Page 111 of IRL: In Real Life
I opened a new text to Zaria.
Running behind this morning. Push my first meeting back thirty and send me the revised deck when you get in. I’ll be there soon.
She replied almost immediately.
Got it. You good?
I stared at that for one second.
Apparently my lateness had to have a story.
I’m good. Just moving slow this morning.
That was true enough to let stand.
When I stepped into the hall again, the smell of breakfast hit harder. I followed it straight into the kitchen and stopped at the threshold.
Micah stood at the stove in gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips and nothing else.
Bare back.
Broad shoulders.
Muscles moving easy under brown skin every time he reached for something on the counter.
The sight of a grown man in his own kitchen making breakfast shirtless should not have had as much effect on me as it did. But there was something almost indecent about how domestic and fine he looked at the same time.
He glanced over his shoulder, saw me standing there, and smiled slow.
“Morning.”
I leaned against the doorway and took him in without pretending otherwise. “So you cook too?”
He turned back to the stove and slid something from the pan with the ease of a man who actually knew what he was doing. “That sound like disbelief.”
“It is disbelief.”
That got a laugh out of him.
On the island behind him sat two plates. Omelets folded perfectly. Toast browned at the edges. Orange juice in glasses beading with cold. And because apparently he had decided to stay irritatingly thoughtful in the daylight too, a little bowl of cut fruit sat between the plates with whipped cream on top like he had been raised by people who believed details mattered.
Damn.
I pushed off the doorway and came farther into the kitchen. “After a whole chef in here last night, I did not expect you to be at the stove this morning.”
That made his mouth shift.
“I had no intention of wasting my time cooking last night,” he said, reaching for a spatula. “My plans for last night were entirely focused on you.”
The results of his focus moved through me, low and immediate. My nipples tightened under the T-shirt before I could do anything about it, peaking against the soft cotton like my body had just volunteered information I had not agreed to share.
Micah glanced over, caught it, and went still for half a second.
His eyes darkened.
“See,” he said, voice lower now as he turned back to the stove, “that right there is why breakfast had to be simple.”
A laugh slipped out of me, thinner than I meant it to. “You are entirely too pleased with yourself this morning.”
