JAKE
The dock is quiet when we walk down it. The town still glows behind us, but out here it’s just water, the soft creak of rope against the cleats, and us.
Mo’s hand is in mine. She hasn’t let go once.
Every few steps her thumb brushes the side of my hand, absentmindedly, and every time it happens, my chest does something stupid.
The light is on outside the boathouse. Ryan must’ve flipped it when he dropped Hank off.
I ease the door open.
Hank is asleep in the middle of the couch with his travel bag dumped beside him, bandanas spilling halfway onto the cushion like he personally supervised the unpacking and then emotionally clocked out before completion.
One paw twitches in his sleep.
Probably chasing French Fry.
Mo kicks off her shoes by the door. They land beside mine on the mat.
Two pairs of shoes.
That’s it.
That tiny thing changes the whole room.
She walks into the kitchen without hesitation. Fills her bkr from the sink and drinks from it, leaning against the counter, one hip cocked, completely at ease. Then she opens the window and the night air rolls in carrying salt and the distant hum of town life.
The boathouse already sounds different. Feels different.
Fuller.
She sets the Buccaneers hat beside my keys. Her bkr bottle next to my glass.
Small things.
Things that shouldn’t matter.
They matter greatly.
She turns toward me in the low light. It catches the edges of her—loose hair, bare legs, the curve of her shoulder, the easy way she’s standing in my kitchen like she belongs here.
Because she does.
“I need a shower,” she says. “I’ve been marinating in stadium sweat all day, and I’m disgusting.”
“You’re not disgusting.”
“Jake. I can literally taste the sweat.”
I push off the counter and walk toward her slowly. “Then let’s fix that.”
Her mouth curves.
“Oh.”
“Oh,” I confirm.
She takes my hand and pulls me toward the bathroom with a look over her shoulder that does absolutely nothing good for my pulse.
The bathroom’s small. Old tile. Rain shower head I installed last year after the original one gave up and started spraying sideways.
I reach in and turn the water on. Steam starts building almost immediately. When I turn back around, she’s already pulling her shirt over her head.
She drops it on the floor and looks at me like a challenge. She unhooks her bra and lets it fall.
I’ve seen her naked before. I know what she looks like. That information is currently useless because my brain has decided to experience it like the first time anyway.
Her hands go to my chest. Fingers spread. She pushes my shirt up with the clear intention of someone who has been thinking about this and is done thinking.
I pull it off, and her eyes drop. Her hands follow.
Her fingers are already at the button of my jeans before I’ve fully caught up.
I’m absolutely not complaining about the pace she’s setting.
I help with the zipper because my hands still function even if my brain is three steps behind, and she pushes my jeans and boxer briefs down with both hands while I kick out of them.
She shimmies out of her shorts and panties in one smooth motion and steps into the shower.
The water hits her shoulders and runs down her body while steam curls around her, and I just stand there staring because thirty-one years of having a functioning imagination did not prepare me for the reality of her in my shower.
She looks back at me through wet hair already turning darker. “Are you getting in or just going to stand there?”
I step in behind her, and my hands find her hips.
I pull her against me, and she inhales sharply when she feels exactly how done I am with standing there.
She turns in my arms and kisses me hard.
Her tongue slides against mine, and her hands push into my hair while water pours over both of us. She’s pressed against me from chest to hip, and there is absolutely nothing between us anymore. Not clothes. Not distance. Not ten years of silence.
Nothing.
I back her against the tile. She gasps at the cold and then again when my mouth finds her neck.
My hand slides over her ribs and up the curve of her breast. Her head falls back against the wall.
I brush my thumb across her nipple, and the sound she makes—I do it again.
She reaches between us and wraps her hand around me, and my forehead drops to her shoulder because I lose every thought I had.
All of them. Gone.
“Mo.”
She strokes me once. Slow. Deliberate. Fully aware of what she’s doing to me.
“Yeah?” she says, and I can hear the smile in her voice.
I lift my head enough to look at her. Water runs over her face. Her hand is still wrapped around me. Her eyes are dark and focused and completely here.
“You’re making it very hard to be a gentleman.”
“Good because I don’t want a gentleman right now.”
That’s all I need to hear.
My hand slides down her stomach slowly. Her breath catches before I even get there. Then my fingers find her, and she bites her bottom lip.
“Jake.” Breathless. Barely a word.
I work her slowly at first, watching her face the entire time because I want to see every single thing I’m doing to her. Her eyes closing. Her lips parting.
She moves against my hand impatiently, so I speed up.
Her fingers tighten on my shoulders hard enough that I’ll have marks tomorrow, and I want every one of them.
She’s close. I can feel her breathing fracture and her thighs tense against my hand.
I slowly slip two fingers inside her.
“Don’t stop,” she whispers.
I add one more and she comes apart against my hand with my name on her lips and her nails digging into my shoulders.
I hold her through it because her knees stop fully committing to standing.
Before she’s even recovered, she looks up at me through wet hair and flushed cheeks with an expression that is pure challenge.
“I need you inside me,” she says. “Now.”
I lift her immediately.
Her legs wrap around my waist, and I brace her against the wall. For a second neither of us moves. Just water pouring over us while she grips my shoulders and both of us breathing hard.
Then she rolls her hips against me once.
I groan and press my forehead against hers.
“Jake Wheeler,” she says, breathless. “If you go slow right now, I swear I will—“
I push into her, and the rest of the sentence disappears.
Her back arches off the tile. Her ankles lock behind me. One hand grips the back of my neck while the other presses flat against the wall.
I move, and she meets me on every stroke, her hips matching mine with an urgency that makes it clear she’s not interested in patience tonight, and neither am I.
The water pounds down around us while steam fills the room thick enough to blur everything except her. The tight heat of her around me. The drag of her nails down my back. The way she says my name.
She comes again. I feel it before I hear it—her body tightening around me, the sharp inhale, the sound she makes that I will take to my grave.
Fuck.
I follow right after her with my face buried against her neck and her name breaking apart in my mouth.
For a minute neither of us moves. Just water. Steam. Her heartbeat slamming against mine.
She laughs first. Breathless and a little stunned. “Well.”
“Yeah.”
“That was…”
“Yeah.”
I set her down gently. Her legs wobble on the first attempt but hold on the second. She leans back against the wall, grinning at me while water streams over the front of her.
We make it to the bedroom eventually.
Damp hair. Clean skin. Her wearing one of my shirts and absolutely nothing else.
And this feels different.
The shower was urgency. Need. The kind of wanting that builds until it finally detonates.
This is quieter.
She’s on her back with the sheets draped over her feet while I brace myself above her on my forearms. Moonlight and water reflection move slowly across the ceiling in the way it does when the tide is moving.
I kiss her jaw. The hollow of her throat. The place beneath her ear where her pulse jumps every time I touch her there.
I pull the shirt up and over her head.
I want to take my time now. Because the last time she was in this bed, we both knew she was here temporarily. Every touch had an expiration date we were pretending didn’t exist.
Not tonight.
Tonight she’s here.
Staying.
I kiss my way down her body slowly enough that she makes a frustrated noise that I find deeply satisfying.
“You’re doing that on purpose.”
“What would that be, Mo?”
“The slow thing.”
“You seemed to enjoy the fast version. Thought I’d show you some range.”
She grabs for me. I don’t let her pull me back up. I keep moving lower, pressing kisses against her hip, her thigh, the soft skin on the inside of her knee.
“Jake.” Half warning. Half surrender.
When my mouth finally reaches where she wants it, her hips lift off the mattress and her hand fists in the sheet.
And something about that nearly undoes me.
Mo in my bed, making these sounds because of me.
I want to spend my life giving her pleasure like this.
I stay there until her thighs shake and she’s saying things that aren’t words anymore.
Then I kiss my way back up her body, settle between her hips, and push into her slowly enough that both of us feel every inch.
She cups my face in both hands. “I love you,” she says quietly. Looking directly at me.
“I will always love you,” I tell her.
I move, and she moves with me slowly, deeply, her legs wrapping around my waist.
Her hands slide down my back and pull me deeper, and I make a sound against her neck that I did not intend to make.
She smiles against my jaw. “I like that sound.”
“Keep doing that and you’re going to hear a lot of it.”
I tilt my hips just enough to change the angle and the sound she makes almost unravels me.
When she comes this time, her eyes stay on mine the whole way through.
And all I can think is she chose me.
Mo is curled against my side afterward with one leg thrown over mine and her head on my chest.
The ceiling fan turns slowly overhead. Outside, the tide is pulling out. I can hear the difference in the water. Lower now, softer, like the bay is exhaling.
I run my fingers through her hair because she’s here and I can just do that now.
“Jake.”
“Hm.”
“I want you to keep playing.” She lifts her head, chin resting against my chest. “I saw you out there today,” she says softly. “You love it. And you’re still really, really good at it. I don’t want you giving that up because of me.”
She doesn’t know I already turned the offer down once while watching her eat butter pecan ice cream straight from the carton on my porch.
She doesn’t know I chose staying because I thought going back meant losing her all over again.
And now she’s the one telling me to go.
Because the woman who used to leave is now the one saying I’ll be here when you get home.
“The contract’s through the rest of the season,” I say.
“Then you play the rest of the season.”
“And after that?”
“After that, you decide what you want. But you decide because it’s what you want. Not because you’re afraid I won’t be here.”
I look at her. She doesn’t look away.
“I’m not going anywhere, Jake.”
I pull her up and kiss her slowly and deeply, saying every word I can’t get out right now.
She settles back against me again. After a while she says, “I’m going to give Southern Living my notice.”
I glance down at her. “Yeah?”
“This summer reminded me of something.” Her fingers drift lazily over my ribs. “Working in the bakery with Granny. Trying new things. Making a mess without worrying whether somebody else would approve of it. I forgot what that felt like.”
“Creating for yourself instead of for someone else.”
“Exactly.” She’s quiet for a second. “I’m proud of the work I did there. But somewhere along the way, it stopped feeling like mine. Everything became their recipes. Their deadlines. Their standards. That test kitchen started feeling less like a dream and more like a cage closing in on me.”
I tighten my arm around her.
“I kept staying because it was safe and structured,” she says quietly. “And safe meant I never had to ask myself what I actually wanted.”
She looks up at me then. “I don’t want to live like that anymore.”
I don’t say anything. I just hold her closer.
She yawns and burrows deeper into my shoulder, dragging the sheet with her like she’s officially claiming territory.
Her bkr is on the nightstand beside my phone.
Her clothes are on the bathroom floor, tangled with mine.
She’s been here less than an hour, and the whole place already feels different.
“Mo.”
“Hm.”
“Move in with me.”
Her head lifts immediately.
Her eyes find mine in the dark.
“Yes,” she says.
No hesitation.
No overthinking.
Just yes.
And apparently I exhale hard enough for her to notice because she smiles instantly.
“Were you nervous?”
“No.”
“Jake.”
“Maybe a little.”
She laughs softly, and I kiss her forehead.
“This is your home now,” I tell her. “You know that, right?”
“It always was,” she says. “I just took the long way back.”
I wake up sometime before sunrise to the sound of Hank negotiating with the bedroom door, leaning against it with slow, determined pressure, believing the laws of physics will bend to his will.
They do.
The door pops open.
He walks in, looks at the bed, looks at Mo, looks at me, then climbs up and wedges himself directly between us with a heavy grunt.
Mo laughs into the pillow. “He’s enormous.”
“You agreed to live with him.”
“I agreed to live with you. He’s a bonus.”
Hank rolls onto his back, all four legs pointing to the ceiling. His tongue rolls out as he tilts his head. He looks deeply satisfied with his title as bonus.
I reach across Hank and find her hand under the blankets.
She threads her fingers through mine.
Outside, the water catches the first gray light of morning and holds it. The fan turns slowly overhead. Hank starts snoring before either of us says another word.
I look at her over the broad expanse of my bulldog.
She’s already looking at me.
In our bed.
This house that held everyone I ever loved and now holds one more.
Home.
All three of us.