34. Mia
Chapter Thirty-Four
Mia
The first time he walks back into the loft, it's slower than I imagined.
We take the elevator up. One of the bags is over his shoulder, even though he’s not supposed to lift heavy things, because he refuses to let me carry everything, his hand braced on a cane the doctors gave him for ‘temporary support’.
He’s exhausted by the time we reach the door.
“Ready?” I ask quietly.
He stares at the door, at the number on top of it, at the familiar scuff near the bottom where the previous version of him probably kicked it a hundred times.
“I don’t know,” he admits.
I unlock the door and push it open. The apartment breathes around us.
The warm light, wood floors, and the big window spilling the late afternoon across everything.
He steps inside, and his shoulders tense.
For a second, I see something flicker over his face.
Grief, nostalgia, regret, all folded into one sharp flash. Then it passes. He looks around slowly.
“You changed the rug,” he says.
“I spilled an entire pot of coffee on the old one,” I confess. “Accidentally.”
He huffs out a tiny laugh. His gaze moves to the window. He walks toward it, slower than he used to, I suppose, but steady. He stops where he always did—where I do now—and rests his hand on the frame.
“It’s smaller than I remember,” he says.
“Or maybe you’re just bigger,” I say.
His mouth curves as he turns back to me. “This feels… different,” he murmurs.
“Is that a good different or a ‘there’s a stranger living in my old home’ different?” I ask.
He studies me for a second. “You are not a stranger.” He says.
My heart trips over itself. “Well,” I say lightly, because if I don’t, I’ll cry, “We have been ‘talking’ for a few months now. That has to count for something.”
His eyes warm at that. Then he sets his bag down by the couch. “So.” He says, clearing his throat. “House rules?”
“House rules?” I echo, relieved for the shift. “Okay. Erm, one: I make terrible experimental dinners at least once a week. Complaining is allowed, but you still have to try them.”
“Cruel,” he says. “But fair.”
“Two: Sometimes I stand in the kitchen and eat cereal out of the box. That is not a cry for help.”
“That absolutely is a cry for help.”
“Three,” I continue, ignoring him, “If you see me sitting on the floor staring at my laptop, assume I am having a life crisis and just offer me snacks.”
“Snacks as emotional intervention.” He says. “Got it.”
He hesitates.
“And you?” I ask. “Any rules?”
He looks around again. Then at me. “Just one,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t disappear on me.” He says softly.
I feel like I just stopped breathing. “I won’t,” I whisper.
We stand there in the middle of the living room, surrounded by the ordinary, and the weight of everything that’s shifting between us settles in.
Domestic intimacy sneaks in quickly.
He starts making coffee in the morning because I always forget to schedule the coffee machine, and he is always awake before me.
I put his meds on full display on the kitchen counter, so he doesn’t have to remember alone.
He washes dishes more slowly than I do, but more thoroughly.
I reorganize the pantry, and he pretends not to notice that I alphabetized the spices.
He takes the smaller bedroom without question. I offer him mine, well, his, but he refuses. “I’m not kicking you out of your room,” he says. “I may be wounded, but I’m not a monster.”
“At least let me get you a better mattress,” I argue.
He shakes his head. “I’ve slept on worse.”
“I know,” I say. “That’s part of the problem.”
Every time the floor creaks at night, my heart jumps. I want to go there, to lie on his bed, or for him to come to mine, but I don’t know how to make that approach. I don’t even know if I should at all.
Whatever we had going on has vanished. The banter, the teasing, everything has disappeared, and I don’t blame him. We’ve been preoccupied with his recovery, and I don’t regret a single thing.
But somewhere deep inside my mind, I can’t help but wonder…has it really vanished? Or is it simply hiding behind all of this?
We have fallen into a rhythm.
We go to his follow-up appointments together. We laugh at stupid TV shows because neither of us has the emotional capacity for anything heavy. We cook side by side, shoulders brushing, heat humming under my skin with every accidental touch. He moves around the space like he’s relearning it.
Sometimes, I catch him watching me more than the room. I let him.
I start to learn his damage. The way his hand trembles when he grips the mug too tightly. The way his shoulder stiffens when he reaches too high. The way his breath catches when he laughs too hard, and his ribs protest.
I also learned his tenderness. The way he takes the knife out of my hand when I’m chopping vegetables too fast. The way he covers me with a blanket when I fall asleep on the couch. The way he always, always makes sure I’m on the inside of the sidewalk when we walk anywhere.
I’m becoming his person, and he’s becoming mine.
We don’t say it. We haven’t kissed, and we don’t touch more than we have to. But the wanting is everywhere. It’s in the way his eyes linger on my mouth when I talk. In the way my fingers itch to push his hair back from his face. In the way our laughter stretches longer than the joke calls for.
Slow burn used to be something I liked in books. Living inside one is something else entirely.
Even as I tell myself to be careful, to breathe, to take it one day at a time, a single truth keeps beating under everything. We are one small, reckless moment away from crossing a line we won’t come back from. And I don’t know if I’m more afraid of that…or of never crossing it at all.