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Living with Ellie Miller is every bit as hectic as Hardy expected it to be. There’s a toddler interrupting his sleep, a teenager stealing his socks and a woman who seems incapable of buying fruit.
He can’t remember being happier.
The constant noise and activity are overwhelming at times. He’s so used to solitude that he occasionally has to step out of the room to get his bearings. Miller usually follows him and he hasn’t yet been able to explain his actions to her.
Other parts of living with a family again have come back to him straight away. He watches where he’s walking at all times in case of an abandoned toy and getting Tom awake and functioning enough to get to school on time now only takes him half an hour.
He’s noticed the same can’t be said for Miller.
Hardy knows he’s been starved for affection and he’s compelled to reassure himself that she’s there whenever they’re in the same room together. At dinner, he finds himself reaching out for her thigh under the table. When she’s straining for something in a high cupboard, he has to place a supporting hand on her back. If she’s daydreaming out of the kitchen window, he reminds her to come home with a kiss on the shoulder.
Each time she flinches. Understanding why doesn’t stop the sting.
She knows she does it, knows she’s not used to an affectionate touch from a man. The last person she had any sort of casual intimacy with has tainted those memories beyond repair.
Trying to empathise with that violation just makes him want to cling to her more, like he can erase the other man’s fingerprints from her skin.
After every incident, she reaches out and pulls him back to her in a silent promise that it won’t always be like this.
One morning, as the sound of rain lashing against the windows fills the house, Hardy sees her brushing her teeth through the open bathroom door. For some reason, he strikes him that her hair is now long enough to cover her face when she leans over the sink. He comes up behind her silently and plays with one of the curls.
She beams at him in the mirror.
“Been thinking about growing it for ages,” she says after spitting.
“It suits you.”
She leans back against his chest and his arms circle around her. In the mirror, she lights up like the sun.
It takes him a moment to realise that the image in front of him isn’t a wish for the future, but his reality. Ellie Miller is in his arms, smiling, and it’s the most natural thing in the world.
He closes his eyes and nuzzles the side of her neck. There’s no need for him to see the proof when he can feel it spreading throughout his body from the heart she helped fix.