CHAPTER 4
AVA
The house was quiet that afternoon, the kind of quiet that felt heavy and full of possibility. Grant worked from his home office most days, the door half-open, the soft click of his keyboard drifting down the hallway like a steady heartbeat. Doris, his had been gone for years, even before I got adopted at nineteen and it was just us now—me home from college for the summer, him the calm, steady anchor he'd always been since he adopted me at nineteen.
I walked down the hall in my tiny cotton shorts and cropped tank, barefoot, hair loose around my shoulders. My heart was already racing. I’d been thinking about this all morning how his hands felt on me last night, how his deep voice had whispered against my skin while he filled me up. I needed more. I needed him.
I knocked so
