He froze. A forkful of potatoes halfway to his mouth. “Okay.”
Then Mark did the last thing she expected. He laughed—a short, breathless, disbelieving sound. stepmom makes the first move
Something shifted in the candlelight. Lena had always thought of Mark as the shy, gangly seventeen-year-old she’d first met—all elbows and comic book t-shirts. But the man sitting across from her was twenty-three. He had his father’s jaw and his mother’s careful hands. He also had a way of looking at her, when he thought she wasn’t paying attention, that she’d been telling herself to ignore. He froze
“One night,” he repeated, testing the words. He laughed—a short, breathless, disbelieving sound
“I’ve had dreams about you saying that,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. “And then I woke up feeling like a complete monster.”
