Chapter 15
EM
Miles’s question shot through me like a bucket of ice water.
Snack.
Right. That was what normal adults did in kitchens at midnight. Not make out like teenagers on the verge of making terrible, wonderful decisions.
“I, uh, yeah, bud.” My voice came out two octaves higher than normal. I cleared my throat. “Just talking about…food.”
Nailed it.
Noah still stood between my knees, his hands hovering at my hips like he didn’t know whether to yank me back in or shove himself all the way across the room. His pupils were still blown, lips swollen, hair sticking up in about four different directions where my fingers had been.
I’d done that. To his hair. To his mouth. I’d kissed Noah Abbott, famous NFL player.
I was going to die.
“We woke you up?” Noah asked, doing a better job than I was at pretending we were fine. His voice was only slightly rough, like he’d swallowed gravel.
Miles rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and yawned. “I had a dream Sassy was a dragon.” He squinted at us. “Why is Aunt Em on the counter?”
Fantastic question.
“I’m…tall now,” I blurted. “I live here now. On the counter. It’s my new home.”
Noah choked. Actually choked.
“Em was helping me with the dishes,” he said quickly, moving away from me so fast I almost reached for him on instinct. “I’m not good at…stacking.”
“Yeah,” I added weakly. “He needed a supervisor.”
Miles considered this like it made perfect sense. “Can we have a snack?”
“Sure,” I said, grateful for a task that didn’t involve my tongue down his uncle’s throat. “What’re you thinking? Apple slices? Crackers? Air?”
He made a face. “Air’s not a snack.”
I hopped down from the counter as casually as possible. My legs were jelly. My knees might never recover.
I busied myself at the pantry so he couldn’t see my face, which probably looked like I’d finished a three-hour make-out montage.
Behind me, Noah moved. His presence shifted to the other side of the island like we’d silently agreed on opposite corners.
Not touching him was the right choice. I’d felt how thick and strong and hard he was…
everywhere. And the desperate sound he made while kissing me?
I’d replay that for years.
“Can I have cereal?” Miles asked.
“Little bowl,” Noah said. “We’re not doing second dinner at midnight.”
I poured a modest amount of cereal into a bowl with shaking hands, then added milk and slid it toward Miles at the table. Sassy trotted in, sniffing his feet like she was checking for crumbs.
“Hi, Sass,” he said, calmer now, rubbing her head. “You missed my dragon dream.”
“That sounds terrifying,” I said. “Was she a nice dragon or the steal-your-gold kind?”
“Nice,” he said through a mouthful of cereal. “She let me ride her.”
“Obviously,” I said. “She’s a lady.”
My heart rate finally began to drop from will definitely have a stroke to merely cardio class. I risked a glance at Noah.
He leaned against the counter, arms crossed, watching Miles with this soft, tired expression that did something awful and warm to my insides. His jaw was still tight, though. When he felt me looking, his gaze flicked to mine.
For a second, the kitchen went silent in my ears. It was just…him. The man who’d confessed he’d wanted me for years. The one who’d kissed me like I was oxygen and he’d been drowning. How could that be? How had I not known or realized? I needed time to unpack that.
My cheeks burned. I snapped my attention back to Miles.
“Sweetheart,” I said, aiming for normal. “After your cereal, do you want me to tuck you back in?”
His eyes lit up. “With a story?”
“Sure,” I said. “We can continue the saga of Tree Monster Kevin.”
He beamed. “Yes. He needs a dragon friend.”
“Perfect,” I said, ignoring the way Noah’s mouth tugged at the corner like he remembered how much I loved these ridiculous bedtime sagas. “We’ll interview candidates.”
Miles polished off his cereal like it was his job. I rinsed the bowl, set it in the sink, then held out my hand. “Come on, champ. Bedtime, round two. Sorry I missed your earlier one.”
He slid off the chair and grabbed my fingers, dinosaur tucked under his arm. “’Night, Uncle Noah.”
“Night, bud.” Noah’s voice softened. “Love you.”
“Love you,” Miles mumbled, already yawning as I led him down the hall.
As soon as we were out of the kitchen, my brain started screaming again.
I’d kissed Noah, and he kissed me back. God, it was probably the best kiss I’d ever had in my life? Okay, yeah, no question about it.
In Miles’s room, things were easier. There were rules here. Scripts. Get him into bed. Adjust the nightlight. Make sure his dinosaur was on guard duty.
I tucked the blanket around him and launched into the story, letting my voice and hands do the work almost on autopilot.
“…and then Tree Monster Kevin realized he didn’t want to scare people anymore,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “So he applied for the dragon program.”
“The what?” Miles asked sleepily, blinking up at me.
“The dragon program,” I repeated solemnly. “Rigorous training. Lots of interviews. You have to prove you won’t burn down villages. Very competitive.”
He giggled. “Did he get in?”
“Well, the dean of dragons, who may or may not have been Sassy in a tiny hat, pulled his file and said, ‘Kevin, do you know the difference between roasting marshmallows and roasting villagers?’”
Miles snorted. “What’d he say?”
“He said, ‘I am…learning.’ But he promised to try very hard, and the dean could tell he had a good heart, so she gave him a chance. Probationary dragon.”
“Like me starting swim lessons,” he mumbled, his eyes drifting shut.
“Exactly like that,” I said, my voice softening. “And you’re going to be great at those too.”
He hummed, already half-gone. “Will you…come to my swim meet?”
I swallowed over the lump that suddenly formed. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
He nodded once, satisfied, and drifted into full snores. I sat there a second longer, watching his little chest rise and fall, the Avengers comforter bunched around his chin.
He trusted us. Both of us. In his world, Aunt Em and Uncle Noah were there. A team.
The weight of that pressed on my ribs. Whatever that kiss was—whatever this thing shifting between us was—didn’t only impact me. Or him. It touched this tiny human who’d already had his world blown apart.
I bent and kissed Miles’s forehead. “Good night, dragon rider,” I whispered.
Sassy, who’d flopped in the hallway, thumped her tail once as I slipped the door almost closed.
Then I turned and nearly crashed into Noah.
He was leaning against the opposite wall, arms folded over his chest again, ankles crossed. The hallway light caught on the stubble along his jaw. It looked darker than usual. Or maybe I was noticing…more.
“Sorry,” I said, heart jumping. “Didn’t see you there.”
“Didn’t mean to lurk,” he said quietly. “Just wanted to make sure he got back down okay.”
“He’s out,” I said. “Kevin the tree monster joined a dragon academy. It really took it out of him.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “You’re really good with him.”
“Yeah, well. I’ve had practice entertaining overtired men.”
His eyes met mine. Something flickered there, hot and startled. The air between us felt heavy again.
“Em,” he said.
Just that. My name. It did unspeakable things to my insides.
“We should…probably talk,” I blurted. “About…that. About what happened in the kitchen.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, pushing off the wall. “We should.”
We stood there, five feet apart, neither of us moving.
“I’m sorry,” we said at the same time.
I winced. “You first.”
He shook his head. “No, you—”
“God, this is already a nightmare,” I muttered, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Okay. I’ll go. I’m sorry I lied about the date. That was…immature and panicky and stupid. I shouldn’t have dragged some hypothetical software engineer into my mess because I was embarrassed.”
“You didn’t have a date?” he asked, brows pulling together. “You were embarrassed?”
Heat scorched my neck. “It doesn’t matter. I found a date and then hung out at a late-night coffee shop hiding in shame. Point is, I put us in a weird position. And then I jumped you like a deranged raccoon in a dumpster, which, again, not my best work.”
His mouth twitched. “You did not look like a raccoon.”
“That’s a lie, but appreciated,” I said. “I…everything you said, Noah. I wasn’t expecting it. You can’t drop ‘it’s always been you’ and then expect me to have normal control.”
He rubbed the back of his neck, gaze dropping for a second.
“I know. I should’ve handled the situation better.
I just—watching you walk out the door tonight, thinking about you with some guy who doesn’t know your coffee order or that you hate being on the inside seat in restaurant booths—it made me lose my mind a little. ”
“Oh,” I said. My heart went all gooey and traitorous. “That’s…weirdly specific.”
“Yeah, well.” He huffed out a humorless laugh. “I’ve been paying attention for a long time.”
Silence settled over us. Not the comfortable kind we’d had before this week. This one crackled.
“I don’t know what to do with this,” I admitted, toes curling in the carpet. “With…us. With the kiss. With you saying all of that. I mean, I know what my body wants to do with it, but the rest of me is a little behind.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth for a beat, then came back to my eyes. “What do you want, Em? What do you actually want? I’ll give you anything I can.”
I opened my mouth. Closed it. Went searching through all the tangled feelings in my chest.
Want was easy. I’d trusted him for years. Loved him for years. I loved his attention and how he made me feel. I loved his stupid dimple, his steady presence, his laugh. Wanted mornings where he made coffee and I stole his hoodies and we didn’t dance around this line like it was barbed wire.