Chapter Thirteen
MILLIE
Three Days Before The Patch Ceremony
The lawyer’s office has the feel of every serious place I’ve ever been in, all polished wood and neatly stacked files, the kind of room where decisions are made that don’t get undone.
I sit in the chair beside Dad, my hands folded in my lap the way he taught me when I was seven years old, watching him sign his name at the bottom of page after page.
His handwriting is still steady. I find myself cataloging things like that now, whether his hands shake when he pours coffee, whether his voice holds that familiar authority when he speaks, whether the man sitting beside me still resembles the man I’ve known my entire life.
Today, he looks good, better than he has in weeks.
There’s color in his cheeks, and he makes a joke to the receptionist on our way in, something about the painting on the wall looking like a desert after too much sun.
She laughed, and he looked almost like himself.
I have learned, in the months since his diagnosis, that good days are a gift you take without asking questions about what comes after.
When everything is signed, when the lawyer gathers the pages into their neat, official pile, Dad reaches over and squeezes my hand. His grip is firm.
“Everything is in order,” he says simply, and his eyes find mine with a directness that has always meant he is done discussing a matter. “Whatever happens, you’ll be taken care of. The mine will be taken care of.”
I nod because if I try to speak right now, I won’t be able to keep my face arranged the way he needs it to be. I squeeze his hand back, holding it for a beat longer than I normally would, and he lets me.
I don’t ask what ‘in order’ means in the specific, legal, final kind of way it means today.
I don’t ask about timelines, provisions, or what he has decided to leave to whom.
He’s Jonas McClane, and he has always handled the hard things so that I don’t have to, and today, even though it costs me something to do it, I let him have that.
I trust him completely, the way I have trusted him my entire life, the way you trust the ground beneath your feet without thinking about it.
The drive back to our house is silent, but not uncomfortably so. He asks me about the clubhouse, whether Victoria is feeling well, and whether Marley has settled in properly, and I answer him easily, giving him the small bright things because that’s what he is asking for.
When I pull into the driveway, he leans over and kisses my forehead the same way he has since I was a child.
“I love you, sweetheart,” he says.
“I love you too, Dad.”
I watch him go inside, and I sit in the car for a moment longer than I need to, my hands resting on the steering wheel.
‘In order.’
I take a breath, then another, until the tightness in my chest loosens enough to function, and then I get out of the car.
Will is on the porch when I arrive, leaning back against the rail post the way he always settles into whatever space he occupies, like he belongs exactly where he is.
He has a bottle of water dangling from two fingers, and when he hears the car door close, his eyes come up to find me without any of the searching that some people do, the quick scan to assess whether something is off.
Somehow, he already knows, and it’s both the most comforting and the most terrifying thing about him.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.” I drop down onto the porch steps beside him, and for a while neither of us says anything at all, which is one of the things I love most about being near Will.
He has never filled silence for the sake of filling it.
He lets it exist between us like a third presence, comfortable and undemanding.
After a day of holding myself together in lawyer’s offices and cars, the absence of expectation is something I could nearly weep with gratitude for.
The street ahead sits mostly still, the neighborhood wrapped in that strange March version of Las Vegas before tourist season hits full force. The whole city feels different this time of year—slower and less fake.
“First time I ever rode a bike,” Will says eventually, his voice low and unhurried, “I stole Deek’s.
” I turn to look at him, and the corner of his mouth is already lifting.
“Thirteen years old, I thought I was absolutely invincible. Didn’t tell anyone, didn’t ask, just took it out of the garage at five in the morning before Dad was awake.
” He pauses, taking a drink of his water. “Made it approximately four blocks.”
I have no idea where he is going with this, so I decide to ask. “What happened?”
“Fence post at the end of Calloway Street. Didn’t account for the fact that Deek had adjusted the brakes, and I had no idea.
” He says it so matter-of-factly, like a man who has made peace with his thirteen-year-old self’s spectacularly bad judgment.
“Bent the front wheel. Snapped a section of the post clean off.”
I feel the laugh building in my chest before it escapes, the first real one I’ve had all day. “What did Bear do?”
“Made me fix it myself.” Will’s expression is fond in that way it gets when he talks about his father, exasperated and full of love in equal measure.
“Every bolt, every part… took three weekends, because I had to source some of the pieces on my paper route money, which Dad thought was entirely appropriate.”
“And Deek?” I ask because I know Deek, and I know there is absolutely no version of this story in which Deek was not deeply involved.
“Narrated the whole thing.” Will’s voice carries that perfectly dry amusement.
“Sat in a lawn chair every Saturday morning with a beer he’d stolen from the kitchen and was hiding from Dad, then provided running commentary.
Used a voice like he was announcing a sports event. The neighbors came out on week two.”
I let out a proper laugh, and Will is watching me laugh with an expression I don’t let myself examine too closely. It’s the look he saves for moments like this when he thinks I’m not paying attention.
Gradually, the laughter settles. Somewhere nearby, someone’s television flickers through a window, a low blue pulse of light.
I smile, understanding his weird tangent storyline. It was simply to make me laugh. So, I lean my head against Will’s shoulder in thanks. His shoulder rests beside mine, solid heat through leather, his breathing slow and controlled.
The silence settles into something deliberate, and we watch the street together.
I’m not sure how long we sit here. Time does strange things when I’m with him, stretches and compresses in ways I’ve stopped worrying about.
At some point, I become acutely aware that my pulse has changed to something more awake, and I know what it is because I know this feeling.
I’ve known it for two years, carried it around in every room he’s walked into, every time his voice found me through a crowd, and my whole body reacted before my brain could catch up.
I tilt my head without fully deciding to, and the air between us tightens, charged in that low, electric way storms build out in the desert.
He notices.
Of course, he notices.
His eyes dip to my mouth, then rise again, darker now, whatever hesitation was there replaced by something more final.
Like he’s giving me one last chance to pull back.
I don’t.
The space closes slowly, the last inches disappearing in increments small enough to feel deliberate. Close enough now that I see the faint scar at the edge of Will’s jaw, the roughness of stubble along his skin, the steady rhythm of his breath.
My pulse is loud.
Too loud.
Every nerve feels lit from the inside.
His hand comes up first, neither hesitant nor rushed. It settles at the back of my neck with a certainty that grounds something wild inside me. Like he’s making sure I understand the moment before it happens.
Then his mouth meets mine.
Soft at first, but not unsure. The contact is firm enough to feel intentional, the kind of kiss that says he has thought about this more than he’ll ever admit.
Heat follows almost immediately, spreading low and fast through my chest, through my stomach, through the places I’ve been keeping tightly controlled for so long.
I make a small sound I don’t recognize as my own.
That’s when his restraint shifts.
His fingers tighten slightly in my hair, guiding rather than asking, angling my head just enough to deepen the kiss.
The world narrows to the rough warmth of his mouth, the steady pressure of his body close to mine, the slow, deliberate way he takes his time like he knows exactly how dangerous it would be to rush this.
The first brush of his tongue against mine hits just enough to send a sharp rush of adrenaline through my veins, followed by a dizzying wave of endorphins that makes my knees feel suddenly less reliable, even though I am already sitting.
He feels it.
His free hand slides to my waist and holds me there easy and natural, like touching me has always made sense to him, even when neither of us was allowed to act on it.
The kiss deepens slowly, controlled but heavy with restraint, finally snapping loose after two years of pretending this thing between us wasn’t there.
Nothing about him is careless.
Nothing about this is accidental.
It feels chosen.
When we finally break, it’s not from lack of wanting. It’s from the shared understanding that if we don’t stop now, stopping later might become impossible.
His forehead drops to mine, his breath rougher than I’ve ever heard it. One of his thumbs traces a slow, grounding line along my jaw as if he’s confirming I’m real.
And the realization that I have just undone Will, even a little, settles deep in my chest with a sweetness that almost aches.
“Three more days,” he says, his voice rough.
“I know,” I whimper.
He lifts his head, and his thumb traces a slow arc along my temple, barely touching, the kind of gesture that holds more weight than anything either of us could say right now.
Then he presses his lips to my forehead, and I close my eyes and let myself have the moment instead of ruining it by thinking too far ahead.
We stay on the porch for another hour.
Shoulder to shoulder, his arm eventually finding its way around me, my head returning to rest against him.
We talk about nothing important, little things like Deek’s latest terrible idea involving a pool table and what sounded like a legally questionable bet, whether Victoria’s craving for my salted caramel cookies had increased or decreased this week, and whether Bear would actually cry at the patch ceremony the way Koa was predicting.
We don’t kiss again.
But the shape of everything has changed, and we both know it, and neither of us seems to need to speak that aloud to make it real. It sits between us, this new and undeniable thing, warm and steady as the shoulder I’m resting against.
Three more days.
My father’s affairs are in order.
Will’s patch ceremony is imminent.
And whatever comes after, whatever complicated, beautiful, devastating thing this life is arranging for both of us. But tonight there is only the porch, and the man beside me who finally let it be what it is.
I think that might be enough to carry me through anything.