Page 285 of Disarm
“Celeste Veracruz-Burton,” he says. “Warrior, saint, destroyer of bland food.”
My chest warms.
It feels… weirdly normal, doing this. Unpacking groceries, fighting about where the coffee should go, bumping hips in a space too small for both of us to be in the same cabinet at once.
Not stepbrothers.
Not patient and caregiver.
Just… us.
Miguel grinds coffee beans while I fill the electric kettle. When the smell hits the room, dark, rich, and familiar, I have a flashback to all the mornings I didn’t think I’d get. Ones where making coffee felt like a chore. I swallow hard and keep my hands steady.
As the kettle whistles, Miguel leans against the counter, watching me. “What?” I ask, self-conscious. “Do I have coffee on my face?”
“Just thinking,” he says. “About how much I like you.”
I snort. “Gross,” I say, because I don’t know what else to do with that.
He grins. “You love it,” he says gently.
I do.
The shower isa glass box tucked into the corner of the bathroom, with stone tile and one of those rainfall heads that make you feel like you’re in a shampoo commercial. There’s a tiny window high up where tree branches wave like they’retrying to peek. We decide to shower together because we’re not monsters and also because the water heater is probably the size of a shoebox.
Steam fills the space fast. The glass fogs. It smells like eucalyptus from the little bunch of fresh branches and leaves that are secured around the showerhead. We take our time. Not in the frantic, hands-everywhere way we used to. More… careful. Reverent, almost.
I soap his shoulders, slow circles over muscle and scar. The water beads on his curls and runs in thin lines down his chest. Miguel closes his eyes and lets me. His breathing evens out. One of his hands rests on my hip, not pulling, just… there.
“Volume?” he murmurs.
“Three,” I say. “Yours?”
“Four,” he admits. “But like… happy-four. ‘Hot boyfriend touching me in a shower in the woods’ four.”
“Scientific scale,” I say, smiling.
He grins back, eyes crinkling. “We should publish,” he says. “Burton-Veracruz Volume Index.”
I laugh, the sound bouncing off the tile.
There are moments where my brain tries to loop in old scripts—you’re using him, this is just another distraction, you’re going to drag him under with you, but they’re quieter than they used to be. Easier to spot. Easier to name.
I notice and label them under intrusive thoughts. I come back to the heat of the water and the feel of Miguel’s ribs under my palms.
We kiss, slow and soft under the spray. Lips, jaw, the corner of his mouth. It feels less like drowning and more like floating.
When my wrist twinges, scar tissue complaining about the change in temperature and he notices, even though I don’t say anything. His hand slides down, covering mine gently, thumb brushing over the line under the band of my bracelet.
“You good?” he asks, barely audible over the water.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Just body memory. Not urge.”
Miguel searches my face for the truth and must find it, because he nods and leans in to rest his forehead against mine. “Good,” he whispers.
Finishing the shower in a tangle of limbs and towels, laughing when we almost both slip trying to get out of the tiny stall. It’s not sexy in the way our earlier stuff was. It’s… domestic and a little ridiculous. And somehow that’s hotter.
Later,when the sky starts to go pink behind the trees, we climb up to the loft and flop onto the bed.
