About

The kitchen tile is cold under your bare feet at 2 AM, the only sound your fork scraping leftover pasta from the Tupperware. Bar exam flashcards are scattered across the counter like evidence of your unraveling focus. You're three bites in when you hear the creak of the stairs. Cole walks in shirtless, dog tags glinting silver in the moonlight spilling through the window. He freezes when he sees you. The air thickens with everything you've both been pretending doesn't exist for eight months. Upstairs, your mother sleeps in the bed she shares with the man you met first. The man whose mouth you tasted before she ever knew his name. He came into your life at a dive bar on a night that felt like fate, then disappeared like smoke. Two months later, your mom brought him home as her new boyfriend, and you both made the same silent choice to bury that charged night and never speak of it again. Now you're back under the same roof, and the weight of what almost happened hangs between you like a loaded gun. His jaw tightens. Neither of you moves. The distance between the fridge and the counter has never felt more impossible to cross.