Page 177 of Gamebreaker

I took down two mugs.

Then, I stood at my kitchen counter with both hands wrapped around mine and looked at the second one, and a feeling went through me that was related to happiness but bigger and stranger. It was the dizzy feeling of a future you'd stopped letting yourself picture becoming, without any warning, the present you were standing in.

There was a second mug in my kitchen.

There was someone to make it for.

I'd stood in this kitchen a lot of mornings over the past two years. Alone, mostly. Occasionally with Mia. Once, with a woman I'd dated for three weeks who turned out to be aggressively cheerful before seven AM, which was information I could have used earlier in the process.

I'd stood in this kitchen the morning after Cam's house, too. I hadn't made coffee that morning. I'd stood at this counter with her teeth marks on my neck and Trish's name on my back and a knot in my hair the size of a quarter, and I'd felt what it was like to make the right call and have it cost exactly what I'd known it would.

Three weeks later, a sentence that had been left hanging was finally finishing itself.

I was standing in my kitchen, thinking about narrative arcs at 6:15 in the morning, which said a lot about my general state of mind.

"You made coffee."

I turned around.

Cam was in the kitchen doorway.

She'd pulled her henley back on, and nothing else, and it was wrinkled into oblivion, the one I'd cried on and twisted in both fists. Below it, long, bare legs. Bare feet on my kitchen tile. Her dark hair was down and thoroughly tangled, falling around her face, and there was a mark on her collarbone from my mouth that I noticed and felt extremely good about. On her wrist, the hair tie.

She was looking at the second mug.

Her face changed, and she didn't try to stop it. I'd woken up in the same morning she'd fallen asleep in, and I'd made two cups of coffee because there were two of us now. I'd done it without thinking about it.

"Yeah," I said. "There's a whole process. Don't ask me about it. I've been keeping it secret to protect my brand."

"Your brand," she repeated, amused.

"Relatable chaos. It's very carefully constructed. Pour-over ratios do not fit the aesthetic." I held the second mug out. "It's oat milk. I'm going to the store today, so we will eventually have options, but right now, oat milk is what's happening."

She crossed the kitchen.

She was barely awake, technically. But Cam half-awake was more present than most people at full attention, like some deep physical awareness that never completely switched off. I'd watched it come on since she appeared in the doorway, the slow sharpening, and by the time she reached me, it was all the way on, aimed at the kitchen, at the mugs, at me.

She took the mug from my hand. Our fingers touched, and neither of us moved for a moment.

"Hi, baby," she said.

"Hello, love." God, that felt good to say.

"You let me sleep."

"You needed it. You've been running on playoff adrenaline and twelve years of repressed feelings. That's exhausting. I have personal expertise in the subject."

She took a sip. Her eyebrows went up.

"Harper."

"I told you there was a process."

"This is excellent coffee."

"Thank you. The grind size is critical. Most people underestimate—"

"Harper."