Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
“Do you like it?” I ask quietly.
Her breath fans my mouth. “I love it, Lucas.”
The first kiss is slow, deep, a reacquainting. It feels like the front door opening after a long day—the exhale, the warmth, the rightness. She makes a sound that’s all throat and heart and I answer with a shaky laugh I don’t usually let out loud. My hands map the familiar: the curve of her hip, the line of her back, the small shiver when I trace beneath her ear with my mouth. She melts and rises at once, meeting me, urging me.
Clothes become less than necessary. We peel away layers like we’re unwrapping a gift we already know we love—no hurry, no ceremony, just the soft rip of fabric and the shared grin when a sleeve gets stubborn. I memorize again: the path of her collarbone under my lips, the way her breath hitches when I bracket her waist and lift, the heat of her skin under my palms as I lay her back on the bed I built for us.
“Lucas,” she says, and the way she says my name is its own gravity.
“Mel,” I answer, and it’s both a prayer and a promise.
We move together, slow becoming sure, sure blazing into something that lights the ceiling. I hold myself over her and then beneath her and then tangled up with her, every angle a new yes. She’s laughter and heat and the kind of focus I thought only belonged to work, and I’m undone in the best way, undone on purpose, rebuilding as we go.
I talk to her in the language she taught me. It’s little questions against her mouth, along her throat, at her ear, every answer a soft more. She answers with hands and hips and the low sounds that make my chest too tight for breath. She pulls me closer, and I go willingly. I anchor as she arcs. When she breaks, it’s like the house inhales with us—the lights brighter, the world sharper. I follow, head pressed to her shoulder, and the sharp becomes soft, the bright becomes steady.
After, we lie in the glow with our breaths syncing back to ordinary. I trace slow, lazy patterns on her hipbone, and she draws invisible constellations on my shoulder with one fingertip. The music hums; the candles pulse; the house listens. For the first time, it’s not a structure I’ve assessed. It’s a place that knows us.
“What are you thinking?” she asks into my neck, the question that used to spook me because it could be anything and now only ever means tell me your thoughts.
“That this feels like a perimeter I want to keep forever,” I say. “That I bought a house for the first time in my life and it was the easiest decision I’ve ever made. That I’m excited to teach Ev how to throw a ball in that yard and also how to come inside when the weather gets mean. That I cannot—will not—believe I get this with you.”
She presses a kiss to my jaw, smiling. “Lights that stay on,” she whispers.
“Always,” I say, and reach blindly to the nightstand. The lemon ornament sits there, ridiculous and perfect. I hang it on the lamp switch, let it catch the fairy lights and throw them back in tiny pieces across the ceiling. Stars, lemons, whatever we want them to be.
My phone is face down, silenced except for Amelia’s code. It buzzes once—
Amelia: All good. He smiled in his sleep. I’m teaching him to say Auntie first.
I send back a laughing emoji and a threat to cut her off from cookie supplies if she succeeds.
I roll back to Melanie and pull the sheet over us, the two of us a tangle of warm limbs and clean sheets and the kind of tired that will always feel like victory. Outside, a late train whispers through Saint Pierce. Inside, the house we chose breathes with us.
“Welcome home,” I tell her.
She curls closer, fits herself under my arm like she’s known this cutout was waiting since long before we met. “Welcome home, Lucas,” she says, and it lands in my chest like a key turned in a final lock.
And as the lights glow—battery and otherwise—I understand that “happily ever after” isn’t a finish line. It’s a room you keep warm, a bed you set, a door you lock, a yard you fill, a life you say yes to every night you get the chance.
In the soft dark, I kiss her once more, slow and sure, and we start the next part.