My boy / Drew Starkey

44

Mila

His question lingers between us, weaving itself into the quiet, intimate space of the treehouse. I can still remember the last time we were here—how the golden afternoon light had slanted through the leaves, the way Drew had looked at me like I was something fragile and important all at once. The memory feels close enough to touch.

I swallow hard, my fingers tracing the edge of the wooden seat beneath me. "It was late," I say finally, my voice soft, almost cautious. "We had been here for hours, talking about everything and nothing."

Drew shifts beside me, and I feel the warmth of his body, the barely-there brush of his knee against mine. "And then we almost—" he stops himself, letting out a quiet breath, like he's debating whether to say it out loud.

I glance at him, my heart a steady pulse in my throat. "Yeah," I murmur, looking away, because if I keep staring at him, I know I'll give too much away. "We almost."

His hand rests between us on the worn wooden surface, fingers flexing slightly, like he's fighting the urge to reach for me. A part of me wonders if he would, if I let him.

"I wanted to," he admits after a beat, his voice lower now, almost rough with something unspoken. "I think about it sometimes. How close we were."

I feel my breath catch in my chest. "Me too," I say, the words slipping out before I can second-guess them.

For a moment, there's nothing but silence, the distant hum of voices from below, the occasional creak of the treehouse shifting with the wind. The fairy lights overhead cast a warm glow around us, flickering slightly, like even they can feel the tension between us.

Drew exhales sharply, shaking his head with a small, almost disbelieving smile. "God, Mila," he murmurs, rubbing a hand over his jaw. "Being here with you again—it's like nothing's changed, but everything has."

I don't know what to say to that. Because he's right. We are different, changed by everything that's happened between us, by the choices we've made and the ones we've been too afraid to. But being here—just us, in the quiet of our treehouse—feels like stepping into something untouched, something still ours.

Drew turns to me then, his expression unreadable, but his eyes—his eyes give him away. They hold too much. Too much of the past, too much of whatever this is between us now.

I force out a small, shaky laugh. "It's kind of ridiculous that a café has a treehouse, right?" I say, trying to break the heaviness settling between us.

Drew doesn't smile. Instead, he leans in just slightly, not enough to close the space between us, but enough that I can feel the shift in the air. "No," he murmurs, his gaze dropping briefly to my lips before meeting my eyes again. "It's kind of perfect."

And suddenly, I can feel it again—that same pull I felt the last time we were here, that same breathless anticipation. The way my pulse picks up, the way the space between us seems to shrink even though neither of us has moved.

His fingers twitch on the wood between us, and I wonder if he's about to reach for me, if he's about to erase the distance we've kept for too long. My mind is screaming at me to stop this, to remember the consequences, the complications. But my body—my heart—is aching for me to do the opposite.

Drew exhales slowly, his fingers tightening briefly where they rest on his knee, like he's grounding himself, holding back. But his eyes—they don't hold back at all. They stay locked on mine, unwavering, heavy with everything unsaid.

"I think about that day a lot," he admits, his voice low, rough. "About what almost happened."

My breath catches, my fingers twitch against my lap. "Me too," I whisper, the confession barely past my lips before the air between us tightens.