5. Mila
five
Mila
Colm comes back the next morning. And the next.
By Saturday he knows the nap window. He knows that she'll fight sleep even when she's clearly exhausted and the only reliable counter is a very boring story told in a low monotone.
He knows she doesn't like loud noises but she makes them herself constantly, which she finds inconsistent but unavoidable.
He has learned the specific texture of the tantrum — the warning signs, the peak, the particular thing that redirects her — in the way that only comes from paying very close attention.
He is a natural.
It cracks me open every morning.
Two years, I think, watching him crouch in the festival grass to show Macie how an axe handle is joined to the head. Two years earlier, and she'd have had this from the beginning. He'd have known her, too.
I did this.
I know the argument against that conclusion.
I didn't have his name. I looked. But I also made a choice, three years ago, to leave before morning.
I made a choice, in the weeks after, to decide that I could do this alone — that showing up with a baby at someone's door was a kind of trap, a pressure no stranger should face. That was a decision too.
But it was in the past, and I had to move forward.
Some nights, the motel had a teenager in the lobby who babysat for festival guests to attend the after-hours parties.
The woman at the front desk mentioned it at check-in, and I noted it the way you note emergency exits.
Occasional child care breaks were a miracle to a single mom like me, and I never took them for granted, but I hadn’t planned on using the service until he texted.
He texts me at six-thirty: Can you leave her with someone for a few hours.
I can.
I text him back, and he gives me an address that is three blocks off Main Street.
It's a cabin, or close enough — a single-storey house with a deep porch and a yard that runs back to the tree line. Wood-sided, dark-stained, with a light on over the front door. I can smell pine and something cooking. He opens the door before I knock.
He looks different here. Festival-Colm wears a lanyard and carries a radio. This Colm is in a flannel shirt with two buttons open and bare feet.
"Come in," he says.
Inside was a kitchen, a living room with a wide couch, and a fireplace with ash still in the grate from the last winter. Outdoor gear on hooks by the door. Maps on the wall — actual paper maps, topographical, with trails marked in pencil. A huge collection of DVDs.
"Sit down," he says. "I made food."
He brings two plates and sets them on the coffee table, and sits on the other end of the couch.
We eat. We talk. He asks me about Kelowna, and I ask him about Silver Ridge, and it's strange how easy it is, under everything. The same quality that night had, three years ago. The feeling of a conversation that goes further than it should in the time available.
I notice that throughout the conversation, he’s been moving closer. Now his arm is around my shoulder and I have to say, "I've been a single parent for two years."
"I know."
"I don't — I haven't —It's been a long time since I had time for anything that was just mine."
He looks at me, waiting.
"I have time now," I say. "Tonight."
He puts his hand on my face, his palm against my jaw, his thumb just below my cheekbone. The same way he touched me three years ago and the same way it lands.
"I know," he says, and kisses me.
Colm kisses me like he has been waiting, specifically, for this — not the idea of it but the fact of me, in his house, tonight. His hands are careful, and I don't want careful, I want real, and I pull back long enough to tell him so.
He turns me in one motion, so I'm back against the armrest of the couch, and he's over me and that is absolutely what I remember and absolutely what I've been missing.
“God, I missed you.”
"Yeah," he says. "Me too."
He gets my shirt off and I get his. Then we’re skin to skin on his couch and his hands are everywhere—rough palms sliding over my breasts, down my stomach, between my legs.
Two thick fingers drag through my wetness and push inside me without hesitation.
I’m soaked already, and the low groan he makes when he feels it goes straight to my core.
“You okay?” he asks.
“More than okay.” My voice is rough. “I want the opposite of slow.”
He pulls back just enough to look at me, eyes dark and focused. “I’ve thought about this for three years.”
“Don’t tell me that right now.”
“Why not?”
“Because then I’ll feel it.” I’m already shaking. “And I’m already—”
“Good,” he says. “Feel it.”
He doesn’t go slow. He spreads my thighs wider, lines up, and pushes into me in one steady thrust. The thick stretch of his cock—God, I missed this exact feeling—fills me so completely my back arches off the couch.
He’s big, hot, and familiar in a way that makes my breath hitch.
Three years and my body still remembers exactly how he fits.
“Fuck,” I breathe. The word slips out before I can stop it.
He says my name against my throat, then, “I’ve got you,” and that’s what undoes me.
I wrap my legs around his waist and meet every thrust, hips lifting to take him harder.
The couch creaks under us. Skin slaps against skin.
His hand grips my ass, holding me open as he drives into me with that steady, relentless rhythm—deep, rolling strokes that drag perfectly along my walls.
I missed his cock like this, missed the way he fills me so full I can barely think.
“Tell me what you need,” he rasps against my cheek.
“This,” I moan. “Harder. Don’t stop.”
He gives it to me. The pace picks up, deeper, more urgent.
Every thrust pushes a broken sound out of me.
My thighs tremble. The pressure builds fast and overwhelming until it breaks—my orgasm crashes through me, pulsing hard around his cock as I cry out against his shoulder.
He follows a few strokes later, burying himself deep with a low, guttural groan, hips jerking as he comes.
We stay like that, locked together, breathing hard. He doesn’t pull out right away. He stays inside me, heavy and warm, brushing slow kisses along my jaw and into my hair while the aftershocks tremble through us.
After a minute he rolls to the side and pulls me against him and I put my face against his chest and somewhere inside me, beneath the heat and the aftermath, something starts to cry.
Not out loud. Not sadness. The crying that comes when you've been holding something alone for too long and someone takes the weight.
He feels it. He doesn't say anything. He pulls me closer and puts his mouth in my hair.
I don't have to explain it. He already understands.