Chapter 13
JOY
Sunlight was still on the floor when I came back to myself.
Not bright, morning sunlight—this was the late-day kind, softened by the angle of it, turning the dust motes into glitter and making my wood floors look warmer than they had any right to.
Outside the front windows, King Street hummed the way it always did—footsteps, distant laughter, a car horn that sounded more impatient than angry.
And downstairs, the bakery was still going.
I could smell it through the floorboards, that steady pulse of sugar and yeast and heat. Someone was definitely pulling something out of an oven. A tray clattered. A bell rang. A man’s voice carried up through the old building like it had always lived inside the walls.
Normal life.
Ordinary life.
The kind I’d built my whole world around.
Except I wasn’t ordinary anymore.
Micah lay beside me in the narrow strip of space my bed allowed, his body turned slightly toward mine like he’d chosen a direction and then refused to change it.
One arm was thrown above his head, the other heavy across my waist—casual, possessive, unthinking.
He looked like a man who didn’t sleep often and didn’t sleep deeply when he did, but right now he was still, breathing slow, as if my tiny condo had convinced his body it was safe.
That thought alone made my throat tighten.
Because it wasn’t just my body that felt different.
It was my space.
My bed. My quilt. The linen curtains my momma had picked out with me at a dusty little shop on Wadmalaw because she said a bedroom should feel like a soft place to land.
Micah’s boots were lined up by the door like soldiers.
His clothes were somewhere on my floor.
And his presence—him, all edges and quiet intensity—had suddenly blended into my life with a kind of inevitability that terrified me.
I lay there, staring at the slice of sunlight on my wall, and waited for the emotional earthquake I’d always assumed would come after a first time.
I’d always thought I would feel … ruined.
Not because I believed in purity. I never had. My parents were practical people who taught us to be kind and honest and responsible, not ashamed. They talked about sex the way they talked about money—something you didn’t throw around carelessly, something you respected because consequences existed.
But it wasn’t morality that had kept me from having sex.
It was something quieter.
Something harder to name.
A kind of internal math I’d been doing my whole life without realizing it.
If I give someone access to me—my body, my vulnerability, the places I don’t show anyone—what happens when they decide I’m not worth keeping?
That fear didn’t come from religion.
It came from history.
From an origin story that didn’t begin with a warm, familiar face telling me I was wanted. It began with a blank space. A question mark. A file I didn’t get to read until I was old enough to understand what it meant to be left behind.
People loved to say adoption was beautiful. A miracle. A gift.
And it was.
But it was also this: learning, very young, that love can arrive after loss.
That you can be chosen later.
That “forever” might require paperwork.
My parents never hid it. They didn’t make it a secret, didn’t whisper it like shame. They told me my story the way they told me everything—straightforward, loving, matter-of-fact.
We wanted you.
We found you.
We chose you.
We choose you.
Every day.
And I believed them. I did.
But a small part of me—some animal part that lived under language—still held onto the earliest lesson.
People can leave.
So, I learned to be … good.
Not performatively good. Not the kind of good that needs applause.
The kind of good that tries not to cause trouble.
The kind of good that doesn’t ask too much.
The kind of good that makes itself easy to keep.
That’s what I’d been, for years.
Joy McKinley. Cheery. Responsible. The girl who could make a room feel lighter just by stepping into it. The girl who could take grief and turn it into flowers. The girl who could listen, comfort, fix, smooth, manage.
And yes—there was optimism in me. Real optimism. I wasn’t faking that.
But it was an optimism that had been built as a strategy.
Because if you believe life can be good, you don’t spend all your time waiting for it to fall apart.
And I had spent enough time waiting for things I couldn’t control.
Now, lying in the slant of sunlight with a man like Micah breathing against my shoulder, I didn’t feel ruined.
I felt … awake.
My body wasn’t shocked by what had happened. It wasn’t ashamed.
It was simply aware, in a new and startling way—like I’d been living in a house with one locked room for years and someone had finally turned the key.
I shifted slightly, testing my body.
There was tenderness—real, physical feedback, the kind you couldn’t ignore. Not pain, not exactly. More like a reminder. A quiet insistence: something happened here.
My cheeks warmed just at the thought.
Because that something had been Micah.
Micah, who looked like danger.
Micah, who had spoken to me in that garden like flowers were a waste.
Micah, who’d walked into my shop like he was marching into a place he didn’t deserve, apologized like it cost him something, and then looked at me like he couldn’t stop.
Micah, who had kissed me like restraint was a language he spoke fluently until it failed.
I turned my face slightly and looked at him.
In sleep, the hard lines of him softened. The tightness in his jaw loosened. His lashes rested against his cheeks. He looked younger in a way that didn’t make him less intimidating—it made him more human.
And something in my chest squeezed.
Because I’d spent my whole life believing that safe men were the only ones I could want.
And then I met one man who didn’t feel safe at all—who felt like a storm—and my body responded like it had been waiting for thunder.
Micah stirred.
Not fully awake. Just enough to tighten his arm around me, pulling me closer. His hand splayed over my stomach, warm and heavy, like his body had made a decision without consulting his brain.
The motion sent a ripple of sensation through me—half physical, half emotional.
It was too intimate.
Too familiar.
And my mind immediately tried to do what it always did when intimacy got too close.
It tried to step back. To evaluate. To plan.
To protect.
But Micah’s voice rumbled against my hair, sleep-thick and low.
“You okay?” he murmured.
Not did you like it.
Not are you hurt.
Just: you okay.
I swallowed around a sudden lump in my throat.
“Yes,” I whispered. “I am.”
He didn’t move for a moment, like he was listening for the truth beneath the words.
Then he shifted onto his side so he could see me better, his gaze scanning my face as if he could read my thoughts.
His eyes weren’t soft the way mine were.
His eyes were trained.
Even half-awake, he looked like he knew how to assess damage.
“How do you feel?” he asked quietly.
My cheeks heated.
I could’ve made a joke. I was decent at jokes. Humor was one of my favorite escape routes.
But something about him—something about the way he was watching me—made me want to be honest.
“Different,” I admitted. “But not … bad different.”
His expression flickered with something like relief, quickly buried.
“Good,” he said.
We held each other’s gaze in the quiet.
Downstairs, a bell chimed. Someone laughed. Life continued.
Micah’s eyes dropped—briefly—to my mouth, then back up, like he was trying not to let himself wander.
And then his jaw tightened.
Not with lust this time.
With responsibility.
“Joy,” he said carefully.
My stomach tightened, instinctively bracing.
“I need to ask you something.”
I nodded, suddenly very still. “Okay.”
“Are you on birth control?”
The question landed like a cold splash—not because it was wrong, but because it was real.
Because I hadn’t been.
Because I hadn’t needed to be.
Because for years, sex had felt like an event that would happen in some distant future version of my life, a version where I had certainty and control and time to prepare.
In the heat of this day, I hadn’t prepared.
I’d surrendered.
I swallowed. “No.”
Micah didn’t flinch.
But he went still in a way I was beginning to recognize. The way he got when something mattered and he needed to think fast without showing it.
“When was your last cycle?” he asked, voice controlled.
I told him.
His gaze stayed on my face while his mind did calculations I couldn’t see.
“And we didn’t use anything,” he said, quiet and factual.
“No,” I whispered.
“And I … didn’t pull out.”
My cheeks burned, but my voice stayed steady. “I know.”
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
I waited for fear to hit me.
It didn’t—not the way I expected.
Instead, something rose in my chest that felt almost like … clarity.
Micah watched my expression change and seemed to misunderstand what he saw.
“Joy,” he said, voice lower. “I’m not—I’m not trying to scare you.”
“I know,” I said quickly. “You’re being responsible.”
His mouth tightened. “Yeah. I’m trying.”
Trying.
That word did something to me.
Because Micah didn’t seem like a man who tried at anything.
He seemed like a man who took. Who survived. Who endured.
Trying sounded like effort.
Trying sounded like care.
And care was dangerous.
Care was how you got attached.
Care was how you got hurt when someone left.
I took a breath. “Can I tell you something?”
His eyes stayed on mine. “Yeah.”
I hesitated—only for a second.
Then I said it.
“I’ve thought about pregnancy before.”
His brow furrowed slightly. “Because you want kids?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Maybe. Someday. But it’s not just that.”
He waited.
I could feel him holding himself still, like he didn’t want to spook me.
“I’m adopted,” I said softly.
His expression didn’t change. He already knew that part.
“But what people don’t talk about,” I continued, “is how adoption makes you think about … origin.”
Micah’s gaze sharpened. Focused.