easily. She told him about the art-supply trip she’d intended to keep under fifty dollars and absolutely had not. She had gone in for replacement brushes and come out with brushes, canvases, two sketchbooks, charcoal she did not need, and three tubes of blue that she insisted were completely different despite her sister holding them beside one another and declaring them identical. “They are different,” Cleo said firmly, already anticipating Ben siding with the prosecution. “One is colder. One has more gray in it. One is deeper. Do not look at me like that. You own guitars that sound identical to every normal person on Earth, so I suggest you choose your next words carefully.”

She told him about breakfast after the doctor’s appointment too, because somehow that had stayed with her more vividly than the appointment itself. She’d gone alone to a little place she’d passed dozens of times and never entered, ordered pancakes because for once her stomach had agreed pancakes were not an act of aggression, and sat by the window for almost an hour. Nobody had needed anything from her. She hadn’t called anyone to fill the silence. She’d sent Ben a picture afterward, but what she hadn’t told him was how strangely proud she’d felt sitting there by herself, one hand occasionally drifting to the barely emerging curve beneath her sweater while she watched people walk past outside.

“That was one of the days I really missed you,” she admitted. “Because the appointment had been good, and normally I would’ve wanted you there afterward so we could talk about everything fifteen times even though the doctor had basically said, ‘Everything looks great, see you next time.’” Her thumb moved slowly across his knuckles. “But I didn’t feel sad sitting there alone. I just kept thinking you’d have liked the pancakes.” A smile touched her mouth. “Which was deeply romantic of me.”

She didn’t tell him every story. There would be tomorrow for that, and the next day, and little pockets of conversation that would open without warning while one of them brushed their teeth or stood in the kitchen. For once, Cleo didn’t feel compelled to empty the entire month onto the couch simply because Ben was available to receive it. That realization itself felt like another quiet measure of how different they had become. She trusted there would be time—not infinite time, not even uninterrupted time, but enough. Enough for forgotten stories to survive until later.

Her gaze wandered toward him while he listened, and she caught the heaviness creeping back into his expression despite all his protests. Cleo didn’t point it out. Winning the argument would only make him fight sleep out of principle, and she had no interest in spending one of their three evenings debating the biological necessity of unconsciousness with somebody who had already crossed several time zones. Instead, she shifted carefully and tucked herself closer beneath his arm, making the couch increasingly comfortable without acknowledging that she was doing it.

“You know,” she said after a moment, “I thought this was going to feel stranger.”

Her voice had changed, not heavier exactly, but quieter. She kept her eyes on their joined hands rather than turning the thought into something that required his full attention. “You coming back after a month. I thought there’d be this adjustment period where we’d have to remember how to share space again.” She rubbed her thumb along the side of his finger. “Like maybe I’d gotten too used to sleeping diagonally or you’d come home and suddenly all my weird little routines would annoy you.”

She smiled faintly. “Instead you walked through the door, dropped your bag in exactly the place I would’ve yelled at you for dropping it a month ago, and within an hour you’re stealing my crackers and criticizing my television decisions.” Cleo tipped her head back enough to look at him, warmth settling openly into her expression. “It doesn’t feel like you’re visiting. That’s what I mean. It feels like you were gone and now you’re home.”

The words were simpler than everything they had once required from one another. Maybe that was why Cleo liked them so much. She didn’t need to explain what home meant anymore or qualify it with the knowledge that another flight waited three days away. Ben could be home while he was here and still leave again. Those truths no longer canceled each other out.

Her eyes dropped briefly toward the subtle curve beneath the blanket, and she smiled when another thought occurred to her. “Although I should warn you, your side of the bed has been partially colonized.” She looked back at him. “There’s a pregnancy pillow involved now. It’s enormous and obnoxious, and I’m emotionally attached to it, so you’re going to have to negotiate your territory directly with the pillow.”

Cleo’s expression grew more serious as though the situation required diplomatic preparation. “I don’t know how much influence you have after a month away. It’s been very supportive during your absence.” Her mouth betrayed her before she could maintain the performance, a smile spreading as she squeezed his hand. “Honestly, it may be the other boyfriend. That would explain everything.”

She laughed softly and rested against him again, content to let the joke dissolve into quiet. The apartment had begun taking on the muted warmth of evening, the unfinished canvas darker now without direct sunlight catching its texture. Dinner plates remained on the coffee table because neither of them had cared enough to move them yet. Ben’s duffel was still by the door. Her brushes were still where she’d abandoned them when she’d heard that first impossible creak and turned around to find him standing there.

A few hours ago, none of this had been part of her day.

Now his hand was wrapped around hers beneath the blanket.

Cleo brought their joined hands closer and rested them against the small curve of her stomach, not ceremoniously, not asking him to marvel at it again. She simply wanted his hand there while they sat together. At four months, she had become increasingly aware of the quiet physical fact of the baby throughout her day, and there was something satisfying about folding Ben back into that awareness now that he was physically here.

“You missed some things,” she murmured, her cheek settling against his shoulder. “And you’re going to miss some more things when you leave again. I think that’s probably just going to be part of this for us sometimes.” There was no accusation in it. A month earlier, perhaps she would have struggled to say it without one. Now her fingers merely threaded more securely through his. “But I don’t think I’m scared of that the way I was.”

She let herself breathe there for a moment, feeling the warmth of him beside her and the familiar rise and fall beneath her cheek. “Because you still know where home is.”

Cleo didn’t wait for him to answer. She pressed another small kiss against his shoulder, then settled back into the position she’d been slowly engineering for the past several minutes, warm beneath the blanket with his arm around her and his hand resting with hers over the beginning of their baby.

“And now,” she murmured, closing her eyes despite being perfectly awake, “tell me another stupid tour story. Nothing profound. I specifically want something useless.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben's expression shifted at the nine-thirty correction with such immediate offense that there was no possibility of pretending the joke had slipped past him. His fingers tightened around hers on instinct, and he turned his head slowly enough to give her the full weight of a look that would have been considerably more threatening if he weren't barefoot, wrapped in a throw blanket, and still faintly pink from the shower. “Nine-thirty,” he repeated. “Good. Great. That's actually perfect.” He nodded toward the front door with grave consideration. “I'll be here. He and I can talk about his scheduling choices.” The performance lasted until he felt the kiss through his shirt, at which point his mouth betrayed him, curling at one corner as he drew her a fraction closer beneath his arm. “Very disrespectful to make the international boyfriend and the local boyfriend overlap, though. Poor management.”

The threat of photographic evidence earned considerably less concern. Ben had been photographed in enough unflattering circumstances over the years that Cleo possessing a picture of him asleep on their couch barely registered as leverage, especially when he had no intention of providing the opportunity yet. “Go ahead,” he said, settling his head more comfortably against the cushion in a way that probably weakened his case. “I'll look peaceful and mysterious. You'll look cruel for exploiting a vulnerable traveler.” He wasn't particularly sleepy, despite the heaviness that came and went behind his eyes whenever he stopped moving; the shower and food had done their jobs, leaving him in that pleasant post-travel state where his muscles were tired but his mind had finally stopped feeling several seconds behind everything around him.

The cabinet story immediately justified his earlier suspicion that there had been more to it. He listened with growing amusement as moisturizer somehow became a full-scale reorganization project, his gaze periodically drifting toward the hallway as though he could see the scene reconstructed on the bathroom floor. By the time Band-Aids entered the crisis, Ben had pressed his lips together to keep from interrupting. It wasn't that the logic made sense. It was that Cleo was explaining it with enough conviction that he could almost understand how two-fifteen in the morning had transformed shelf placement into an emergency requiring immediate intervention.

“Okay, no, I take it back. There absolutely was an inciting event,” he said once there was finally room for him. “The inciting event was you opening a cabinet while pregnant at two in the morning. That's basically the beginning of a psychological thriller.” His thumb moved slowly across hers while he considered the rest. “But I'm impressed you spared my section. I would've come home, opened that thing, and spent twenty minutes accusing myself of putting deodorant somewhere stupid before it occurred to me that another human being lives here.”

Then she mentioned having organized around his eventual return, and the joke waiting behind Ben's teeth quietly disappeared. It was such an ordinary detail that she might as well have told him she'd left his toothbrush where it belonged, but that was exactly why it got him. While he'd been living out of suitcases and moving between rooms that ceased belonging to him the moment he checked out, Cleo had been rearranging their bathroom at an ungodly hour and making decisions that included the assumption of him coming back. His things had a future tense here even when he didn't.

Ben didn't point that out. The impulse to dissect every tender thing between them had faded considerably over time, and this one felt better left intact. He only lifted their joined hands and pressed his mouth briefly against the back of hers before lowering them again. “Thank you for respecting my deodorant's established habitat,” he murmured. “It means a lot to me.”

Her sister's sabotage nearly ruined the tenderness immediately. Ben laughed, head tipping back against the couch as he pictured the deliberate relocation of toothpaste. “No, that's funny. I'm sorry, but that's excellent.” He glanced down at Cleo's narrowed eyes and visibly reconsidered his allegiance. “Terrible. Cruel. Unforgivable.” Another beat passed. “Putting it with first aid was inspired, though.”

The art-store confession put him directly into another trap. Three shades of blue sounded like precisely the kind of thing he could have teased her about for ten minutes if she hadn't produced the guitar comparison before he had the opportunity. Ben froze with his mouth already beginning to form an argument. Slowly, he closed it. His eyes narrowed, first at Cleo and then vaguely toward the room as though searching for legal representation that was not forthcoming.

“That was cheap,” he decided. “Accurate, but cheap.” He shifted his leg beneath the blanket and regarded her with wounded dignity. “Also, guitars don't sound identical. They feel different, they respond differently, the pickups—” He stopped himself, recognizing the hole getting deeper in real time. “I'm hearing it. Never mind.” His fingers squeezed hers once in reluctant concession. “Your blues are different. I support all three blues. I'm sorry I ever doubted them.”

The breakfast story stripped the amusement from his expression much more gradually. Ben remembered the photograph. He remembered where he'd been when it arrived too, although the specifics were fuzzy now—somewhere backstage, his attention split between people moving equipment around him and Cleo's message on his phone. He'd seen pancakes and sunlight and had been glad she was eating after the appointment. He hadn't known about the hour beside the window, or the quiet pride contained inside it, or the fact that she'd been missing him without needing that absence filled immediately.

His thumb slowed against her hand. “I would've liked the pancakes,” he said, because anything more sentimental at first would have risked crowding the memory she was giving him. A faint smile appeared. “Probably would've complained that yours looked better after ordering something completely different, then eaten some of yours anyway.” He pictured her sitting there after receiving good news about their baby, alone without being lonely, and felt something warmer than pride settle through him. “I'm glad you went.”

There was a distinction there he understood more clearly after everything she'd already told him. He wasn't glad because she had demonstrated some ability to survive breakfast without him. He was glad because the day hadn't become lesser simply because he couldn't be part of it. There would be more of those days. His work virtually guaranteed it, and parenthood was not going to politely schedule every meaningful moment around tour dates. He could hate missing pieces without needing Cleo to hate living them.

Her observation about his return drew Ben's attention back from the memory. He looked around the apartment almost involuntarily when she described the adjustment period she'd expected, as though there might be evidence of one hiding somewhere. His duffel was still exactly where he'd dropped it. He had already used the shower without thinking about where anything was, pulled clothes from his drawer, eaten her crackers, and settled into his preferred part of the couch with the entitlement of someone who had been gone for an afternoon rather than a month.

“I'm sure I'll find a routine to ruin,” he said, but his voice had softened. “Give me until tomorrow. I'll put something in the wrong section of the military cabinet and destroy the peace.” His gaze returned to her, lingering when she gave language to the thing he'd felt since walking through the door. Visiting implied carefulness. It implied a bag that stayed packed and toiletries that remained inside it, asking where the glasses were kept, occupying somebody else's space without leaving much evidence behind. Nothing about being here felt temporary in that particular way, even with another flight sitting several days ahead.

Ben leaned his head lightly against hers. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “That's what it feels like to me too.” There wasn't much else he wanted to add. The simplicity was the point.

Then came the pregnancy pillow.

Ben's head lifted. He stared at her as though she had just disclosed a major betrayal deliberately withheld during all previous conversations. “I'm sorry, my side of the bed has what?” His eyebrows climbed higher as the rival acquired increasingly damning qualities: enormous, supportive, emotionally significant. By the time Cleo suggested the pillow might be the mysterious second boyfriend, Ben looked genuinely affronted. “Oh, so he's already sleeping in my bed. That's much worse than nine-thirty.”

He considered this new domestic adversary with the seriousness it deserved. “I'm not negotiating with a pillow,” he informed her. “I live here. I have rights.” A pause followed while practical reality apparently presented itself. His eyes narrowed. “How enormous are we talking? Because if this thing is one of those full-body horseshoe situations, I may need to review the floor plan before making promises.”

The smile broke through before he finished, and Ben shook his head at the absurdity of being jealous of an object designed to make his pregnant girlfriend comfortable. “Fine. It can stay.” He gave the concession grudgingly, then added, “But I'm not thanking it for its service. It knew what it was doing.”

Even while he joked, the existence of the pillow supplied another small piece of the month he'd missed. Cleo's sleep had changed enough to require something new. Her body had made demands and she'd adapted to them while he was elsewhere, just as she had with food and clothes and all the little practical realities that photographs didn't show. Ben didn't feel excluded by it exactly. He simply kept discovering that pregnancy had an everyday texture no appointment update could communicate.

The room grew quieter around them. Evening had begun replacing afternoon at the windows, softening the apartment into warmer shadows, and Ben became aware of how thoroughly he'd settled into the couch only when Cleo moved their hands. He followed without resistance until his palm rested over the small curve beneath the blanket, hers layered with it. This time there was no startled fascination, no need to examine the difference he'd first noticed by the door. His hand simply belonged there for the moment.

Her next words found the part of him that had been deliberately refusing to think too far ahead.

Ben looked down at their hands while she acknowledged what both of them already knew. He was going to miss things. Maybe small things, maybe something one of them wished desperately he'd been present for. There was no honest promise he could make that touring would never cost them moments, and he respected her too much to offer one merely because it would sound reassuring. The reality of his career had existed before the pregnancy; now the stakes attached to absence were simply changing.

His fingers spread slightly beneath hers. He thought of being in some dressing room when Cleo called because something had happened for the first time. He thought about appointments he would make and ones circumstances might force him to miss, about eventually leaving a child at home along with her and discovering an entirely new version of the ache he'd already learned. None of those thoughts made him want his work less. They made him want to become better at the transitions between the two lives until they stopped feeling like separate lives at all.

“I hate that part,” he admitted quietly. “Not you saying it. The fact that it's true.” His thumb moved once over the fabric beneath his palm. “I'm gonna miss stuff. You're gonna have things happen when I'm somewhere stupid with a guitar, and I'm probably going to take it personally even though time itself is not conspiring against me.”

A tired little smile touched his mouth, but he didn't use it to escape the thought. “I don't want to start making promises I can't control just because they sound good. I can't promise I'll catch every single thing.” His eyes lifted from their hands to Cleo. “But you won't have to wonder whether I'm coming back from wherever I am.”

That was something he could give her without pretending their life would become easier than it was. There would be airports and hotel rooms and schedules. There would also be this apartment, his drawer, the absurdly regimented bathroom cabinet, a pregnancy pillow currently occupying disputed territory, and eventually a baby whose existence would make leaving significantly harder than any tour departure had been before. Home didn't erase the movement. It gave the movement somewhere to return from.

The kiss against his shoulder loosened something in his chest. Ben let his cheek settle lightly against the top of her head, breathing out through his nose while her request steered them away from anything profound before either of them could drown in it. “Something useless,” he repeated, considering the category. “Okay. I have an excellent one.”

His hand remained beneath hers over her stomach, but the rest of him shifted slightly as he prepared to tell it. “So, Brazil. Hotel. Maybe two in the morning.” He glanced down at her. “And before you ask why every bad decision apparently happens at two in the morning, I don't have an answer. It's an industry-wide problem.”

The memory already had him smiling. “I get back after the show, and I'm trying to be quiet because the whole floor is basically asleep. I get to my room, put the key card against the door, red light. Try it again. Red light.” Ben lifted his free hand, counting off the escalating indignities with his fingers. “I flip the card over even though I know that's not how technology works. Red light. I wipe it on my shirt like it's an old Nintendo cartridge. Red light.”

He had been tired enough by then that the door's refusal had begun feeling personal. Instead of admitting defeat and going downstairs, Ben had stood in the hallway repeatedly presenting the same key to the same lock as though persistence might eventually shame the electronics into cooperation. “Then I hear somebody moving around inside,” he continued, eyebrows lifting. “And now I'm pissed, because my brain goes straight to, somebody's in my room. Not maybe I have the wrong room. No. Clearly I've uncovered a hotel-based conspiracy at two in the morning.”

Ben's smile widened as the stupidity of what came next returned to him. “So I knock. Very authoritative. Like I'm about to reclaim property.” He demonstrated two firm knocks against the couch cushion with his knuckles. “Nothing happens for a second, and then this guy opens the door wearing pajama pants, one sock, and the most terrified expression I've ever seen on another human being.”

There had been a beat in which Ben stared at the stranger and the stranger stared back. Behind him was a room that looked almost exactly like Ben's because hotels were designed specifically to make this kind of humiliation possible. Ben had even looked past the man at the bed, convinced for one catastrophic second that he was somehow still correct. “And I go, ‘I think you're in my room.’” He closed his eyes briefly now, visibly pained by his past self. “Cleo, I said it with confidence. That's the worst part. Full confidence.”

The stranger had blinked at him, looked down the hallway, then very cautiously pointed at the number beside the door. Ben's room was one floor above.

“I wasn't even on the right floor,” he admitted, laughing now. “Not the wrong room. Wrong floor. I'd gotten off the elevator, walked the exact route I always walked, and apparently my brain just decided geography was optional.” He shook his head. “And this poor guy doesn't get angry. That would've been easier. He just looks at me and goes, ‘Long night?’”

Ben had been forced to stand there and accept the kindness of a stranger whose hotel room he'd nearly attempted to repossess. “So I apologize about six times, tell him I'm an idiot, and start walking away.” His shoulders moved with another quiet laugh. “Then I get back in the elevator and stare at the floor for the entire ride up like the security cameras can feel disappointment.”

The story was precisely as useless as requested. No revelation about tour, no emotional significance, nothing Cleo needed to know about the month they'd spent apart. It was simply something ridiculous that had happened to him in a hotel hallway thousands of miles away, saved accidentally until he could tell her from their couch.

Ben turned his face enough to press a kiss into her hair. “There,” he murmured, satisfaction warm in his voice. “No meaning whatsoever.” His fingers shifted beneath hers over the small curve of her stomach, comfortable and unhurried. “I've got at least thirty more.”

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo’s laugh came out muffled against him somewhere around the revelation that he had confidently accused an innocent man of occupying his hotel room while standing on the wrong floor. She had tried to hold it together through the key card, failed somewhere around the Nintendo-cartridge technique, and completely lost whatever sympathy remained when Ben reenacted the authoritative knock. By the time he reached the poor stranger’s painfully polite long night?, her forehead had dropped against his shoulder and her body shook with the kind of laughter that made her stomach ache. “Oh my God,” she managed, lifting her head enough to look at him. “You traumatized that man. He was probably lying in bed afterward wondering if the weird American was going to come back with hotel security and continue claiming his room.” She squeezed his hand where it still rested beneath hers over her stomach, her smile widening when she imagined Ben’s miserable elevator ride afterward. “And I know exactly what your face looked like when those doors closed. You absolutely stood there replaying every decision that brought you to that moment.”

Thirty more stories sounded perfect, though. Cleo could have stayed on the couch and listened to every single one of them, but the longer she sat there tucked against him, the more aware she became of how much she wanted something she hadn’t been able to have for the last month. Not a phone propped against a pillow. Not his voice coming through a speaker while she curled up alone. Him. Warm and solid and physically here, close enough that she could put her face against his chest and hear him without electronics translating the sound first. Her gaze wandered toward the hallway before returning to him, and a small smile pulled at her mouth. “Come on,” she murmured, shifting beneath the blanket. “Let’s move to bed. I’ll show you your replacement.”

She climbed out first, immediately missing his warmth when the cooler apartment air reached her, and held out a hand as though Ben required assistance getting off a perfectly ordinary couch. “Come meet the man who’s been sleeping on your side.” Her expression remained solemn for approximately two seconds before she laughed and started toward the bedroom, keeping his hand in hers once he stood. She didn’t hurry. There was something quietly satisfying about walking down the hallway with him behind her again, hearing another set of footsteps in the apartment after a month of knowing exactly which sounds belonged to her because there had been nobody else there to make them. She pushed the bedroom door open wider and gestured toward the bed with exaggerated ceremony. “There. Your competition.”

The pregnancy pillow was every bit as obnoxiously large as she had made it sound, curved across the mattress in a configuration that had been genuinely useful when she slept alone and suddenly looked faintly ridiculous now that Ben was standing there to witness it. Cleo climbed onto the mattress on her knees, grabbed the thing with both hands, and gave it one considering look. “You know what?” Whatever demonstration she had planned lasted no longer than that. She wrestled it toward the edge of the mattress instead, shoving until the bulky pillow tipped over and landed on the floor with a soft, undignified thump. “Never mind. You’re home. He’s been demoted.”

She turned back toward Ben with an expression of complete satisfaction and pulled the covers down. “Get in.” There was no complicated arrangement after that, no careful recreation of the sleeping position she had developed while he was gone. Cleo settled onto her side and waited only until Ben was beside her before closing the remaining space herself. Her leg slipped between his beneath the covers, one arm crossed his middle, and she tucked herself against his chest until her cheek found the familiar place beneath his shoulder. The little curve of her stomach changed the fit by a fraction, enough that she noticed it even if she doubted anyone else would have, but she adjusted without thinking and relaxed when his body accommodated hers just as naturally. This was what she had wanted. Not support engineered into a giant pillow. Ben’s arm around her, his warmth collecting beneath the blankets, his breathing under her ear, the familiar shape of him filling the side of the bed that had felt conspicuously oversized without him.

“There,” she murmured, already sounding pleased with herself. Her fingers flattened against his shirt and then began tracing idle little patterns over his chest. “Much better. Don’t get smug. The pillow is still technically better for my hips.” She tipped her chin enough to look up at him, fighting a smile. “But it doesn’t have arms, so you’re currently winning.” She let herself look at him for another second before settling down again, and the simplicity of it nearly overwhelmed her more than the surprise at the front door had. She had missed this with an almost embarrassing physical specificity. She had missed putting a cold foot against his leg and having somewhere to tuck her hand when she didn’t know what to do with it. She had missed his chest beneath her cheek. She had missed being able to say something without first checking whether the connection had frozen.

His promise of thirty useless stories reminded her that she owed him some of her own. Cleo stayed quiet for a moment while she sorted through the month, her fingertips continuing their lazy movement over his shirt until one memory surfaced strongly enough to make her smile before she had even decided to tell it. “Okay, I have another one,” she said. “And I cannot believe I forgot this because Jax almost died on the beach.” She felt Ben’s attention shift and immediately corrected herself. “Not literally. Obviously. Although according to Jax, yes, literally. He suffered terribly.”

She moved slightly higher against the pillows so she could see Ben while she talked, but she kept one leg tangled with his and made no attempt to surrender the arm around his middle. “So my sister had that beach shoot a couple weeks ago, and I went because she asked if I wanted to get out of the apartment for the afternoon. Which sounded great in theory. Beach, sunshine, fresh air, I bring a book, she does her thing, everybody wins.” Cleo’s mouth began twitching again. “Jax came too, which should have been my first warning that I was not going to spend a peaceful afternoon reading.”

She could see the whole afternoon again now: her sister moving through poses and outfit changes as though standing barefoot in sand while somebody photographed her was the most natural occupation in the world, Cleo safely outside the production with her shoes kicked off and absolutely no intention of becoming useful, and Jax beginning the afternoon with similar ambitions. “For maybe the first twenty minutes, Jax and I were basically just the support staff nobody hired. We carried things. We guarded a bag. I held her phone while she changed something. Jax was holding this giant iced coffee that was apparently his only emotional support for the day.” Cleo paused, already laughing. “Then she decides she needs one of those candid walking shots along the water, except obviously a candid walking shot requires approximately seventeen extremely specific instructions.”

Her fingers curled lightly into Ben’s shirt as the memory improved. “She tells Jax to walk behind her because she wants movement in the background, but she doesn’t want him looking at the camera. Fine. Easy. A grown man can walk down a beach. Except she keeps telling him he’s walking wrong.” Cleo lifted her head, adopting her sister’s increasingly frustrated cadence. “‘Slower. No, not that slow. Jax, why are your arms doing that? Stop looking like you know you’re being photographed.’ And Jax finally goes, ‘I do know I’m being photographed. There is a camera six feet from my face.’”

That had been the beginning of the collapse. Cleo had been sitting farther up the sand trying not to laugh loudly enough to ruin the shot while her sister reset them yet again. “So then she tells him to just act natural, which is the worst possible instruction you can give anybody because the second someone tells you to act natural, you forget how your entire body works. Jax suddenly could not walk. I have known that man long enough to personally verify that he learned how years ago, but apparently not under observation.” Her shoulders shook with another laugh. “He started doing this weird model stride because he thought that looked more normal, and she just stared at him. Didn’t even say anything. Just stared.”

Cleo had been useless by then. Completely useless. She had abandoned her book, pulled her sunglasses down so she could watch properly, and offered absolutely no assistance while Jax’s dignity disintegrated thirty feet away. “Then he gets annoyed and says he’s done being background talent, so he comes over to sit with me. Except he’s looking at her instead of where he’s going, because they’re still arguing, and he steps directly into this little hole somebody dug in the sand.” Cleo stopped because she was already laughing too hard to finish properly, burying her face briefly against Ben’s chest before forcing herself through it. “His whole ankle disappears. His iced coffee goes flying. He doesn’t fall all the way down, but he does that horrible thing where your entire body jerks sideways and you know everybody saw it.”

She lifted her head again, eyes bright with remembered amusement. “And my sister—your girlfriend has nearly broken his ankle, his coffee is dead, his dignity is gone—and do you know what she does?” Cleo waited barely a beat. “She looks at the photographer and goes, ‘Did you get that?’” Another laugh escaped before she could stop it. “Jax just stood there staring at her like he had discovered something fundamentally disturbing about the woman he loves.”

The photograph had, naturally, been excellent. That was the worst part. Her sister had shown it to them afterward: Jax caught halfway through disaster in the background, her own expression turned toward him in genuine surprise, the whole thing possessing exactly the spontaneous energy they had spent nearly half an hour unsuccessfully manufacturing. “And she posted it,” Cleo added, because that detail mattered. “Not the one where everybody behaved. The one where Jax is actively losing a fight with the earth.” Her grin widened. “She cropped it enough that you can’t really tell what happened unless you know, but we know. Jax knows. I think about it every time I see the post.”

Cleo relaxed against Ben again once the story was finished, still smiling into his shirt. The memory had seemed stupid at the time, one ridiculous afternoon among several she had used to keep herself occupied while he was gone, but telling him now gave it another life. That was becoming her favorite part of having him home. The month didn’t feel like a blank space they needed to bridge anymore. It was simply full of stories they hadn’t exchanged yet.

Her hand slid from the center of his chest around his side, pulling herself that tiny bit closer even though there was almost nowhere left to go. “So,” she murmured, pressing a soft kiss through his shirt before resting her cheek there again, “while you were terrorizing innocent hotel guests in Brazil, Jax was being defeated by a hole in the sand in California.” She smiled against him, eyes drifting closed now that she was warm and settled completely into the shape of his body. “I think we both had productive months.”

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben had barely recovered from the image of the hotel stranger when Cleo's laughter started shaking against him, and whatever dignity he might have tried to reclaim disappeared with it. He could feel every suppressed breath and failed attempt at composure where she was folded into his side, which only made him start laughing again despite being the victim of the story. “I did not traumatize him,” he said, immediately sounding like a man defending himself against overwhelming evidence. “He was fine. Confused, probably. Concerned for me personally, definitely. But fine.” The accusation about the elevator earned a reluctant grimace because she had him there. He had, in fact, spent that ride reconstructing the entire sequence from the moment he stepped onto the wrong floor as though identifying the precise point of failure might somehow make it less humiliating.

His protest softened when the conversation shifted away from the couch. The suggestion caught him by surprise only because he had settled so thoroughly into the cushions that moving had stopped occurring to him as an available activity. Still, the promise of seeing the infamous pillow was enough to make him glance toward the hallway with renewed suspicion, and by the time he stood, his body was awake enough to cooperate without complaint. He let himself be pulled along, amused by the ridiculous ceremony of the whole thing and by how quickly something as simple as walking through the apartment behind Cleo could feel deeply familiar again.

The bedroom hit him differently from the living room. Nothing about it had changed enough to be startling, but after a month of hotel beds and temporary rooms arranged by strangers, seeing his own side of this one produced a small internal shift he hadn't expected. The lamp, the familiar scatter of her things, the particular way the blankets sat when nobody had bothered making the bed for presentation—all of it had the accumulated disorder of real life rather than hospitality. Then his eyes landed on the pillow occupying an unreasonable percentage of the mattress.

Ben stopped in the doorway and stared at it. “Oh, that's obscene,” he said, taking in the full curved bulk of it with narrowed eyes. “You undersold this thing.” Whatever joking hostility he'd prepared turned briefly analytical as he tried to determine how Cleo had even fit around it at night. “That's not a pillow. That's infrastructure.” The sight of it made the month suddenly tangible again in a domestic way he hadn't been prepared for: this enormous object had been sleeping beside her while he'd been somewhere else, filling space he usually occupied because her body had needed something different from sleep.

When the pillow was abruptly displaced, Ben's eyebrows lifted. He looked from the fallen rival to the newly available side of the bed with open satisfaction. “That was easier than expected,” he said. “I thought there'd be mediation.” His gaze dropped once more toward the pillow on the floor, and he added, “Good run, man. Respectfully, stay down.”

Getting into bed felt less like changing locations and more like slipping back into a habit his body had never forgotten. The mattress dipped beneath him, the sheets smelled familiar, and before he'd fully settled, Cleo had filled the space against him so completely that the entire month seemed to compress into the few inches between one breath and the next. Ben's arm went around her without conscious thought, hand settling along her back while one leg shifted automatically to accommodate hers. There was a slight difference to the way their bodies met now, a subtle new curve between them that required almost no adjustment but registered anyway.

That tiny change got him more than the obvious ones ever seemed to. He had expected photographs, appointments, dates on a calendar. He hadn't expected the fractional reconfiguration of an embrace. Ben felt it, adapted around it, and then found himself smiling faintly into her hair because apparently pregnancy could announce itself through geometry.

The pillow comparison brought his attention back down. “Currently winning?” he repeated, offended all over again. His hand slid once along her side before settling comfortably at her waist. “That's insulting. I crossed an ocean and got compared to foam.” He paused, considering the criteria with mock seriousness. “Arms should be worth a significant number of points. Also body heat. Conversation. Emotional range.” Another beat passed. “That thing doesn't even have a passport.”

The joke lingered, but beneath it Ben understood exactly why being here felt better than any call had. He had gotten good at accepting the artificial intimacy of touring—phones balanced against lamps, screens cutting off half a body, voices arriving a fraction late when the connection was bad. It worked because it had to. It let him see her face at the end of a night and hear about appointments and paintings and whether she had eaten. But none of it recreated the thoughtless physical knowledge of this: knowing how much pressure to put behind his arm when she tucked closer, where her knee usually landed, how her breathing changed once she got comfortable.

By the time she started another story, Ben was fully settled and listening. The opening nearly undid him immediately. His brows shot upward at the suggestion that Jax had nearly died, then lowered again as the exaggeration revealed itself. “That's a strong opening,” he murmured. “Very responsible use of language.” He could hear in Cleo's tone that whatever followed had been ridiculous rather than dangerous, which made it easy to relax back into the pillow and let the story build.

The more she described the shoot, the clearer the scene became. Ben could picture the whole thing with unsettling accuracy: Cleo off to the side claiming neutrality, her sister working while simultaneously managing everyone within a twenty-foot radius, and Jax somehow getting conscripted into a job he hadn't agreed to perform. The iced coffee detail made Ben smile before anything had even gone wrong because it sounded exactly like the kind of prop fate would eventually weaponize.

By the time the instructions about walking began, Ben was already losing it. The idea of someone being told they were moving their arms incorrectly while performing one of the most basic human activities struck him as impossibly funny, especially because he understood the phenomenon immediately. “No, that's real,” he said, voice muffled slightly as laughter started getting in the way. “The second somebody tells you to act natural, you're done. You suddenly don't know where elbows go.” His free hand lifted briefly as though demonstrating the sudden uselessness of limbs before falling back to the mattress.

Then came the model walk.

Ben made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan and covered part of his face with his hand. “Oh, no,” he said, already seeing it. “Not the model walk.” He could imagine Jax trying to correct overcorrection with even worse overcorrection, growing increasingly self-conscious while everyone watched. The silent stare from Cleo's sister made it better. Ben didn't need the exact expression described to know the kind of look it must have been—the devastating silence reserved for someone who had made a simple task inexplicably complicated.

The fall almost finished him. Ben's whole body moved with laughter when the story reached the hole in the sand, his arm tightening reflexively around Cleo as though keeping her close might somehow help him breathe. “Of course there was a hole,” he managed. “Of course.” The detail about the iced coffee leaving his hand made Ben wince in sympathy despite everything else. Losing dignity was one thing. Losing caffeine in the process elevated the tragedy.

Then he heard what happened immediately afterward, and Ben went very still for one beat before laughter exploded out of him again. “No.” He turned his head toward Cleo, disbelief all over his face. “She did not.” The fact that the photographer had apparently been expected to capitalize on Jax's near-collapse was brutal enough. Learning that the resulting image was actually good made Ben laugh harder because there was no justice in that outcome whatsoever.

He understood immediately why it would be the photograph that survived. Manufactured candidness almost always looked like exactly what it was, while genuine disaster had no interest in flattering anyone. Jax's humiliation had apparently succeeded where repeated direction had failed, which meant nobody involved would ever allow him to forget it. “That's awful,” Ben said, still grinning. “And artistically, I respect it.” He paused. “Morally, no. Professionally, yes.”

The fact that the photo had been posted sealed it. Ben shook his head slowly, imagining Jax seeing it online afterward and realizing his worst moment had become useful content. “That's a lifelong grievance,” he said. “You can't recover from that. Every anniversary, every birthday, every argument—he has that in reserve.” He considered it for another second. “Actually, no. She has it in reserve. That's worse.”

His amusement eased when the story ended, leaving a warm afterglow in the room. Ben liked hearing Cleo tell stories in person because her entire body participated in them. The rhythm changed when she was trying not to laugh, her voice shifted when she imitated someone else, and little details arrived because she wasn't watching a clock or a battery percentage. Those were the things calls couldn't preserve completely.

He let the quiet sit for a moment, his hand moving slowly along her back. The comparison between their respective months earned a soft huff of laughter from him. “Yeah, I'd say we both really distinguished ourselves,” he said. “I attempted to evict an innocent man from his own hotel room. Jax lost a territorial dispute with sand. Strong work all around.” His eyes closed briefly, not with sleep but with the simple comfort of having nowhere he needed to look.

Then another detail occurred to him, and his eyes opened again. “Wait.” His tone sharpened with sudden interest. “Did anybody help him recover the coffee situation, or did everyone just stand there appreciating the composition?” The corners of his mouth lifted before he continued. “Because I need to know exactly how ruthless this production was.”

He shifted just enough to look down at Cleo more easily, his expression still carrying the remnants of laughter. There were other things he could have asked about the month, more serious things, but right now he liked the accumulation of nonsense between them. The hotel door. The hole in the sand. The cabinet reorganization. Three shades of blue. None of it mattered individually, which somehow made all of it matter together.

His fingertips moved once along her side beneath the blankets, then stilled. “Also, I want to see the picture eventually,” he said. “Not tonight if that requires moving. I'm not making that mistake.” His gaze flicked toward the floor where the pregnancy pillow had been exiled, then back to her. “We've established a very delicate territorial balance in here.”

The smile that followed was softer than the joke. Ben settled his cheek against the top of her head and let the room go quiet again, listening to the familiar sounds of the apartment around them. The bed felt warmer than any hotel had managed to feel in a month, not because of the blankets or the mattress or anything he could have explained without sounding embarrassingly sentimental. It was simply theirs, and Cleo was curled into him in the exact way he'd missed.

He could feel her breathing against his chest, the small rise and fall gradually becoming another familiar rhythm beneath the quiet of the room. Ben's hand made one last slow pass along her back before settling there, and for once he didn't feel any need to fill the silence just because they finally had access to each other without a screen between them. There would be more ridiculous stories, more pieces of the month that surfaced when neither of them was looking for them, and apparently photographic evidence of Jax losing a fight with the California coastline. None of it needed to be extracted tonight.

“Productive months,” he murmured after a while, the remnants of a smile still in his voice. “Absolutely humiliating for the men involved, apparently, but productive.” He pressed an absent kiss into her hair and relaxed deeper into the mattress, keeping her tucked securely against him. The pillow could stay on the floor. For the first time in a month, his side of the bed had him in it again.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo’s laughter only got worse when Ben tried to defend the stranger’s emotional wellbeing, because concerned for me personally was not the exonerating evidence he apparently thought it was. She lifted her head from where she had been tucked against him, eyes bright and cheeks already aching from laughing. “That makes it worse,” she told him. “Now this poor man went back to bed wondering if you were okay. You absolutely became a story he told somebody the next morning.” The reluctant grimace that followed her accusation about the elevator confirmed the rest, and Cleo pointed at his face as though she had caught him confessing. “There. That. You did exactly what I said you did. You got into that elevator and conducted a full internal investigation into where everything went wrong.” She could picture him standing there alone beneath fluorescent hotel lighting, staring at the floor indicator while mentally reconstructing his own humiliation, and another laugh escaped before she buried her face briefly against his shoulder. “I would’ve had to change hotels. Possibly countries. You were already conveniently in another one, so I guess that helped.”

Getting off the couch required more effort than Cleo had expected after becoming so thoroughly comfortable there, but once she had decided he needed to meet the ridiculous object that had been occupying his place for the last month, she wasn’t letting exhaustion derail the introduction. She kept hold of his hand as she led him toward the bedroom, fingers threaded through his even though there was no practical reason for it. That alone felt like something she wanted to indulge tonight. For a month, wanting to touch Ben had ended at wanting. She could see him through a screen and hear him through a speaker, but she couldn’t reach backward while walking down their hallway and know his hand would be there. Tonight she could, so she did, occasionally tightening her fingers around his simply because the option existed again.

The bedroom looked completely ordinary to Cleo until she saw Ben taking it in, and then she found herself looking at it through his eyes. She had lived inside this room while he was gone. Her clothes had migrated onto the chair, books had changed positions on the nightstand, water glasses had come and gone, and the blankets had been pulled up and kicked down dozens of times without her thinking about any of it. Nothing had been arranged for his return because she hadn’t known he was returning tonight. It was simply theirs, caught exactly as she had been living in it. Then his attention reached the bed, and Cleo didn’t even need to follow his gaze to know what had stopped him.

His horrified assessment of the pregnancy pillow made her mouth drop open in immediate offense. “Obscene?” she repeated, climbing onto the mattress beside the enormous U-shaped thing as though she had been appointed its legal counsel. “First of all, I told you it was huge. You decided I was exaggerating.” She patted one padded side affectionately. “Second, infrastructure is rude. This thing has been doing important work. My hips love him.” Seeing it beside Ben did, admittedly, make her understand how ridiculous it looked. It consumed an unreasonable percentage of the mattress, curling around the space where she slept like some enormous upholstered barricade, and Cleo had gotten so accustomed to arranging herself inside it that she hadn’t considered what it looked like to anyone else. Her defense lasted another few seconds before she looked at Ben, looked at the pillow, and made an immediate decision. “Actually, no. You’re home. He can take the night off.”

She wrestled it off the mattress with considerably less dignity than she would have preferred, finally shoving the entire unwieldy thing over the edge until it landed on the floor. Ben’s satisfaction was immediate enough that she narrowed her eyes at him. “Don’t get cocky. This is temporary leave, not termination.” His farewell to the pillow made her laugh as she pulled the comforter back. “And stop antagonizing him. You’re leaving again in three days and then I’m the one who has to repair this relationship.” She glanced toward the floor. “Ignore him. You’ve been wonderful. We’ll talk Thursday.” Then she looked back at Ben with a grin. “There. Mediation complete.”

The second Ben was actually lying down, Cleo abandoned any pretense that she intended to preserve personal space. She climbed beneath the comforter and curled immediately into him, fully settling onto her side with her head over his chest, one arm sliding across his torso while her leg found his beneath the blankets. His arm came around her with such easy familiarity that something inside her loosened almost at once. She hadn’t realized how much she missed the complete lack of thought involved in this. Neither of them had to negotiate where anything belonged. Her body remembered where his was, and his seemed to remember hers, except there was a small new complication now—a gentle curve where there hadn’t been one the last time they’d had weeks of uninterrupted nights together. Cleo felt the adjustment as they settled and smiled, her hand drifting briefly toward her stomach. Sage was beginning to participate in cuddling whether either parent had invited them or not.

The fact that Ben seemed to register the difference without making a production of it made Cleo even more aware of it. Her fingers rested against the small curve for a moment before returning to his chest, and she looked down between them with a private little smile. There had been photographs and appointments and measurements, all the obvious markers that told them the pregnancy was moving forward, but this was different. Her body simply didn’t fit against his in precisely the same way anymore. It wasn’t enough to separate them; it only asked them to rearrange by an inch here, a fraction there. “We’re getting crowded,” she murmured affectionately, smoothing her palm once over her stomach before settling comfortably against him again.

Ben’s renewed offense at being compared with the pillow made her laugh against his shirt. “I said you’re currently winning. You’re the one who decided there was a competition.” She lifted her head enough to regard him with exaggerated seriousness while he listed his qualifications. Arms. Body heat. Conversation. Emotional range. Each earned a thoughtful little nod as though she were evaluating an application. “All excellent points. Especially emotional range. He gives me absolutely nothing.” The passport argument nearly broke her composure. “Okay, that one might put you over the top. He hasn’t crossed an ocean for me.” She paused before adding, “But he does support my knees exactly where I want them for eight consecutive hours without ever needing to reposition, so don’t get arrogant.”

Once she tucked herself beneath his chin again, the joke softened around the edges. The pillow genuinely had helped her sleep, but lying against Ben made the comparison ridiculous in ways that had nothing to do with comfort. Foam didn’t breathe underneath her cheek. It didn’t move its hand over her back or shift when her leg shifted. It didn’t smell faintly like the soap he’d just used in their shower. It didn’t have a heartbeat. Cleo had spent a month making do with approximations in more ways than one: the pillow where Ben normally slept, his face on a screen instead of beside her, his voice arriving through speakers rather than vibrating beneath her ear when he talked. All of those things had been enough because they needed to be. None of them were the same.

Her dramatic opening about Jax nearly dying earned exactly the reaction Cleo had hoped for, and Ben’s dry assessment of her responsible use of language made her smile smugly. “Thank you. I thought I showed admirable restraint.” She knew perfectly well Jax’s life had never been in danger, but Jax had a mildly embarrassing afternoon failed to convey the magnitude of what she had witnessed. If Ben was going to bring her stories from Brazil involving attempted hotel-room eviction, Cleo was entitled to elevate beach incompetence into near tragedy.

As she continued, she could see Ben assembling the scene from people he knew well enough to picture without explanation, and that made telling it more fun. “Phoebe had everybody working by the end,” Cleo said, because of course she had. “I went there under the impression that my job was to be pregnant moral support and eat snacks. Somehow that became an actual production position.” She still found it offensive in principle, although not enough to have left. “And Jax should’ve known better. He dates Phoebe. He knows standing within twenty feet of her while she’s doing content means you’re eventually getting assigned something.”

Ben’s agreement about the impossibility of walking normally once somebody instructed you to walk normally made Cleo nod emphatically. “Exactly. The second somebody tells you what your arms are doing, you become aware that you have arms.” His brief demonstration made her laugh, and she caught his hand before it could drop completely, bringing it down between them and keeping it there. “Suddenly Jax had elbows he’d never encountered before. Shoulders became confusing. Hands were apparently a new feature. Walking, something he’d successfully done his entire life, became theoretical.”

The model walk had been bad enough that Cleo started laughing again before she could even properly defend her description of it. “No, you don’t understand. He committed.” She shifted slightly against Ben, animated all over again by the memory. “There was a moment where he genuinely thought he’d solved it. Like, yes, this is how humans walk naturally. This is it.” Phoebe’s expression afterward remained one of Cleo’s favorite parts. “And Phoebe didn’t say anything. She just stared at him. You know exactly which look I’m talking about. The one where she doesn’t have to ask why you’re like this because her face already did.”

When the story reached the fall and Ben’s laughter moved beneath her, Cleo dissolved with him. She pressed her face against his chest, laughing hard enough that she had to pause before she could continue. “The hole wasn’t even impressive,” she insisted. “That’s important. It wasn’t some enormous crater. It was just there at exactly the correct place and time to destroy him.” The coffee, however, deserved genuine mourning, and Ben’s sympathetic wince made her nod solemnly. “That was the actual tragedy. Forget his dignity. He watched that coffee leave his hand like he’d just witnessed a death.”

Ben’s disbelief over Phoebe’s reaction made Cleo lift her head immediately. “She absolutely did. He had barely recovered and she wanted to know whether they got the shot.” Even now, Cleo couldn’t decide whether that made the situation better or worse. “And then it was actually a good picture, which was the worst possible outcome for Jax because it completely validated her. If it had been terrible, maybe she would’ve experienced guilt. But no. The universe rewarded her.”

His distinction between artistic respect and moral condemnation made Cleo point at him. “Don’t ever say that in front of Phoebe. Ever. She’ll hear artistically, I respect it and erase everything else you said.” Her smile widened. “She does not need validation. Especially not from another creative person. You’ll make her unbearable.” Cleo could already imagine Phoebe invoking Ben’s professional approval the next time Jax complained, and that alone was enough reason to keep it secret.

The fact that the photograph had actually been posted made Ben’s assessment of a lifelong grievance entirely fair, but Cleo disagreed with who possessed the useful ammunition. “No, Phoebe absolutely has it in reserve. Jax thinks the photograph being embarrassing gives him leverage, but she owns the evidence.” She considered it for a second and grinned. “If they ever get married, I hope it ends up in a slideshow. Not even explained. Just one frame where everybody who knows what happened starts laughing and everyone else has no idea why.”

When the story finally ran itself out, Cleo let herself settle more heavily into Ben again. She liked this version of telling him things. She could have told him the entire story over FaceTime, and he would have laughed in all the same places, but she wouldn’t have felt it. She wouldn’t have felt his arm tighten around her when something got him or been able to lift her head and catch his expression without looking at a little square on a screen. The differences were stupidly small, but after a month apart, she had become greedy for small things.

His summary of their respective months earned an offended sound. “Excuse me. You and Jax distinguished yourselves.” Cleo lifted her head enough to make the correction properly. “Phoebe and I had perfectly respectable months.” The two-fifteen-in-the-morning bathroom-cabinet incident immediately resurfaced in her memory, forcing her to narrow that claim. “Mostly respectable. I reorganized toiletries at an unreasonable hour, but I never attempted to evict a stranger from his own hotel room, and I never lost a fight with sand. I’m comfortable with my ranking.”

When Ben abruptly returned to the coffee question, Cleo grinned because apparently the fate of Jax’s caffeine genuinely mattered to him. “Nobody helped him at first,” she admitted. “I couldn’t. I was laughing too hard, and I am invoking pregnancy as a complete legal defense. Phoebe was busy checking the picture, because apparently content doesn’t pause for human suffering, and the photographer just kept shooting.” She shook her head, still able to picture Jax standing there sandy and betrayed. “He looked at all of us like we’d failed him on a spiritual level.” She paused. “We did eventually get him another coffee. And tacos. There was restitution. We’re not monsters.”

The accumulation of ridiculous details made Cleo smile as she settled again. None of them mattered, and that was exactly why she liked hearing and telling them. The important things had made it through the distance easily enough. Ben knew how the appointments had gone. He knew Sage was healthy. Cleo knew where he’d been performing and when he was exhausted and what cities he had moved through. But the cabinet reorganization and three shades of blue and Jax’s lost coffee and Ben standing on the wrong hotel floor belonged to the messier category of things that became important only because they belonged to each other. They were pieces of life too small to qualify as updates and somehow exactly the pieces she wanted back.

When he asked to see the photograph, Cleo nodded without making the slightest attempt to retrieve her phone. “Tomorrow. I know exactly where it is, and you can appreciate Jax’s suffering properly then.” His glance toward the abandoned pillow made her tighten her arm around him. “But you’re right. Nobody moves. We’ve achieved equilibrium.” She looked pointedly toward the floor. “If I get up now, he could reclaim your side, and I’m not mediating another territorial dispute tonight.”

The softer smile on Ben’s face quieted her almost as effectively as the room itself. When his cheek came to rest against the top of her head, Cleo let her eyes close and listened. For weeks, silence with him had still contained electronics: the faint hiss of a call, the occasional connection glitch, whatever hotel air conditioner happened to be running behind him. Sometimes one of them would stop talking and the other would ask whether they were still there. She didn’t have to ask tonight. His body answered for him.

The slow pass of his hand along her back made Cleo breathe out, her entire body settling another fraction deeper into the mattress and into him. She could feel herself becoming sleepy, but she resisted it—not anxiously, not because she was counting down the seventy-two hours, but because she had only just gotten him back and didn’t particularly feel like becoming unconscious yet. She wanted a little longer with the simple fact of him being there. Another useless story. Another laugh. Another few minutes of feeling his chest rise underneath her cheek.

“Productive for Phoebe and me,” she corrected when he delivered his final verdict. “Humiliating for you and Jax. I need the historical record to reflect that accurately.” His kiss disappeared into her hair, and Cleo smiled as her fingers tightened gently in the front of his shirt. She could have stayed exactly there. She probably should have. Her body was comfortable, her eyes were heavy, and Ben was finally home in his own side of their bed.

Instead, the kiss in her hair made something restless flicker through all that comfort.

Cleo opened her eyes.

For a moment she didn’t move anything except her fingers, loosening them from his shirt and smoothing her palm slowly over his chest. She had spent a month missing him in layers. She had missed talking to him without calculating time zones. She had missed seeing his things mixed with hers around the apartment. She had missed complaining about inconsequential things and having him physically there to hear them. And she had missed this too—the uncomplicated privilege of touching him whenever she wanted, without glass between her hand and his face. She had been so happy simply to get him into bed and curl against him that she hadn’t done much more than hold on.

That suddenly seemed like an oversight.

Cleo lifted her head from his chest and shifted carefully higher beside him, staying conscious of the small curve of her stomach as she moved. Her hair slipped forward over one shoulder before she pushed it back, and for a second she simply looked at him from close range. The shower had left his hair softer and slightly disordered, and the exhaustion from travel was still there around the edges even after food and laughter. She had seen his face almost every day while he was gone. It was ridiculous how different it looked when she could count the inches between them instead of pixels.

Her hand came up to his face before she said anything. Cleo traced her fingertips lightly along his cheek, then into the hair near his temple, letting herself touch him with the same slow curiosity she’d felt when he’d first walked through the apartment door. “You know,” she murmured, “I think I’ve been very restrained considering my boyfriend unexpectedly appeared in my living room after being gone for a month.”

The observation amused her, but she didn’t give it enough time to become another joke. Cleo leaned down and kissed him.

The first kiss was deliberately soft, almost unfairly so after the month behind it, because she wanted the first second of it instead of rushing through it. Her hand stayed against the side of his face, thumb resting near his cheek as her mouth lingered against his. When she drew back, she only went far enough for their noses to brush, and the closeness sent a warmer little rush through her than she’d expected. She smiled, eyes dropping briefly toward his mouth before finding his again. “Hi,” she whispered, which was absurd considering they’d spent the entire evening talking.

Then she kissed him again.

This time Cleo didn’t treat it like a greeting. Her fingers slid farther into his hair at the back of his head, and she shifted closer as much as her changing body comfortably allowed, taking her time with him because there was nowhere else either of them needed to be. She had missed kissing him without knowing exactly how much she’d missed it until she was doing it again. FaceTime could preserve his expressions. Photographs could preserve the particular shape of his smile. Nothing had preserved this.

She broke away only enough to breathe, forehead resting against his while her fingers remained threaded loosely through his hair. “Okay,” she murmured, a little breathless and smiling now. “That’s better.” Her nose brushed his once, deliberately, and she pressed another kiss to his mouth before he could turn the moment back into a joke. The kiss lingered longer, Cleo’s other hand sliding from his chest to his shoulder as she kept herself close.

When she finally pulled back, she didn’t return to her place against his chest. She stayed there beside him, face close to his, thumb brushing lazily near his hairline while she studied him with open affection. “I missed your face,” she said, then immediately shook her head. “No. That’s stupid. I saw your face constantly.” Her smile turned playful. “I missed having access to your face.”

Cleo kissed the corner of his mouth, then his cheek, apparently determined to demonstrate what she meant by access now that she’d introduced the concept. The month apart had taught her that she could miss him without unraveling. Tonight didn’t need to prove that lesson again. He was here. She was allowed to be greedy about it.

The twenty-nine remaining stories could wait a few minutes.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben let the correction about the historical record pass with the expression of someone who knew the evidence was against him and intended to appeal anyway. There was still laughter sitting warm in his chest from the entire beach disaster, but it had settled into something looser now, less about Jax specifically and more about how easy the room felt around them. “Fine,” he murmured, conceding the point with no sincerity whatsoever. “You and Phoebe were pillars of dignity. Jax and I disgraced ourselves internationally and domestically. History may record it however you need.”

The coffee restitution earned a low hum of approval because, apparently, some part of him had become genuinely invested in whether Jax had been compensated for the loss. Tacos improved the matter considerably. “Okay, that helps,” Ben said, the corner of his mouth lifting. “That moves it from cruel indifference to restorative justice.” He could picture Jax sandy, betrayed, caffeineless, surrounded by people who had found his suffering photographically useful, and suspected the actual picture would make him far less sympathetic tomorrow.

Her refusal to move suited him perfectly. He had no desire to go searching for phones or photographs or anything else that required leaving the warmth they had built around themselves, and the exiled pillow on the floor had become funny enough that he found himself glancing toward it every so often like an animal waiting to reclaim territory. “Tomorrow,” he agreed. “We’ll review the evidence in daylight. Jax deserves a fair trial.” His arm settled comfortably around her again, and the apartment seemed to grow quieter around the decision, as though the evening had finally stopped asking anything of either of them.

He noticed the change in her breathing before he noticed anything else. It wasn’t sleep exactly, not yet, but a deeper settling that made his own body answer in kind, tension easing from his shoulders into the mattress. After so many nights ending with one of them still half-alert to a clock, a schedule, or a dying battery, there was something almost strange about having silence that didn’t need managing. Nothing blinked or buffered or demanded a response from him. Cleo was simply there, warm against his side, and for a while that seemed like enough.

His hand moved once over her back, absent and unhurried, and Ben thought the night might taper gently into that quiet. He wouldn’t have minded. Being together in person had restored all the mundane privileges he hadn’t known how much he valued until they were temporarily unavailable—the ability to stop speaking without disappearing, to shift under the covers without announcing it, to know where the other person was without asking. It made stillness feel less like an absence and more like another thing they could share.

Then something changed.

Ben felt it through her before he could have named it, a subtle shift in attention that made him more alert without requiring any obvious movement. The room remained dim and warm, the blankets unchanged, but the air between them suddenly seemed less sleepy and more deliberate. He became acutely aware of where she was in relation to him, of the faint brush of her hair near his jaw, of the soft weight of her hand where it rested. The transformation was small enough to be almost nothing and distinct enough that he knew instantly she had turned toward him in a different way.

He stayed still and let the moment come to him. Touring had made him used to abrupt transitions—stage to van, van to hotel, hotel to airport—but this felt better because nothing needed rushing. His attention narrowed naturally, catching on the smallest things instead: the way her gaze held his a second longer, the little shift in her expression, the warmth that had crept into her features beneath the bedside light. He hadn’t forgotten what it was like to have her this close. His body had simply been deprived of the evidence.

The touch against his face caught him off guard more effectively than anything louder would have. His breath changed, barely, while his eyes followed hers. There was something disarming about being studied from inches away by someone who already knew him intimately, as though familiarity did not cancel curiosity. The feeling made the faint exhaustion around his eyes seem suddenly irrelevant.

Her observation about restraint pulled a smile from him before he could stop it. “You’ve shown incredible discipline,” he murmured, voice lower now, teasing but not flippant. “Truly inspiring.” He had the sense that anything cleverer would only get in the way, and for once he was content to leave the joke small.

The first kiss quieted him completely.

What struck Ben wasn’t surprise so much as recognition. His body seemed to know what to do before thought entered the process, one hand firming lightly at her side as he returned it with the same measured softness she had offered him. The kiss was gentle enough to make the restraint behind it obvious, and that restraint made it land harder than urgency would have. There was time in it. Time to register the warmth of her mouth, the brush of her breath, the impossible ordinariness of getting to do this again.

When she stayed near afterward, Ben’s smile appeared before he could hide it. The tiny greeting she gave him was absurd and perfect, so he answered it in kind. “Hi,” he said softly, the word carrying more than it had any right to. His eyes stayed on hers, amused and fond, and whatever smart remark might have followed never made it out.

The next kiss changed the temperature of the moment without making it hurried. Ben’s hand found the back of her neck, fingers settling there with familiar ease, while the other adjusted at her waist in response to the way she had shifted closer. He kissed her with more certainty this time, slower rather than deeper, as though reacquainting himself with something he already knew and still wanted to pay attention to. The familiarity of it didn’t dull anything. If anything, it sharpened the contrast between memory and presence.

There were tiny differences now, most of them practical and nearly invisible, and Ben registered them only because his body was used to hers. The small curve between them changed how close she could comfortably settle. The angle of his arm needed a fraction of adjustment. None of it felt disruptive; it simply reminded him that life had continued moving while he was gone, even in ways too small for photographs to capture.

When they finally broke apart enough to breathe, Ben stayed where he was instead of falling back against the pillow. His forehead hovered close to hers, and the pleased little assessment she gave the moment pulled a quiet laugh from him. “Yeah,” he said, voice roughened slightly. “Significantly.” His thumb brushed once at the base of her neck. “I was starting to think you’d forgotten this was an available feature.”

The next kiss stole the rest of his argument, and Ben gave up on commentary. He let himself answer her instead, the humor receding naturally as his attention moved elsewhere. There was no dramatic urgency to it, only the accumulated pleasure of finally being able to respond without delay or distance. He found himself smiling once against her mouth anyway, not because anything was funny but because happiness sometimes had nowhere else to go.

What he had missed most was not any single gesture but the responsiveness of being physically together. She moved, and he could answer immediately. Her breathing changed, and he felt it before he heard it. His fingers shifted, and her body reacted in real time rather than through the flattened approximation of a screen. That reciprocity made the whole moment feel alive in a way memory never quite managed.

When the kissing eased, Ben kept his hand lightly at her side and looked at her with the softened focus of someone who had momentarily forgotten everything outside the room. Her correction about missing his face made him laugh under his breath. “No, access is different,” he agreed. “Important distinction.” His mouth curved. “You had viewing privileges. Very limited functionality.”

The series of smaller kisses that followed stripped away whatever composure he had rebuilt. He let his eyes fall closed when one landed near the corner of his mouth, then opened them again when she shifted, enjoying the sheer abundance of affection without needing to turn it into anything more complicated. It felt good to be fussed over. There was no dignified way to admit that, so Ben didn’t bother trying.

Eventually his hand came up to her jaw, not to stop her but to hold her attention for a second. He took in the familiar lines of her face at close range and felt a strange mix of ease and intensity settle through him. Most of the things he loved about her had nothing to do with beauty, but beauty was still allowed to be part of it, especially when she was looking at him like this. His expression softened around the edges before the teasing returned.

“You can keep the access,” he said. “I’m not revoking it.” He leaned in and kissed her again, this one quieter, less exploratory and more certain. When it ended, he stayed near enough that the space between them never really re-formed, his palm remaining warm against her cheek for another second before dropping.

The travel fatigue was still there, but it had changed shape. He no longer felt wrung out so much as pleasantly heavy, body aware of the long day while his mind stayed alert to Cleo beside him. The difference mattered. He wasn’t fighting to stay engaged; he simply was engaged, carried by the ease of the room and the renewed physicality of being together.

His thumb traced once along her cheekbone before his hand relaxed. “You know what’s really unfair?” he murmured, a grin beginning to show. “I spent a month getting very good at missing you responsibly, and apparently the second I get home you decide to make that entire skill set obsolete.” There was no real complaint behind it. The satisfaction in his face ruined the premise.

Ben shifted them slightly, more for comfort than necessity, letting his arm settle around her without steering her anywhere she hadn’t chosen to be. He was aware of the new curve between them, but he had stopped treating every reminder of the pregnancy like a discovery. It was simply part of how they fit now, another detail his body was learning without ceremony. The adjustment felt intimate precisely because it was so unremarkable.

“The stories can wait,” he said after a moment, gaze dropping briefly to her mouth before returning to her eyes. “I’ve embarrassed myself enough for one night.” The corner of his mouth tipped upward as he brushed a kiss near her temple, lighter this time and almost absent-minded. “I think I’m due at least a short break from international humiliation.”

He let the silence settle again after that, but it no longer carried the same sleepy softness it had a few minutes earlier. There was an undercurrent to it now, something warmer and more awake, and Ben seemed perfectly content to leave it unresolved rather than force the night in any particular direction. His fingers idly traced the seam of her sleeve while he watched her, expression easy and open. Whatever came next could arrive on its own.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo let his claim to international humiliation sit between them for all of three seconds before the smile at the corner of her mouth betrayed her. “A short break,” she repeated, as though she were carefully considering whether his application had merit. Her fingertips remained against his shirt while her eyes moved over his face. “I don’t remember approving that. I remember you promising me twenty-nine more stories, actually. There was paperwork involved. Very official.” The kiss he brushed near her temple softened the teasing before she could keep building it, and she tipped her head instinctively toward him, catching the last trace of it against her skin.

She didn’t immediately fill the quiet when it returned. His fingers continued their lazy path along the seam of her sleeve, and Cleo watched him from the few inches separating them, comfortable enough to let herself do nothing more than look for a moment. He was tired. She could still see that much around his eyes, even if the exhaustion had stopped pulling him away from her. It was strange how quickly the evidence of the month apart had begun folding back into ordinary things. His head was on his pillow. His arm was around her. His bare feet were somewhere beneath the same blankets as hers. His duffel could remain abandoned wherever he had dropped it because there was no checkout time attached to tomorrow morning.

Her gaze dropped when his did, catching the brief glance toward her mouth before his eyes returned to hers. That was enough to make her eyebrows lift. “Mm-hm.” Cleo’s hand moved from where it had been resting against him, fingertips trailing slowly over the front of his shirt. “And what exactly was that?”

She didn’t wait for an answer.

Cleo leaned forward and caught his mouth again, taking the kiss for herself before he could produce another argument about responsible missing or international travel. There was less tentative sweetness in it now. Not less affection, but less need to reacquaint herself with something that had already become familiar again. Her fingers gathered lightly in the fabric over his chest as she kissed him, and when she felt his arm tighten around her, she shifted closer without thinking about it.

The curve of her stomach stopped her from fitting against him exactly the way she would have a month earlier, and Cleo adjusted automatically, sliding one leg between his and angling herself until nothing pressed uncomfortably between them. She barely acknowledged the change beyond making it. Tiny Sage could have the additional inches. Cleo intended to keep everything else.

Her mouth left his only long enough for a breath before finding it again. One kiss became another, then another, slower when she wanted to linger and shorter when the smile threatening her concentration got in the way. Her hand released his shirt and flattened against his chest, feeling his warmth through the cotton before her fingers wandered toward the hem.

She slipped them underneath.

Warm skin met her fingertips immediately. Cleo’s palm settled against his side and moved upward over his ribs, unhurried and familiar, until her fingers brushed through the hair across his chest. Her mouth curved against his when she felt his breathing change beneath her hand. She didn’t comment on it. She only let her fingers curl lightly against him before smoothing outward again, tracing the shape of him by touch while she kissed him.

The month apart had made the simplest contact feel almost unfairly good. Video calls had given her his face. They had given her his voice, his expressions, the occasional terrible hotel lighting and more than one conversation conducted while somebody somewhere was insisting Ben needed to leave in five minutes. They hadn’t given her this. They hadn’t given her warm skin beneath her palm or his fingers at the back of her neck or the immediate answer of his mouth when she kissed him again.

Cleo drew back barely an inch, her nose brushing his as she looked at him. “Limited functionality was a serious design flaw,” she murmured, picking up his earlier wording with a little smile. Her fingers remained beneath his shirt, spreading over his side. “I’d like that included in the official tour review.”

She kissed him again before he could tell her where she could file the complaint.

This time her fingers traveled downward instead of up, following the warmth of his stomach until they reached his waist. She lingered there while her other hand slid into his hair, fingertips disappearing into it at the back of his head. The combination brought her closer again, and Cleo made a quiet sound against his mouth when his hand shifted along her side in answer.

There was no careful plan behind any of it. She had missed him. He was finally in their bed again. Every time she kissed him, she wanted another one.

Her fingers hooked lazily at his waistband while she kissed along the corner of his mouth and back again. “You know,” she murmured between kisses, “for somebody demanding a break, you’re being remarkably unhelpful.”

Whatever expression he gave her made her smile widen, and Cleo kissed it off his face.

Her hand left his waistband again, sliding back beneath his shirt and around his side as she moved closer. She pressed her palm against the bare skin of his back and held him there, kissing him with enough enthusiasm that the blankets shifted around their legs. When one caught awkwardly around her ankle, she gave an impatient little kick beneath them until it loosened, never getting far enough away from him to make the interruption meaningful.

The ridiculousness of it made her laugh softly against his mouth. “Smooth.”

She caught his lower lip in another lingering kiss before drawing away, cheeks warm and hair beginning to lose whatever order it had possessed when they climbed into bed. Her hand came out from beneath his shirt long enough to touch his face, fingertips moving along the faint tiredness beneath one eye before her palm settled against his cheek.

For a moment, Cleo’s expression softened completely.

“Hi,” she whispered again.

The word made her smile because they had already done this once, but apparently one greeting after a month wasn’t enough. She kissed him again, softer for a few seconds, then let it deepen naturally when his hand settled more securely against her. Her fingers returned to his hair, and she followed when he shifted them, perfectly content to let him change the angle and take some of the initiative she’d been monopolizing.

That lasted until his mouth left hers.

Cleo immediately followed it.

“No,” she murmured, catching him in another kiss with a quiet laugh. “Come back.”

She had no intention of pretending she was anything except pleased when he did. Her hand slid down his chest again, beneath his shirt this time, fingers spreading over his stomach before curling lightly against his side. She stayed tucked against him as closely as she comfortably could, her body already learning the slight adjustments their new geometry required without making any ceremony out of them.

When she finally let him breathe for longer than a few seconds, her forehead dropped against his. Cleo’s eyes stayed closed while she smiled, thumb moving lazily where her hand rested against his skin.

“You were gone too long,” she murmured.

There was no accusation in it. She knew exactly why he’d been gone. She had been okay while he was gone. Both things could exist beside the simple fact that having him back felt better.

Her eyes opened, finding his from inches away. “So,” she added, the playful edge returning as her fingers curled gently against his side, “I think the twenty-nine stories are officially postponed.”

Then Cleo kissed him again and, when his arm tightened around her and his movement became more certain, she let him take over without surrendering the enthusiasm that had started the whole thing. Her hand stayed warm beneath his shirt, one leg tangled comfortably with his beneath the blankets, and the pregnancy pillow remained thoroughly abandoned on the floor.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben’s attention sharpened almost immediately, all traces of the lazy argument about stories pushed somewhere much farther back in his mind. There was still humor in his expression, but it had changed register, amusement threaded now with the unmistakable concentration of someone who had stopped pretending the situation was casual. “I’ll submit the complaint to management,” he murmured, voice dropping lower. “Unfortunately, management is me, so I’m predicting a lengthy internal review.” The joke barely survived its own delivery before his mouth was occupied again, and whatever bureaucratic defense he might have invented after that was abandoned without appeal.

Warmth moved beneath his shirt and Ben’s breathing betrayed him before the rest of him did. He felt the involuntary expansion of his ribs, the little hitch he would have denied if she had pointed it out, and his hand flexed once against her waist before settling more deliberately there. A month of distance had left him prepared for missing her in all the abstract ways—conversation, companionship, the ease of sharing a room—but apparently his nervous system had been keeping its own inventory. Skin remembered skin with humiliating efficiency.

He answered the renewed closeness by angling himself more fully toward her, careful only in the practical sense, adjusting around the small change between them without turning it into a discussion. His palm traveled from her waist to the curve of her back, then rested there with steady pressure as he kissed her with less teasing and more intent. There was no reason to rush. If anything, the opposite felt better: taking enough time to notice the tiny shifts in her breathing, the way his own body relaxed and tightened in alternating waves, the familiar rhythm returning without either of them needing to negotiate it.

The accusation that he was somehow failing to assist in his own reprieve earned a sound from him that was half laugh, half surrender. “I’ve made several tactical errors,” Ben admitted near her mouth, the words slightly wrecked by proximity. “First one was apparently lying down.” His thumb moved idly along her side as he considered the obvious consequences of his decision. “Second was letting you think I have self-control after midnight.”

He had barely finished before whatever composure he’d regained became irrelevant again. The blankets shifted around them, the mattress gave under redistributed weight, and Ben let out a quiet laugh at the minor chaos of limbs and fabric. There was something deeply familiar about it, the lack of elegance more intimate than anything choreographed could have been. “Very graceful,” he said dryly, though the warmth in his voice ruined any chance of genuine criticism.

The softer moment that followed caught him differently. Ben’s expression changed without becoming solemn, amusement easing into something more open as his gaze stayed fixed at close range. The second greeting landed with an absurd amount of force for one syllable, and this time his answer came without even the pretense of a joke. “Hey,” he said, quieter than before, the word almost lost in the small space between them.

He touched her face then, not with the curious slowness of someone rediscovering a stranger, but with the easy familiarity of someone returning to a habit. His thumb moved once near her cheek, fingers settling lightly near her ear before his hand slid into her hair. He knew the texture of it, knew how much pressure she liked at the back of her head, knew how to tilt himself so their noses didn’t collide every third kiss. That knowledge had survived the month intact, stored somewhere deeper than conscious memory.

When Ben took more control of the rhythm between them, it happened without ceremony. His arm tightened around her just enough to draw her into the angle he wanted, and his mouth found hers with a confidence that had been building through every earlier interruption. He stayed attentive to the way they fit now, shifting his hip and leg fractionally when necessary, but the adjustment remained practical rather than precious. Their bodies were changing around a new reality; that did not make every touch fragile.

The attempt to reclaim him the instant he created space made Ben laugh outright, breath breaking warm between them. “I’m right here,” he managed, though the words did very little to create distance and even less to discourage anything. There was something ridiculously satisfying about being pursued from six inches away. It fed the part of him that had spent weeks being reachable only through technology and schedules and made it almost impossible not to indulge her.

So he did.

Ben stopped trying to ration the moment and let instinct carry more of it. His hand slid along her back beneath the loose fall of her hair, then returned to her side, fingers spreading as if to keep track of her there. The kisses changed naturally—some brief and amused, others slower, drawing enough quiet between them that he could hear traffic somewhere beyond the bedroom windows and the faint settling noise of the apartment around them. The world outside remained stubbornly ordinary, which somehow suited this better than any dramatic silence would have.

The warmth of her hand against his bare skin kept distracting him in the best possible way. Every small movement produced an immediate physical answer, the muscles beneath his ribs tightening before easing again, and Ben became increasingly aware that his earlier claims about restraint had been wildly optimistic. He could laugh at himself for it later. Right now, he was too occupied with the fact that she could touch him and he could answer without a screen turning either of them into light.

When the moment finally opened enough for him to draw a full breath, Ben didn’t retreat. He rested close, gaze moving over her face with a concentration that was neither dramatic nor detached, simply attentive. “You’re making a very compelling case for postponement,” he said, voice roughened around the edges. “I’m beginning to think the remaining stories have been administratively canceled.”

His hand left her hair and settled along her upper back, fingertips moving in a slow, thoughtless pattern that had nothing to do with seduction and everything to do with habit. The contrast helped steady him. Desire was there, obvious and warm and growing, but it existed beside the ordinary things too: the soft cotton of the sheets, the familiar dip in the mattress, the knowledge that his phone was nowhere nearby and he did not care. He liked that their intimacy could contain all of it at once without needing to choose a single mood.

The admission about the length of his absence landed quietly. Ben didn’t answer immediately, partly because there was nothing useful to defend and partly because he knew she wasn’t asking him to. His fingers paused against her back for half a second before continuing. “Yeah,” he said at last, simple and unpolished. “It was.”

He left it there. No speech about schedules, no accounting of days, no promise that reality would suddenly become easier because they both wished it would. The truth had already been acknowledged enough tonight. What mattered more in that moment was that he could bend toward her and close the remaining space again, answering the sentiment with something physical instead of turning it into another conversation they had already had in several forms.

Ben kissed her with more certainty after that, one hand firm at her side and the other returning to her hair. The exhaustion that had followed him through the apartment earlier was still present somewhere beneath everything else, but it no longer dictated the pace. He felt awake in a narrower, more immediate way, attention concentrated entirely on the person beside him and the responsive rhythm they were finding again. When he shifted, it was to make them more comfortable, not to break the moment.

A trace of humor returned once breathing became necessary again. Ben drew back just enough to look at her, eyes still warm with everything that had preceded the pause. “I should point out,” he said, “that this is terrible incentive structure.” His thumb brushed once along her side. “You postpone twenty-nine embarrassing stories and somehow I’m supposed to object?”

The answer seemed obvious enough that he didn’t wait for one. His mouth curved briefly, and he kissed her again, slower this time, letting the energy settle without disappearing. The abandoned pregnancy pillow remained somewhere below the edge of the mattress, the duffel still waited unpacked in another room, and tomorrow contained whatever practical things tomorrow would contain. None of them required attention now.

Eventually Ben eased onto his side more fully, keeping close without crowding her, his arm settling around her in a way that left room for whatever position felt easiest. He had stopped consciously tracking the tiny adjustments around the pregnancy; his body was already learning them. There was something reassuring in how quickly adaptation became ordinary, not because the change meant less but because loving someone often looked exactly like that—moving an inch without discussion and carrying on.

His gaze lingered on her for another moment, equal parts affection and residual amusement. “For the record,” he murmured, “I was fully prepared to tell you all twenty-nine.” His fingers traced once along her back before coming to rest. “You derailed a very important cultural archive.”

The joke stayed light, but Ben didn’t use it to pull away. He remained where he was, close enough that the next kiss required almost no movement at all, and took it without hurry. The night had stopped feeling like something they needed to maximize or document. It was simply theirs again, messy blankets, unfinished conversations, bad stories postponed indefinitely, and all.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Cleo’s mouth stayed against his through the low murmur about management and the internal review, the joke dissolving where their lips met. She answered it with another kiss rather than words, slower, her hand still under his shirt and moving without any particular plan except closer. Warm skin met her palm as she pushed the fabric higher, fingertips tracing the line of his ribs and the involuntary hitch she felt there before she followed it downward again.

When he angled toward her and his palm settled at the curve of her back,
she shifted with him, careful of the round of her belly between them and unbothered by the adjustment. The mattress dipped. Blankets bunched at her hip. She kissed him with the same unhurried intent he had set, noticing the way his breathing changed against her mouth and matching it without comment.
“Lying down was optimistic,” she said near his lips, the words uneven. Her thumb moved once along his side in answer to his. “Midnight was always going to be a problem.”

The small chaos of limbs made her laugh against his mouth, soft and brief, before she found him again. She didn’t chase elegance. Her knee nudged his, her hair fell forward, and she let the blankets stay wherever they landed. When he said hey, quieter, she felt it more than she heard it. Her hand came up to his jaw for a second, thumb at the corner of his mouth, then dropped again as his fingers slid into her hair. She knew that pressure. She leaned into it.

He drew her into the angle he wanted and she went, kissing him back with less interruption now. The space he made lasted only as long as it took her to close it. Her hand left his ribs and traveled lower, over the waistband of his shorts, unhurried and deliberate. She palmed him through the fabric first, feeling the shape of him, the heat already gathering there, and stroked once, slow, from base toward the head. The cotton dragged lightly under her fingers. She did it again while her mouth stayed on his, kissing him through the motion, open and unhurried, her other hand braced at his shoulder.

“I’m not trying to create distance,” she murmured against his mouth when he told her he was right here. Her fingers slipped beneath the waistband. Warm skin. She wrapped her hand around him properly this time, not fully hard yet, and stroked with an easy, steady pressure, thumb passing over the head on the upstroke. She kept kissing him while she did it, some kisses brief, some longer, her hand working in the same unhurried rhythm as her mouth. Each pass drew a little more response from him. She felt him thicken against her palm, felt the shift from soft heat to firmer weight, and adjusted her grip without breaking the kiss.

Traffic moved somewhere beyond the windows. The apartment settled. She didn’t mark either of it. Her forehead rested near his when she needed air, breath warm between them, and her hand kept moving, slow strokes that stayed attentive rather than rushed. When he spoke about postponement and canceled stories, she smiled against his mouth and answered by tightening her fingers just slightly on the next stroke, drawing him fully hard in her hand.
“Good,” she said, quiet. Her thumb circled once. “They can wait.”

She didn’t pull her hand away when he eased more fully onto his side. She shifted with him, belly accommodated between them, arm around her left room to move. Her strokes stayed lazy and sure, learning the new angle the same way the rest of her was learning it. When he mentioned the twenty-nine stories and the cultural archive, she kissed the corner of his mouth, then his lower lip, her hand still wrapped around him, thumb resting for a beat at the head before she stroked down again.

“You’ll survive the loss,” she said, close enough that the words barely needed volume. She kissed him again, slower, and kept her hand exactly where it was.

Cleo kept her mouth on his and her hand where it was, unwilling to turn the moment into anything that required letting go. The kiss stayed slow, broken only when she needed a breath, and even then her lips stayed close enough to brush his while she stroked him again. He was warmer now, fuller against her palm, the earlier softness giving way under the steady drag of her fingers. She felt the change and answered it, tightening her grip just enough to meet him and easing again on the downstroke so the motion never turned sharp.

Her thumb passed over the head, slicker than it had been a minute ago, and she used that to smooth the next pass. She kissed the corner of his mouth, then his lower lip, then found him properly again while her wrist kept its unhurried rhythm beneath the loosened waistband. Fabric bunched at her knuckles. She didn’t bother fixing it. Her other hand rested at the back of his neck, fingers in his hair, holding him at the angle that let her keep kissing him without their noses colliding.

She drew back only far enough to look at his face while her hand worked, watching the way his breath caught and the small shift of his hips toward her palm. Another stroke, slower from base to tip. He thickened further in her grip, heavy and unmistakably hard now, the skin taut under her fingers. She held him there for a beat, thumb circling once, and felt the full response settle against her hand before she stroked down again, sure of it.

“There,” she murmured against his mouth, the word nearly lost in the kiss that followed. She didn’t stop. Her hand stayed wrapped around him, moving in the same easy rhythm, keeping him hard while she kissed him as if the rest of the night had nowhere else it needed to be.

[Benjamin Wilder]

The quiet friction of her palm against him short-circuited whatever dry comment he had lined up about the archive. Ben’s breath hitched in his throat, a low, ragged sound that got muffled immediately against the seam of her lips.

A month of hotel beds, cramped tour bus bunks, and staring at the blue glare of his phone screen dissolved into nothing under the slide of her knuckles. It was almost unfair how easily she dismantled him—no rush, no frantic grabbing, just that steady, deliberate familiarity. Her fingers, slick and warm inside the loose waistband of his sweats, gripped him with a slow, confident pressure that turned him completely rigid in her hand.

He let his eyes fall shut for a second, his hips rolling forward into her palm on pure reflex before he caught himself. He didn't want to crowd her belly, but when she murmured *“There”* against his mouth and smoothed her thumb firmly over the weeping, sensitive crown of him, a fine tremor went straight up his spine.

"Cleo," he muttered against her lips, his voice dropping into that scratchy, late-night basement register, rough with the heat pooling heavily low in his gut. "You're playing a very dangerous game with a jet-lagged man."

He wasn't complaining. Not even close.

His hand in her hair tightened, his fingers tangling into the dark silk at the nape of her neck to tilt her head back, deepening the kiss until it was wet, open, and bruising. His other arm slid lower along her spine, following the dip of her waist down to the bare slope of her hip. He hitched her top leg over his hip, angling her body so that the small, firm swell of her four-month bump rested safely against him while her center was drawn flush against his thigh. The contrast was intoxicating—the soft, rounded proof of their life expanding together, pressed directly against the blunt, heavy ache she was coaxing out of him.

He matched the slide of her wrist, nudging his pelvis into each upward stroke, letting her feel every inch of how hard she had made him. A low groan rumbled in his chest when her thumb caught the ridge of the head again, her fingers tight and relentless around his length.

"I'm keeping this," he murmured against her jaw, his teeth scraping the soft skin beneath her ear until her breath hitched. "Filing it under things that are infinitely better than South America."

He shifted, rising up slightly to give himself room. His free hand slid from her hip and gathered the hem of her oversized shirt, dragging the soft cotton up her torso until it bunched above her breasts. He paused for half a second, his dark eyes sweeping over her in the dim light of the bedroom—her flushed chest, her heaving ribs, the taut swell of her small belly, and the dark lace panties clinging low on her hips. Seeing her look at him like that—warm, thoroughly composed, completely undone by the same heat eating him alive—made his pulse hammer violently against his ribs.

His palm smoothed over the curve of her stomach, his thumb stroking a slow, possessive arc over the skin before he slid lower. He hooked his fingers into the band of her panties, dragging them aside to find the slick, burning heat waiting between her thighs.

When his fingers dipped into her wetness, circling her clit with a firm, practiced slide, Cleo’s hips bucked off the mattress, a broken gasp tearing from her throat.

"Don't stop," Ben rasped, leaning over her, his forehead pressed to hers, his own hips rocking helpless and heavy into the steady, demanding stroke of her hand. "Look at me, baby. Keep touching me just like that."

He pushed two fingers inside her, feeling her clench tight and hot around him, and began a slow, filthy rhythm with his hand that perfectly matched the slide of her palm on his cock, kissing her mouth with a starved, breathless hunger that promised they weren't going to sleep anytime soon.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Her grip stayed tight around him, the next stroke dragging slow from base to tip so her thumb could catch that same ridge on purpose. Her hips rolled up to meet the nudge of his, a shaky breath breaking against his jaw when his teeth scraped the skin beneath her ear.

“Then keep it,” she managed, the words thin and warm against his mouth. Her free hand found the back of his neck, fingers sliding into his hair and holding there while her other hand kept working him, relentless and slick.

The cotton bunched above her breasts and the cooler air hit her skin. Her ribs lifted under his look, nipples drawing tight, and she didn’t cover herself. She watched his face while he took her in, her own mouth parted, the hand on his cock never losing its rhythm.

When his palm smoothed over the curve of her stomach she exhaled hard, thighs easing wider on the mattress. The drag of lace to one side made her stomach jump. She was already wet enough that the first brush of his fingers spread it, and her hips tipped up into the touch without her meaning to.

“Ben—” The gasp broke when he circled her clit, her back coming off the bed for a second before she dropped again. She forced her eyes open and kept them on his, forehead still pressed to his, and her hand answered him stroke for stroke, thumb sweeping the head every time his fingers pushed in. “I’m looking. Don’t you stop either.”

He kissed her through the next thrust of his fingers and she opened for it, tongue sliding against his while her fist tightened and dragged down his length. The heel of his hand stayed firm against her clit. She rocked into it, small broken sounds caught between their mouths, her free hand fisting in his hair so he couldn’t pull back.

Two fingers filled her and she clenched around them, the rhythm of her own hand going a little rougher, a little faster, matching him without thinking. Her panties stayed hooked aside, the lace biting lightly at her hip every time she lifted. Sweat gathered at her temple. She breathed his name against his lips and didn’t look away.

Her thighs trembled when he curled his fingers. She stroked him through it, palm slicking from base to tip, wrist twisting at the top the way that had already pulled that groan out of him. The oversized shirt stayed rucked under her arms. Every roll of her hips dragged her stomach against his forearm.

“Right there,” she said, voice wrecked, hips chasing the pressure. She kept her eyes on his even when they wanted to close, kept her hand moving even when her arm shook. “Just like that. I can feel how hard you are. Don’t slow down.”

She kissed him again, messier this time, teeth catching his lower lip while her fist worked him in the same filthy cadence as his fingers inside her. Her heels dug into the mattress. The wet sound of his hand between her thighs mixed with the slide of hers on him, and she held him there, forehead to forehead, refusing to let either of them ease off.

Her fist dragged up him again, slower this time, thumb pressing just under the head until his hips jerked into the stroke. She kept her eyes on his while she did it, breath breaking against his mouth, the heel of his hand still firm on her clit and two fingers buried deep enough that every curl of them pulled a shaky sound out of her throat.

She rolled her hips to meet the next push, lace still yanked aside and biting at the crease of her thigh. Her free hand slid from his hair to his shoulder, nails catching skin, holding him over her so the rhythm didn’t slip. The shirt stayed bunched above her breasts. Every lift of her ribs dragged her nipples against the warm air between them.

“Harder,” she said, the word barely there, and tightened her grip around him to show him what she meant. Her strokes turned shorter, wetter, wrist twisting at the top while she clenched around his fingers. Sweat slipped down her temple. She didn’t look away, even when her thighs started to shake.

The mattress creaked under the rock of both of them. She chased the pressure of his palm, small broken gasps caught between kisses, her stomach brushing his forearm every time she lifted. Her hand never stopped. She worked him from base to tip in the same filthy cadence he was using inside her, slick gathering at her wrist, her thumb catching that ridge again and again.

“Ben—don’t stop.” Her heels dug in. She kissed him open and messy, tongue sliding against his, forehead still pressed to his, and kept stroking him through it, relentless, while her hips bucked up into his hand and stayed there.

[Benjamin Wilder]

The word *harder* nearly tore him in half. Her voice, wrecked and breathless, bypassed his brain and went straight to the heavy, pooling ache in his groin. When she tightened her slick fist around him and twisted her wrist at the top of the stroke, a violent shudder ripped through his shoulders, tearing a ragged sound from the back of his throat.

He couldn't have looked away from her if the room caught fire. Her eyes, dark and dilated, locked onto his while she systematically took him apart.

"Fuck, Cleo," he groaned, the curse grinding against her bruised lips.

He answered her demand with a ruthless, stuttering rhythm of his own. He pushed his fingers deeper, curling them upward to strike that aching, sensitive spot inside her, while the heel of his hand ground firmly into her clit. He felt her internal muscles clench around his fingers, tight and frantic, milking him just as effectively as her fist was working his cock.

Every time she bucked her hips, her warm stomach brushed his forearm—a soft, grounding reminder of the life they were making, completely at odds with the feral, unapologetic way she was undoing him.
He was losing his grip. Fast. The slick, relentless drag of her thumb over his ridge was blinding him. The wet sound of their bodies, the heat radiating between them, the taste of her mouth—it was dragging him right to the absolute edge.

"I'm not stopping," he panted, his chest heaving, sweat from his own forehead sliding against hers. "I'm right here. Let it go, baby. Come for me."

He curled his fingers inside her again, faster, matching the desperate, wet slide of her hand on his length. His hips jerked forward involuntarily, chasing the tight pressure of her fist, unable to hold back the frantic thrust of his pelvis anymore. He could feel the tension bowing her spine, the tremors starting in her thighs, the slick, burning heat of her pouring over his knuckles as she hovered right on the brink.

He didn't want to close his eyes. He wanted to watch her fall apart.

"Look at me," he rasped, tearing his mouth away just far enough to see her face, his free hand sliding from her shoulder to cup her jaw, his thumb sweeping fiercely over her cheekbone. "That's it. Break for me, Cleo."

He drove his fingers in deep and held them there, his thumb circling her clit with a rapid, merciless pressure, pouring every ounce of his focus into pushing her over the edge, even as her fist pumped him so hard his vision started to blur at the edges.

--------------------

Ben’s composure shattered, the last thread of restraint burning straight through. A low, ragged groan tore from his chest, vibrating against her lips as his body took over, running on pure, starved instinct.

A month of empty hotel rooms, cold sheets, and seeing her only through the flat glass of a phone screen vanished into nothing. The only thing that existed was the scorched heat of her skin, the friction of their tangled limbs, and the sheer, consuming reality of having her pinned beneath him.

He didn’t pull back; he crowded her, his weight settling over her with a heavy, deliberate possessiveness. He shifted his hips, bracing on his forearms just enough to keep from crushing the swell of her stomach, but pressing his pelvis flush against the notch of her thighs. The contact was devastatingly direct. Even through the thin barriers of fabric, every roll of his hips was heavy, blunt, and agonizingly slow, a punishing slide of friction that sent a jagged jolt straight up her spine.

"Cleo," he rasped, his voice dropping into that dark, gravel-rough basement register that only ever came out in the dark. His forehead dropped against hers, both of them breathing in each other's scorched air. "You're playing with fire. You know that, right?"

"Then burn," she breathed back, breathless, defiant, her nails biting into the muscles of his shoulders.

He didn’t give her another second to breathe. His mouth came down on hers with a bruising, lawless hunger, parting her lips with his tongue, claiming her mouth in a kiss that was wet, deep, and completely unsparing. It was a collision—teeth grazing, tongues tangling, a desperate re-learning of every curve and contour of each other's mouth.

His large, calloused hand left her hair and slid down her throat, thumb pinning the frantic flutter of her pulse for a half-second before dragging downward. He shoved the hem of her oversized shirt up, bunching the soft fabric high beneath her arms, completely baring the flushed skin of her torso to the cool room air. The contrast was electric—the chill of the bedroom against the radiating, feverish heat of her chest.

His gaze dropped, dark and heavily hooded, drinking her in. Her chest heaved, her nipples tight and peaked, her skin slick with a fine sheen of sweat. Seeing her completely exposed, completely undone by the same madness clawing at him, made his jaw lock tight.

"Look at you," he murmured, his thumb brushing a firm, teasing line across the sensitive peak of her breast, pulling a sharp, broken gasp from her lips. "Jesus, Cleo."

He didn't wait. He dipped his head, his mouth closing over her breast, hot and wet, drawing the tight nipple into his mouth while his teeth grazed the curve beneath it. Cleo cried out, her back arching violently off the mattress, her fingers diving into his dark curls, gripping tight and pulling him closer rather than pushing him away.

While his mouth worked her, his other hand mapped the curve of her hip, large fingers digging into the soft flesh before sliding around to the back of her thigh. With a low, demanding growl against her skin, he hitched her leg up, hooking her knee over his hip, angling her body so that she was completely, devastatingly open to him.

The shift brought him even deeper into the cradle of her thighs. The friction turned sharper, hotter, every rolling press of his hips meeting the damp heat gathering between her legs. Cleo rocked up to meet him instinctively, chasing the blunt, heavy drag of his body against hers, a desperate, broken cadence that set the wooden headboard softly knocking against the wall behind them.

"Ben—please," she choked out, her head tossing back against the pillows, her throat exposed in a long, taut line.

He lifted his head, his dark eyes locked onto hers with a fierce, unwavering intensity. He was breathing hard, a bead of sweat tracing the sharp line of his jaw. His hand slid from her hip down to the waistband of her lace underwear, his fingers hooking beneath the elastic, slowly, deliberately dragging the damp silk to the side until there was nothing left between his bare fingers and the burning, slick core of her.

When his palm made contact, dipping into her heat and pressing firmly against her swollen center, Cleo’s entire body seized. Her breath hitched on a high, strangled sound, her heels digging into the mattress as her hips bucked into his hand.

"I've got you," Ben growled against her jaw, his fingers circling in a relentless, slow, merciless rhythm, matching the heavy, rolling grind of his hips above. "Look at me, baby. Keep your eyes on me. Don't look away."

He leaned all his weight into the slide of his touch, feeling her internal muscles flutter and clench tight against the mounting pressure. He kissed the corner of her trembling mouth, his teeth catching her lower lip, holding her steady as he pushed the pace, taking them both right to the very edge of the cliff.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

Her eyes stayed on his because he had her mouth and she had nowhere else she wanted to look. The bite at her lower lip was light and not light at all, and when she tried to chase the kiss he only held her there, close enough that she could see the sweat gathering at his hairline and the way his lashes dropped when she rolled up into his hand. A sound caught in her throat. She swallowed it badly. The mattress dipped under her heel, and the curve of her stomach brushed the warm brace of his forearm as she shifted, not enough room between them for anything but heat.

“Unfair,” she managed, and it came out wrecked, almost laughing. Her fingers found the curls at the back of his neck and tightened, the strands damp and familiar against her knuckles. “You can’t—Ben—you can’t say look at me and then do that.”

That was his palm, broad and sure, circling until her hips answered without asking her first. She felt the drag of it all the way up her spine. Cool air slid over the skin he’d bared, her shirt bunched uselessly under her arms, and the contrast made her shiver hard enough that her knee hugged higher over his hip. She dragged her free hand down the slope of his shoulder, over muscle gone tight, and felt the breath leave him against her cheek. God, she knew that sound. It lived somewhere low in his chest when he was pretending he still had a plan.

She kissed the corner of his mouth where he wasn’t quite kissing her, clumsy and insistent, then tipped her face just enough to watch him. His jaw was set. A bead of sweat tracked toward it, and she caught it with her thumb, absurdly pleased when his breath hitched at the touch. “There you are,” she whispered, soft and ruined, like she’d found something he’d tried to hide in plain sight. Her smile broke when his fingers pressed firmer. It turned into a gasp she didn’t bother finishing. Her back arched, careful around the swell between them, and the headboard gave a small, traitorous knock against the wall.

She didn’t look away. That took effort. Everything in her wanted to shut her eyes and let the rhythm take her, the heavy roll of his hips meeting the slick pressure of his hand, heat gathering and breaking and gathering again. Instead she kept her gaze on his mouth, on the line between his brows, on the dark fall of a curl stuck to his temple. Her fingertips traced it back. She tugged, lightly, just to see what it did to him. His shoulders flexed under her palms. His breathing went rough at the edges. She felt ridiculous and incandescent and a little mean about how much she liked it.

“Don’t get smug,” she said, though her voice had gone thin and her thigh was trembling against him. She slid her hand down his back, palm flat to damp skin, and pulled him closer by nothing more complicated than wanting the weight of him. The friction sharpened. A laugh shook out of her, breathless, halfway to a curse. “Oh, that’s—okay. Okay, that’s not funny. That’s not—”

The rest dissolved when she rocked up to meet him and the sensation climbed too fast to talk over. Her fingers spasmed in his hair. She held on, forehead nearly against his, breathing the same scorched inch of air, watching the way his expression changed every time she moved. Open. Wrecked at the corners. Still locked on her like the rest of the room had politely excused itself. Sweat cooled along her ribs. The lace he’d pushed aside clung at her thigh. She was shaking, and the shaking made her laugh again, quieter this time, right against his mouth.

“Ben.” Just his name, caught and warm. She kissed him properly then, or as properly as she could manage with her breath breaking, her hand cupping his jaw so he couldn’t drift even an inch. Her heel dug into the mattress. She curled herself closer around him, stomach brushing his forearm, hips chasing the slow merciless press of his hand, and let the sound she made live between their mouths. “Stay right there. Right—yes. Don’t you dare get reasonable.”

Her eyes fluttered and opened again immediately, because she wanted the sight of him more than she wanted relief from it. His curls were a mess in her fist. His shoulders moved under her hands every time he breathed. She studied the giveaway in it, the way control kept slipping and catching at the edge of his mouth, and felt her own body answer before she had anything clever left to say. Pressure. Warmth. The bed shifting under them. She clung, smiled crookedly against his cheek when another tremor ran through her, and pulled him down into it like the only sensible thing in the world was the next inch closer.

[Benjamin Wilder]

Ben gave up the last hollow pretense of holding back the second she dragged him that final inch closer. The slick, relentless friction of her hand gripping him had already burned through whatever strategic pacing he thought he was capable of maintaining, leaving him running on pure, jet-lagged instinct. He let his weight drop more fully against the mattress, bracing his forearm just above the soft swell of her stomach so he didn’t crowd her, but angling his hips to meet the demanding slide of her fist. Every time her thumb caught the sensitive ridge at the top of her stroke, a jagged line of electricity shot straight up his spine, pulling a low, wrecked sound out of his throat that he didn't even try to swallow.

"Reasonable wasn't even on the itinerary," he rasped, the words vibrating harshly against the damp skin of her cheek before he finally closed the maddening distance and took her mouth again. It was a messy, open collision of teeth and tongues, a desperate attempt to swallow the broken gasps she was breathing into the narrow space between them. He drove his fingers deeper into her wet heat, feeling the immediate, convulsive hitch of her breath against his lips. The inside of her was slick and scorching, the tight muscles of her channel clenching around his digits with a greedy, involuntary rhythm that perfectly matched the filthy cadence of her hand on him.

He twisted his wrist, pressing the heel of his hand deliberately against the swollen knot of nerves at her center, and felt her entire body bow into the touch. The headboard gave another solid, rhythmic thump against the drywall, a blunt metronome marking the total collapse of his self-control. He opened his eyes, forcing himself to hold her dark, blown-wide gaze even as the edges of his vision started to blur with the sheer physical demand of it. She was looking at him like he was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth, and the raw, unpolished honesty of it made his chest tighten with an affection so sharp it practically ached.

The temperature in the room seemed to have spiked ten degrees in the last five minutes, the cool draft from the hallway completely neutralized by the radiating heat of their tangled limbs. Ben shifted his thigh, parting her legs a fraction wider to give his hand a better angle, entirely focused on the heavy, dragging friction that was rapidly stripping him down to his base elements. He dragged his thumb deliberately over her clit, rewarded instantly by the sharp bite of her nails digging into the tense muscles of his shoulder. Her hips chased the motion, a desperate, rolling buck that drove him deeper and sent another violent shudder ripping through her thighs.

He could feel the exact moment her grip on him tightened in response, her fingers slick and merciless as they stroked him from base to tip in a punishing, unbroken rhythm. It was a terrifyingly synchronized circuit, every deliberate slide of his fingers inside her generating a tighter, faster stroke from her hand until he was practically blind with it. The faint, distant hum of a siren passing on the street outside the apartment window felt like it belonged to an entirely different planet. Right now, his entire universe was restricted to the damp tangle of her dark hair wrapped around his knuckles and the ragged, uneven tear of her breathing.

"Look at me," he echoed her earlier command, his voice dropping an octave into a gravelly, demanding scrape as he pulled his mouth a fraction of an inch away. He wanted to see it happen, needed to watch the exact second the tension finally shattered her completely. He quickened the pace of his fingers, a relentless, driving thrust that dragged a high, keening sound from her throat. He felt the warning flutter of her internal muscles beginning to seize, the rapid, chaotic contractions telegraphing that she was hovering right on the edge of the drop.

Her whole body went rigid, a sudden, breath-stealing tension snapping through her frame as she tipped her head back against the pillows. Ben swallowed her cry, his mouth crashing down on hers as the violent waves of her climax finally broke, milking his fingers with a crushing, desperate strength. He kept his hand moving, riding out the intense, rolling release with her, his thumb sweeping relentlessly over her sensitive center until she was shaking apart underneath him. The sheer sensory overload of feeling her come around his fingers, combined with the frantic, unyielding grip of her hand on his own rigid length, pushed him past the point of no return.

With a harsh, guttural groan, Ben abandoned the kiss, burying his face in the damp, flushed curve of her neck as his own climax hit him like a freight train. He drove his hips blindly forward into the stroke of her hand, his muscles locking tight as wave after wave of blinding heat ripped through his core. He spilled into her palm with a series of heavy, violent shudders, his lungs dragging in useless, oxygen-starved gasps of air that tasted like salt and sweat. For a long, suspended eternity, the only reality was the heavy, thrumming pulse echoing in his ears and the solid, anchoring weight of her body beneath him.

Slowly, agonizingly, the room began to reassemble itself from the wreckage. The erratic hammering of his heart gradually downshifted, though his chest still heaved against hers in a ragged, syncopated rhythm. He didn't immediately pull his hand away, letting his fingers rest quietly inside her while the last, faint tremors of her release slowly subsided. His other arm felt like it was made of liquid lead, but he managed to slide it fully around her waist, drawing her flush against his side as the adrenaline finally began to drain out of his bloodstream, leaving a heavy, profound exhaustion in its wake.

Ben let out a long, slow exhale that ruffled the damp hair sticking to her collarbone, feeling the last month of travel, bad coffee, and delayed flights finally catch up to him all at once. He carefully withdrew his hand, grabbing a stray towel that had somehow migrated to the nightstand earlier to manage the mess before collapsing fully onto his back. He stared up at the familiar cracks in the ceiling plaster, the ambient glow of the streetlights filtering through the blinds painting everything in hazy, muted gold. The silence stretched comfortably between them, thick and domestic and entirely devoid of the frantic urgency that had just consumed the bed.

"I think my soul just temporarily left my body," he mumbled after a long minute, his voice a dry, gravelly croak that sounded like he’d been eating glass for breakfast. He turned his head on the pillow to look at her, a slow, lazy grin pulling at the corner of his mouth despite the absolute lethargy seeping into his bones. "If the building catches fire right now, you’re going to have to leave me behind. I’m completely immobilized, so I essentially belong to the mattress now."

He reached out, his fingers finding hers in the tangle of discarded blankets and lacing them together, a casual, grounding touch that felt just as necessary as the physical chaos from five minutes ago. His thumb brushed over her knuckles, feeling the faint, lingering tremor in her hand, and his grin softened into something quieter and far more sincere. The relief of being home was a physical weight, settling deep into his chest and displacing the lingering anxiety of the South American tour schedule. He didn't need to give a speech about it; the simple, irrefutable proof was the fact that he was lying in his own bed, holding her hand, and arguing about fire evacuation protocols.

With a grunt of effort, Ben shifted onto his side, dragging the bunched-up comforter from the foot of the bed and pulling it over them both to ward off the encroaching chill of the air conditioning. He settled close, automatically adjusting his angle to accommodate the small, firm bump of her stomach pressing against his hip. It was a new piece of their physical geometry, one he was still getting used to, but the adjustment felt completely natural, just another layer added to the foundation they had already built. He rested his palm lightly over the curve of her belly, the warmth of it seeping straight through his skin.

"So," he murmured, closing his eyes as the sheer gravity of his exhaustion began to pull him under. He dragged his thumb lazily back and forth across the soft cotton of her shirt, fully intending to fall asleep in the next thirty seconds. "Are we still doing the three-course room service, or have we officially reached the point of the evening where I can bribe you with the leftover grilled cheese and a promise to be a functioning adult tomorrow?"

He didn't wait for an answer, pressing a sleepy, lingering kiss to the crown of her head before burying his face in the pillow. The apartment was quiet, the scent of her paint supplies drifting faintly from the hallway, mixing with the lingering smell of the dinner she had made him earlier. He was supposed to be unpacking, or reviewing the east coast itinerary, or doing laundry, but absolutely none of it mattered. He was exactly where he was supposed to be, the world outside the front door completely irrelevant until the sun came up.

[Cleo Ashcroft]

The last of his restraint went the moment she pulled him that last inch closer, and Cleo felt it in the way his weight settled more fully into the mattress, careful still of the soft rise of her stomach even as his hips met the demanding slide of her hand. Heat rolled through her in a bright, unbroken current. She turned her face into the rasp of his voice against her cheek, the words landing somewhere between a confession and a surrender, and kissed him before either of them could pretend they had anything left to ration.

Reasonable had never stood a chance in this room. Her mouth opened under his, messy and grateful, tasting salt and the low sound he didn’t bother to swallow. She kept her fist moving, slick and certain, while his fingers drove deeper and the heel of his hand found the place that made her breath break against his lips. Her free arm hooked around his shoulder. Nails caught in the tense line of muscle there. Every stroke answered the next until the headboard knocked the drywall in a blunt, familiar rhythm and the rest of the apartment ceased to exist.

She held his gaze when he opened his eyes, dark and blown wide and fixed on her as if the blur at the edges of his vision couldn’t be allowed to take her with it. The look undid something in her chest. She chased the drag of his thumb with a roll of her hips, thighs shaking, the cool spill of hallway air long since burned off by the heat of their tangled limbs. A siren passed somewhere far below the window and might as well have belonged to another city. Her whole world had narrowed to the damp weight of her hair caught in his knuckles, the relentless press of his hand, and the way his breath tore when her grip tightened in answer.

“Look at me,” he said, voice gone gravel, and she did. She kept her eyes on his even as the tension climbed past anything she could name, even as her head tipped back into the pillows and a high, broken sound left her throat. His mouth crashed down over the cry. The climax took her all at once, a bright, crushing wave that bowed her up into him and shook through her thighs and belly and the hand still wrapped around him. She clung, gasping into the kiss, feeling him ride it out with her until the aftershocks turned her boneless and the room swam gold at the edges.

She was still trembling when he buried his face in the curve of her neck and came apart against her palm. The groan vibrated straight into her skin. His hips drove forward once, twice, muscles locking, and she held him through every shudder, palm slick, breath caught somewhere between his and the pillow. For a long moment there was nothing but the heavy pulse in her ears and the solid weight of him braced above the small firm curve of her stomach, careful even then. She pressed her mouth to his temple. Her fingers loosened only when the last of it left him in a wrecked exhale that stirred the damp hair at her collarbone.

The room came back by degrees. His chest heaved against hers in a ragged, slowing rhythm. He didn’t pull away at once, and she was glad of the quiet weight of his hand while the faint tremors finished working through her. When he finally drew his arm around her waist and gathered her in, she went willingly, forehead finding the warm hollow beneath his jaw. The month of bad coffee and delayed flights seemed to settle over both of them at once. She felt it in the slack of his shoulders, in the way his breath finally lengthened against her hair.

He cleaned them up with the towel from the nightstand and dropped onto his back, staring at the familiar cracks in the ceiling. Cleo didn’t give the space between them time to cool. She rolled into his side at once, fitting herself along the long line of him, her head coming to rest over the steady thump of his heart. The small swell of her belly settled comfortably against his hip. Under the tangle of sheets her hand searched until her fingers found his, and she laced them together without hesitation, palm to palm, the tremor in her own hand answered by the solid warmth of his.

“Your soul,” she managed, voice still unsteady with leftover breath and the laugh that rose under it, “is dramatically unreliable.” She tipped her face up enough to catch the lazy grin at the corner of his mouth and felt her own answer it. “If the building catches fire, the firefighters can retrieve you. I am not carrying a fully grown man down four flights of stairs while pregnant, and I refuse to abandon our baby’s father to the mattress. They can roll you out on it. I’ll hold the door.”

His fingers tightened through hers. His thumb moved over her knuckles, slow and grounding, and she squeezed back, shifting their joined hands until they rested more easily against the sheet between them. He dragged the comforter up from the foot of the bed and pulled it over both of them. The chill of the air conditioning retreated under the familiar weight of the quilt. When he turned onto his side and adjusted around the firm curve of her stomach, settling his palm lightly over it, Cleo let her free hand come to rest across the back of his for a moment, a brief, affectionate press, before it settled again on the warm plane of his chest.

The quiet that followed felt domestic in a way the last month of screens and countdown clocks never had. She listened to his breathing begin to even out. Streetlight filtered through the blinds in muted gold. Somewhere down the hall the faint mineral smell of her paints lingered under the ghost of the dinner she had made him, grilled cheese and the soup she had kept warm too long. His thumb dragged lazily over the cotton of her shirt. She watched the tension leave his face by inches and felt something in her own ribs loosen with it.

“Three-course room service was always a lie,” she murmured, smiling against his shoulder. “Your version of room service is whatever is closest to the bed and a promise you will not burn the kitchen down tomorrow. The grilled cheese is fine. Better than fine. You are not getting up. You just got home. The itinerary can wait until you remember what time zone you’re in.”

He kissed the crown of her head, sleepy and lingering, and turned his face into the pillow. Cleo stayed where she was. Their fingers remained threaded together beneath the comforter. His palm rested warm over the small rise of her stomach, and she did not move it. The apartment held its ordinary nighttime sounds: the low hum of the building, a car passing on the street below, the soft tick of the radiator that never quite behaved. His breathing lengthened. Slowed. Evened into the particular rhythm she had not heard in person for thirty-one days.

Her eyes stung without warning.

She blinked, once, thinking it was only the leftover heat and the dim light, and a tear slipped free anyway. It tracked down her cheek and darkened a small spot on the cotton of his shirt. Another followed before she could catch it. A tiny, breathless laugh escaped her, more air than sound. She lifted her free hand and wiped her cheek with the side of her wrist, then let the hand fall back to his chest, fingers curling lightly in the fabric. She did not pull away. She pressed her face more firmly into him instead, breathing in soap and skin and the particular warmth that meant he was actually here, not a pixelated version of himself saying goodnight from a hotel room with bad wifi.

The month had not been empty. She had painted. She had met Phoebe for coffee and let herself be dragged to the farmer’s market. She had gone to the appointment alone and texted him the heartbeat recording afterward, and she had slept in the middle of the bed without saving his side. None of that had been pretending. She had been all right. She was still all right. The tears had nothing to do with doubt and everything to do with the simple, overwhelming fact of his weight beside her, his hand in hers, the rise and fall of his chest under her cheek, and no clock anywhere in the room that meant he had to hang up.

“I missed you,” she whispered into the shirt, so low it barely stirred the air. “I’m just really happy you’re home.”

She squeezed their intertwined fingers once, gently, and felt the faint answering pressure of a man already more than halfway to sleep. The tears kept coming for a little while, quiet and warm, soaking a small patch of cotton before they began to slow. She kissed the damp spot without lifting her head. Outside, the street went on being a street. Inside, the comforter held the heat of both of them, and the small firm curve of her belly rested easily between his palm and her body.

Her own exhaustion crept in behind the relief. Her eyes grew heavy. The last tear dried against her skin. She stayed curled exactly where she was, smiling faintly into the dark of his shirt, listening to the steady proof of his breathing until sleep took her too.

[Benjamin Wilder]

The aftermath was a heavy, sinking gravity that pulled Ben straight down into the mattress. His entire skeletal structure felt like it had been replaced by warm lead, and the lingering adrenaline was finally ceding ground to a month’s worth of accumulated travel fatigue. When the mattress shifted and a familiar, warm weight slotted perfectly against his side, he let out a long, quiet exhale that emptied his lungs completely. He didn't have to navigate a time zone difference or angle a phone screen to see her; he just had to tilt his chin to feel the crown of her head resting squarely over his sternum. It was the most profound, immediate relief he had felt since walking out the door thirty days ago.

His hand lay limp on the sheets until her fingers slid into his, an automatic, thoughtless gesture that instantly anchored him. He closed his grip around hers, his thumb mapping the familiar knuckles and the faint, lingering tremor that mirrored the exhaustion humming in his own veins. The contrast in their hands was something he had noticed a thousand times, but tonight it carried the specific, grounding weight of being exactly where he belonged. He dragged their joined hands closer, resting them comfortably between their bodies where the heat of the blankets had already begun to pool. There was nowhere else on the planet he needed to be, and the absolute certainty of that fact settled deep into his bones.

Her pragmatic approach to a hypothetical building fire pulled a rough, chest-deep laugh out of him that vibrated against her cheek. He pictured the entire scenario with cinematic clarity: Cleo standing safely on the sidewalk in her oversized shirt, politely directing a team of firefighters to extract him and his mattress while she supervised. It was exactly the kind of ruthlessly practical affection he loved her for, devoid of unnecessary melodrama but entirely committed to keeping him around. He imagined the baby would probably inherit that exact same brand of merciless logic, which meant he was going to spend the next two decades entirely outmaneuvered in his own home. He was perfectly fine with that trajectory, especially if it meant he didn't have to walk down four flights of stairs tonight.

"I appreciate you holding the door for the rescue crew," he murmured, his voice a low, gravelly scrape that sounded exactly as wrecked as he felt. "That shows real dedication to the family unit. Just make sure they don't drop me in the stairwell, because I am absolutely not going to brace myself for impact." He let his head loll to the side, pressing his cheek against the messy tangle of her dark hair while the amusement continued to rumble quietly in his chest. "I think the mattress is a lost cause, though. We've permanently bonded on a molecular level, so they'll just have to strap the whole thing to the top of the fire engine."

He managed to summon just enough leverage to drag the heavy comforter up from the foot of the bed, pulling the quilt over their shoulders to block out the sharp chill of the Los Angeles air conditioning. Settling back onto his side required a minor recalibration of angles, accommodating the small, firm shape of the pregnancy that had fundamentally altered the geometry of their shared space. He rested his palm over the curve of her stomach with an easy, practiced familiarity, the gesture already feeling like a deeply ingrained habit rather than a novelty. When her hand covered his for a fleeting, affectionate second before moving to his chest, the tactile confirmation of her presence sent a fresh wave of warmth straight through his ribcage. He couldn't imagine sleeping without this exact weight beside him ever again.

The apartment around them settled into its familiar nocturnal rhythm, a quiet, domestic soundtrack that entirely erased the chaotic noise of the South American tour. He could hear the faint, erratic ticking of the ancient radiator near the window, blending seamlessly with the low hum of street traffic drifting up from the pavement below. Woven into the cool air was the unmistakable, grounding scent of her studio—a faint trace of mineral spirits and dried oil paint—layered beneath the lingering aroma of the dinner waiting in the kitchen. It was a chaotic, perfectly imperfect sensory collage that told him exactly where he was and who he was with. The urge to check a clock or run through an itinerary simply vanished, replaced by the sheer luxury of unstructured time.

Her brutal assessment of his room service ambitions was entirely accurate, stripping away his grand promises of a three-course meal with merciless precision. He knew exactly what was waiting in the kitchen—the grilled cheese she had made, likely cold by now, and whatever fruit was left on the counter—and right now, it sounded like a culinary masterpiece. The idea of navigating a menu, making a phone call, and waiting for a stranger to knock on the door felt like a logistical mountain he was utterly incapable of climbing. The tour schedule was currently buried at the bottom of his dark duffel bag by the front door, and he fully intended to leave it there until the sun came up. He let out a long, contented sigh, feeling the last knots of tension finally unspool from his shoulders.

"You drive a hard bargain, but I concede to the grilled cheese," he mumbled against her hair, his words beginning to slur heavily as sleep dragged him under. "It's the superior option anyway. I'll eat it cold at three in the morning when the jet lag inevitably wakes me up, and it will be the best thing I've had in a month." He pressed a slow, deliberate kiss to the crown of her head, inhaling the clean, familiar scent of her shampoo, and let his eyes drift shut. "The itinerary is dead to me. Management has officially clocked out for the foreseeable future."

The sheer gravity of his exhaustion finally won, pulling him down into a heavy, twilight state where the edges of the room began to blur and dissolve. He could feel the steady, rhythmic rise and fall of her chest against his own, a deeply hypnotic cadence that lulled him toward unconsciousness faster than any hotel white noise machine ever could. His fingers remained loosely laced with hers beneath the heavy quilt, a subconscious anchor keeping him tethered to the bed while his mind began to drift. He was vaguely aware of the warmth radiating from her skin, the solid press of her leg against his, and the absolute, unbroken silence of a space that belonged entirely to them. It was a flawless conclusion to an impossibly long month.

He was hovering right on the edge of a deep sleep when the subtle, unmistakable dampness began to seep through the thin cotton of his black t-shirt. It wasn't a sudden shift, but a quiet, localized warmth spreading directly over his sternum, accompanied by a nearly imperceptible hitch in the breathing pattern he had just memorized. Ben's heavy eyelids fluttered, the protective instinct hardwired into his brain cutting through the thick fog of exhaustion to drag him back to the surface. He didn't immediately move or speak, keeping his breathing steady as he processed the faint, shuddering intake of air against his collarbone. He recognized the specific weight of this moment; it wasn't sadness or distress, but the inevitable, overwhelming crash of adrenaline finally leaving her system.

The faint pressure of her knuckles curling into his shirt was a tiny, grounding anchor, and he felt the brush of her wrist as she attempted to casually erase the physical evidence of her tears in the dark. He simply let her do it, refusing to make a production out of a vulnerability she was clearly trying to keep quiet and contained. His thumb resumed its slow, rhythmic sweep across her knuckles, offering a silent, steady current of reassurance that didn't require any grand declarations or analytical conversations. He knew exactly how much she had carried over the last thirty days, balancing her own independent life, her art, and the pregnancy without ever making him feel guilty for his absence. The fact that the dam was finally breaking a little bit now, in the safety of their own bed, made his chest ache with a profound, consuming affection.

The impossibly quiet whisper that followed struck him directly in the center of his chest, cracking open whatever remaining emotional distance the tour had tried to build. It wasn't an accusation or a complaint, just a raw, unpolished truth delivered into the fabric of his shirt that completely wrecked him all over again. He squeezed their intertwined fingers with a deliberate, anchoring pressure, letting the physical touch communicate exactly how fully he understood the sentiment. The reality of the distance they had just navigated was stark and unavoidable, but the immediate, tactile proof of their survival was lying right here in his arms. He didn't need to unravel the entire month of missing her; he just needed to make sure she knew the feeling was entirely mutual.

"I've got you," he whispered back, his voice incredibly thick and heavy with sleep, yet entirely focused on the space between them. "I'm right here, Cleo. I'm not going anywhere." He turned his face into her hair, pressing a firm, lingering kiss against the dark strands, letting his lips rest there as he breathed in the quiet scent of their home. The damp patch on his chest was a badge of honor, a tangible reminder that they had successfully crossed the finish line of a miserable separation. He shifted his arm just slightly, pulling her a fraction of an inch closer so that the curve of her belly rested even more securely against his palm.

He could feel the slow, steady deceleration of her tears, the quiet hitch in her breath smoothing out as the warmth of the blankets and the security of the room worked their magic. His own heart rate settled into a deep, lazy rhythm, matching hers beat for beat while the apartment hummed quietly around them. He thought vaguely about the canvas waiting in the other room, the one she had painted while he was thousands of miles away, and made a mental note to spend a significant portion of tomorrow just watching her work. But tomorrow was a distant, abstract concept that held absolutely no power over the immediate sanctuary of tonight. The only thing that mattered was the steady, rhythmic sweep of his thumb over her knuckles and the solid, undeniable weight of his family in his arms.

The heavy, irresistible pull of sleep finally returned, dragging him under with a gentle, inescapable gravity that he had no desire to fight. The lingering soreness in his muscles felt like a hard-won victory, the physical exhaustion entirely eclipsed by the profound, quiet peace settling over his mind. He let his awareness narrow down to the specific, tactile details of the bed: the soft cotton beneath his cheek, the warmth of her hand in his, and the faint, rhythmic movement of the baby resting beneath his palm. It was the best, most complete version of coming home he could possibly imagine. Ben let out one final, contented breath, allowing the dark, quiet safety of the room to completely pull him under.