Stepmom Makes The | First Move !!link!!

He stared at her for a long, trembling moment. Then he reached across the table—slowly, giving her every chance to pull back—and turned her hand over. His palm was warm. Calloused. Not a boy’s hand at all.

He froze. A forkful of potatoes halfway to his mouth. “Okay.” 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 stared at her for a long, trembling moment

The fork lowered. The rain seemed to hush. Calloused

“I miss your father every day. That’s not going to change. But I’m also—” she paused, searching for the word that wasn’t pathetic or predatory, “—lonely. And the only person I don’t feel lonely with, lately, is you.”

“I know you’re not,” he said finally. His voice was lower than she remembered. Softer. “It’s just… weird.”