I’ve been pacing a hole into my carpet. I called Milly yesterday. She said I couldn’t come to Langley and that she wanted to come to my place when she got home. She asked for a day, and I gave it to her.

I’ve spent the last day trying to think of how I'm going to tell her. She was distant and short on the phone, and I can’t help but think she might already know. She has seen her father, maybe he knew all along who was blackmailing him.

I have also been thinking about what to do with the evidence I’ve found. I'm going to turn it over to the police. I don’t know if there are statute of limitations on blackmail, or if it’s even really a crime, since it was my father who actually did the blackmailing. But I want to see what Milly has to say, what if turning it over to the police gets her father into some sort of trouble.

The only real thing she said was that their dad was going to be able to come home in a few days. So, what if whatever the blackmail was about isn’t why he’s being held by the CIA.

I have so many questions, and I miss my woman, so much. This is the longest we’ve been apart since I found her again. I feel like my right arm is missing.

I’ve been working. And for the first time, in a long time, I’m grateful that there is so much to do. It’s what stopped me from getting into my car and driving to her house to force her to talk to me. But I know that I need to respect whatever boundaries she puts up. Even though I want not even a sliver of daylight between us.

If I have learned anything in the past few days it’s that this Milly, the woman I have gotten to know again, is at her core the same woman I knew back when we were kids. She still sees to the heart of me. She still forces me to lay myself open and be absolutely honest with her.

And the way I love her scares me because it’s not the kind of love you survive the end of. I don’t mean that I would literally die, but I think if I have to live without her, I would feel like a part of me was dead. But she needs my honesty, and she deserves my respect. So, I’ll tell her what I know and if she can’t look at me when I’m done, I’ll find a way . . .

No, fuck that. I won’t find a way. I will tie her ass up and not let her leave my apartment until she sees reason.

I run my hands through my hair for the hundredth time since she called to say she was on her way. The dye is cast. I can’t do anything but wait.

I take a quick shot of Patron and continue to pace.

Ten minutes later, I almost jump out of my skin when the elevator that only stops on my floor dings. I walk over so that I'm standing there when it opens.

Milly walks in carrying a sleeping Anthony. He's draped over her like a monkey, legs wrapped around her waist and arms around her shoulders.

She smiles at me over his head and motions for me to take him.

“He wouldn’t let me come here without him. Said he had missed you. SSo, I brought him. I hope it’s okay,” she says as soon as he’s in my arms.

He's such a bundle of energy, and so incredibly clever. But right now, he's fast asleep and when I take him from his mother, he snuggles his soft head into my neck.

“Of course, it is. I’ll put him down in the spare room. Make yourself at home.” And I take my precious cargo and tuck him into the bed in my guest room.

I come back out to find Milly staring out of the window of my Crystal City penthouse. I’ve recently leased it until I can find something to buy, but it has spectacular views of the Potomac. I can see most of the monuments, the Kennedy Center, and the infamous Watergate apartments from here.

I walk to stand behind her and put my hands on her shoulders. Relief courses through me when she leans back into me. Her jeans can’t disguise her generous ass, and I can’t control the erection that immediately develops to press into her back.

“Miss me, did you?” She smiles at me over her shoulder and grinds that ass, the one I love and can’t stop looking at, into me.

“I always miss you, Milly, but this week has felt like a special kind of hell without you.” I drop kisses on the shell of her ear, under her jaw, and down her neck, breathing in her sweet rose scent.

“Mmmm, baby, me, too,” she murmurs.

She turns around and steps up on her toes to press a hot kiss to my mouth. And that's all it takes. It’s like all of our longing erupts in that moment. The next thing I know, I have her hoisted up, legs wrapped around my waist.

I’m walking her to the waist high counter in my kitchen. We are lost in our kiss, it’s angry, desperate, loving, sexy, hot. Her tongue parries with mine. She sucks at it, licks the inside of my mouth, nips my lips, kisses me like she needs me to know that she's on fire.

And I kiss her so she knows my heart is on fire for her. So she knows I know who these lips belong to. I say I’m sorry with this kiss. I say I love you with it. I say I would fucking burn the earth to ashes to keep you with me, and I say please don’t ever leave me.

She reaches between us and pulls my sweat pants down. My cock, eternally ready for her body, jumps out and bobs between us.

I unbutton her jeans and break our kiss just long enough to pull off her shoes and her jeans and her panties all the way down her legs.

“Dean, please, now,” she demands. My woman does not beg, she knows she never has to, and I comply.

I slide home, she's wet and warm. It feels so good; I know my eyes roll into the back of my head. My lips find hers again as I make love to her. On the counter, with my heart in my throat and my love on my lips as I kiss her with everything I have.

Because everything I have, everything I am, is hers.

She groans, a sound that might as well be the song of the Siren calling Odysseus, because I start to chase it, to move so she makes this sound endlessly.

She lays down on the counter, and I lift her blouse so that her magnificent breasts are in my line of sight. I bend down over her and suck her beautiful, dark brown nipples until I feel her coming.

And when we come, we come together. The ferocious wave of pleasure that moves between us is a centrifugal force. I don’t know where it begins, but I know I never want it to end.

I kiss her as I pull out of her, and she captures my mouth in a searing, quick kiss and mumbles, “I love you,” as she releases me.

I reach around the counter for a paper towel and wipe up the mess we’ve made.

“Can I just get a T-shirt or something,” she says as she sits up on the counter. She pulls her shirt all the way off and she sits there naked. She looks like she has been well-fucked, her beautiful lips tipped up in a smile of satisfaction as she eyes me.

“Of course. Let me get one from my room. I walk down the hall, snag one of my Stanford T-shirts and rush back. She slips it on, slides off the counter, and walks to the bathroom without a word.

I'm sitting on the couch when she comes out a few minutes later and plops down next to me.

“Dean, I need to tell you a few things,” she starts.

I stop her. “Milly, can I go first? I have so much to explain about where I’ve been and what I’ve learned,” I implore.

She looks pained but nods. “Okay, go ahead.”

I tell her about the last seventy-two hours. My conversation with Ed, my trip to Sedona, my visit with my mother, and what I think it all means.

When I’m done, she looks at me with an expression I cannot discern in her eyes. So, I keep talking.

“I know it’s a lot. I don’t know how you can reconcile spending your life with the son of the people who did this to your family, but I had to tell you, even if it meant you wouldn’t be able to—”

She cuts me off when she leaps off the couch, stands in front of me, and starts shouting at me.

“What the fuck is this? Are you breaking up with me?”

She looks furious. And I'm relieved and confused because I thought she was going to be the one breaking up with me. Her eyes look like they are lit with fire burning within her. And Milly never curses. I’m immediately contrite.

“Red, no. I just—”

“You just what? Please, don’t even finish that sentence. You cannot finish that sentence.”

She pins me with a glare that makes me grateful I just finished having sex because my balls might not be capable of descending far enough to ever do it again. She starts to stride back and forth in front of me.

“I know about your parents, my father told me. He found out days ago. He decided to turn himself in because he knew the blackmailer was dead and that he could come home. What your parents did was monstrous. But you didn’t do it. Unless you’re about to tell me you were in on their scheme?” She stops to look at me.

“No, of course not,” I say offended.

“I know this, but clearly you seem to think that somehow their crimes transfer to you.”

She drops to her knees in front of me. “You are the greatest love of my life. We met, and my soul said, ‘that’s him, Milly.’”

I reach out to grab her by the biceps and pull her up into my lap. She smiles at me as she sits.

“I’m not letting you go for anything, Dean. Not for anything. I can figure everything else in the world out, but I cannot figure out how to live without you.” She picks up my hand and presses a kiss to my knuckles. She kisses each one. “Please don’t, Dean, because you are me. I’ve just found my whole self again. And if you try to take away a piece of it, I won’t let it go easily.”

Relief courses through me like a river freed from the dam holding it back. My arms go around her.

“Red, you and Ant Man, you guys are my lighthouse. I couldn’t find my way without your light and without your love.”

I reach around her and unclasp the chain around her neck. I slip the little heart shaped pendant off to reach the promise ring I gave her. I clasp the chain back around her neck.

I reach for her right hand and slip the ring onto the third finger. The same finger I put it on fifteen years ago. And just as I did then I make her promises. But this time, I’m a man in charge of my own life, and I know that it will take an act of God for me to ever break any of the things I’ve just promised her with that ring.

And as Milly accepts my ring, I know I finally have someone willing to keep the promises they have made to me, too.

I don’t know where we are going, but I remember where we’ve come from. And I know that this love, this happiness is a choice. Our adventure, the grand experiment of blending a family, healing old wounds, loving without limitation, reservation, or condition, is just starting.