The scent of rosemary and roasting chicken hung heavy in the kitchen. A thick, savory perfume that clung to the curtains. I smoothed the front of my linen blouse for the tenth time, fingers brushing over the soft, washed-out fabric.

Everything was perfect. The silverware laid out in parallel lines. The napkins folded into crisp, obedient triangles. The floorboards gleaming with lemon oil, waiting for footsteps.

It was a beautiful, suffocating silence.

Through the archway, the blue light of the television flickered against the wall—a restless ghost in the late afternoon dimness. Matt was in his chair. Exactly where he had been since lunch. A shape molded into the leather. A permanent fixture of the room, like the heavy oak bookshelf or the unlit fireplace.

“They should be here any minute,” I said. My voice sounded too loud. Too bright against the quiet hum of the refrigerator.

Matt didn’t turn. He shifted his weight, the leather groaning beneath him, and lifted the remote. “Game’s almost over,” he mumbled. Words slurring together. Speaking required too much effort. “Don’t worry about it, Elaine. Traffic.”

I turned back to the window. Watching the driveway.

It wasn’t worry. Worry is a cold, sharp thing. This was something else. A heat rising up the back of my neck. A nervous fluttering in my stomach.

I hadn’t seen Leo since Christmas. Six months. In the timeline of a mother, six months is a blink. A pause between breaths. But the silence of this house had stretched it into an eternity. I needed the noise. I needed the life he brought, the way he would bang through the door and scatter the dust of my routine.

I wanted to feel useful again.

I wanted to be seen.

The crunch of tires on gravel shattered the stillness.

My heart gave a violent kick against my ribs. “They’re here,” I breathed.

Matt wasn’t listening.

I moved to the foyer. Checked my reflection in the hallway mirror one last time. Hair pinned back, sensible and neat. Face smooth, perhaps a little pale. The lines around my eyes soft but undeniable. I pinched my cheeks, trying to force a bloom of color into the skin, and opened the front door just as the engine cut off.

The late spring air rushed in. Wet grass. Asphalt.

The driver’s side door opened. A pair of worn boots hit the pavement, followed by long legs clad in dark denim.

I smiled—automatic, maternal, ready. “Leo, honey, you made good ti—”

The words died in my throat.

Leo stood up, stretching his arms over his head. The motion seemed to block out the sun.

He was enormous.

The lanky, awkward softness of the boy who had left six months ago had evaporated. Replaced by thick, dense muscle that strained against his grey t-shirt. Shoulders broad. Waist hard and solid. When he dropped his arms, the veins in his forearms stood out like cords.

He turned toward me. The grin was the same—crooked, boyish—but the jawline framing it was covered in heavy, dark stubble.

He looked rough. He looked heavy.

“Hey, Mom,” he called out.

His voice was deeper than I remembered. A baritone that scraped against my nerves. Startling. Strangely electric.

Before I could recalibrate—before I could adjust the image in my mind to the reality standing on my driveway—he was moving. Bounding up the steps. Taking them two at a time. The heavy tread of his boots shaking the frame of the house.

“Leo,” I managed.

He didn’t stop for a polite hello. He stepped into my personal space and wrapped his arms around me.

It wasn’t a hug. It was an engulfment.

I gasped as the air was squeezed from my lungs. A wall of heated stone. No give. No softness. His chest pressed flat against my breasts, hard and unyielding. His arms locked around my back with a strength that bordered on crushing.

And the smell.

Gone was the detergent scent I used to wash his clothes in.

Now? Long hours on the highway. Black coffee. Old leather seats. And something distinctly, sharply masculine. A musk of sweat and testosterone that flooded my senses. Overwhelming. Dizzying.

For a terrifying second, my body didn’t recognize him as my son.

It recognized a dominant, powerful male holding me trapped.

A flush scalded my chest, rising up to my ears. My knees went watery. My hands instinctively clutched at his biceps to steady myself.

Rock hard.

“Missed you,” he mumbled into my hair. The stubble on his chin rasped against the sensitive skin of my neck.

The sensation sent a shockwave straight down my spine. Heavy. Hot. Settling low in my pelvis.

I pulled back. Too quickly. My breath coming in short, shallow bursts.

“I—I missed you too,” I stammered. I smoothed my blouse again. Trying to erase the imprint of his body. I felt small. Breakable. “Jesus, look at you. You’ve ... you’ve filled out.”

Leo laughed. Low. Chesty. “Gym at school is free. Might as well use it.”

“Hi! Oh my god, Mrs. Parsons! It is so, so good to meet you finally!”

The high-pitched voice sliced through the thick, humid tension like a knife. I blinked, tearing my eyes away from Leo’s forearms to look past him.

Coming up the walk was a girl who looked like she had been crafted from sunlight and candy. Bouncing on the balls of her sneakers. A swirling vortex of blonde hair and energy.

Chloe. The new girlfriend.

I forced my smile to widen. It felt brittle on my face. “Chloe. Welcome.”

She was beautiful in a generic, terrifyingly youthful way. but it was her attire that made my stomach twist with a cold, ugly knot. Denim shorts that were little more than a suggestion. The frayed hem cutting high across smooth, tanned thighs.

No cellulite. No veins. No history.

Her top was a tiny scrap of white cotton leaving her midriff entirely bare. No bra. A flat, taut stomach. The soft inward curve of her belly button.

She looked effortless. She looked exposed.

“The house is so cute!” Chloe squealed. She bounded up the stairs, bypassing a handshake to give me a quick, bouncy hug. Skin cool and firm. Strawberries and cheap vanilla. “Leo talks about your cooking literally all the time. I’m starving.”

“I hope you’re hungry,” I said. My voice sounded matronly. Dull. Beside Chloe’s vibrant, half-naked display, I felt wrapped in wool and linen. A creature of a different era.

I crossed my arms over my waist. Conscious of the softness there. The body that had borne the man standing next to me.

“Let’s get the bags inside,” Leo said. He reached past Chloe. His arm brushed against the girl’s bare waist.

Chloe giggled and swatted him. Casual. Intimate. Ownership.

I looked away. A sharp pang pierced my chest. Not just that she was young. But that she had his attention. She had the right to touch that hard, transformed body. She didn’t have to work for it. She didn’t have to roast the chicken or fold the napkins. She just had to exist.

“Come on in,” I said, retreating into the shadow of the house. “Your father is in the living room.”

The procession moved inside. The house, spacious and empty only moments ago, felt incredibly small. Leo took up space. He didn’t just stand in a room; he displaced the air within it. His boots clomped on the hardwood. A violence against the silence I had been living in.

We moved into the living room. Matt was still in the leather chair. The blue light of the TV washing over his face.

“Matt,” I said sharply. “Leo is here.”

Matt blinked. Slowly pulled himself out of the trance. He looked over the back of the recliner, eyes glassy. He didn’t stand up. He didn’t rush. He simply shifted, offering a tired, lopsided smile.

“Hey, kid,” Matt said. Lifting a hand in a weak wave. “How was the drive?”

Leo stood in the center of the room. He held two heavy duffel bags as if they were filled with feathers. He loomed. The afternoon sun filtered through the sheer curtains, outlining his silhouette—the breadth of his shoulders, the thick column of his neck.

“Drive was fine, Dad,” Leo said.

His voice was a drumbeat against the tinny sound of the television commercial.

I looked from my husband to my son.

The contrast was visceral. Matt was a study in beige. Slumped posture. Thinning hair. A softness around the middle that spoke of surrender. He looked like furniture that had begun to sag. Fading. Translucent against the leather.

And then there was Leo.

Vivid. High-definition. Vibrating with an aggressive, latent energy that made the air around him feel charged. He was looking down at his father with a polite, easy smile, but the truth was undeniable. The boy was gone. In his place was a predator who had wandered back into the den, unaware of his own size.

I felt a strange, terrifying thrill curl in my belly. I looked at Matt’s hand—pale, soft, resting lazily on the armrest. Then I looked at Leo’s hands gripping the bag straps. Large. Tanned. Veins prominent. Knuckles dusted with dark hair.

The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow.

There is only one man in this room.

“This is Chloe,” Leo said, gesturing with his chin. Breaking the tableau.

Matt nodded, barely glancing at the girl’s exposed stomach. “Nice to meet you. Elaine, we got any beer?”

I didn’t answer immediately. I was watching Leo’s throat as he swallowed. The apple bobbing in the thick cords of his neck.

The house felt hot. The air felt thin.

“I’ll ... I’ll get some ice water,” I whispered. I turned toward the kitchen, heart racing. I needed to breathe. I needed to get away from the sheer, crushing gravity of him.

But as I walked away, I could still feel him behind me.

I could feel his eyes. I could feel his heat. And God help me, I could still feel the phantom pressure of his hard chest crushing my breasts. A ghost of a hug.

It didn’t feel like a greeting. It felt like a claim.

The bedroom was a vault of stale air and silence.

Midnight had come and gone, leaving behind a stillness that felt heavy, like a woolen blanket pulled up over the head of the house. I lay on my side, eyes wide open, staring at the shadowy contours of the dresser.

Beside me, Matt was a lump of inert heat. He slept with the commitment of the dead. His breathing was a rhythmic, wet rattle—a snore that snagged in his throat on the inhale and whistled on the exhale. It was the soundtrack of the last ten years of my life. Not the deep, restorative breathing of a man at rest. The congested noise of a machine idling in neutral.

I shifted. The cotton of my pajama pants caught against the flannel sheets. My skin felt too tight for my body.

The sensation had started the moment Leo had hugged me hello. A lingering vibration that hadn’t dissipated with the sunset. I felt restless. Frayed. A wire carrying too much current.

I kicked the sheet off my legs. Above, the ceiling fan spun lazily, slicing through the dark, pushing the same tepid air in circles. I looked at Matt’s back. A mountain of indifference. If I reached out and touched his shoulder, he would grunt. Shift. Maybe swat my hand away in his sleep.

There was no danger in him. There was no fire.

Then, the sound began.

Subtle at first. A rhythmic thump ... thump ... thump.

I froze. My heart skipped, instincts flaring. Wind? A loose shutter? I held my breath, straining against the ambient noise of Matt’s snoring.

Thump-squeak. Thump-squeak.

The rhythm tightened. Not the wind.

The sound was structural. Moving through the floorboards. Traveling along the wooden beams that connected the master suite to the guest wing.

The realization hit me with a flush of cold indignation.

They’re awake.

I sat up. The mattress shifted under my weight. Matt didn’t stir. The glowing red numbers on the clock read 1:14 AM.

Thump-squeak. Thump-squeak. Thump.

Disrespectful.

That was the first thought that seized me. A convenient shield of maternal propriety. They were guests in my home. It was late. The walls were thinner than I remembered, or perhaps the silence of my own life just amplified the noise of theirs.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed, feet finding the cool plush of the carpet. Anger, sharp and righteous, stiffened my spine. I imagined marching down the hallway. Rapping my knuckles against the white-painted wood. Hissing at them to go to sleep. I imagined the shameful silence that would follow, the way Leo would look down at his breakfast tomorrow, properly chastised.

I stood up. My hand gripped the edge of the nightstand to steady myself.

From down the hall, a voice cut through the dark.

A high, breathless pant. Chloe. It wasn’t a word; it was a pure, animal sound of reception. A whimper that climbed in pitch and broke into a soft, shattered gasp.

I stopped. My hand tightened on the mahogany until my knuckles turned white.

The anger evaporated. Replaced by something darker. Stickier.

I stood frozen in the predatory dark of my own bedroom, trapped between the urge to flee and the compulsion to listen.

Then I heard him.

“Yeah...”

A growl.

A low rumble that seemed to travel through the floorboards and up through the soles of my feet. It wasn’t the voice of the boy who used to ask for pancakes. It was the voice of the man I had met this afternoon—deep, scarred with gravel, stripped of all politeness.

“Leo,” I whispered.

Bang.

The bed down the hall hit the wall.

The rhythm accelerated. No longer tentative. It was a hammering. A claiming.

My legs gave out. I sank back onto the edge of the mattress. The sound was a violation, an invisible wave crashing into the sanctity of my dull, organized life. I should put on some headphones. I should wake Matt.

I did neither.

I sat in the dark, fingers digging into the edge of the mattress, and let the sound wash over me.

The contrast was cruel. Behind me, Matt let out a long, wheezing snort, followed by a smack of dry lips. Down the hall, my son was driving into his girlfriend with a ferocity that made the house groan.

I closed my eyes.

The memory of the afternoon resurfaced, unbidden. Vivid. Leo’s forearms. The way the veins roped over the muscle when he gripped the luggage. The heavy shelf of his chest. The heat radiating off him. The scent of deodorant and stale car air and man.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

Chloe moaned again. Louder. A shameless, ragged sound. “Leo ... God, Leo...”

The name hung in the air.

My breath hitched. My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. My body was betraying me. A flushed heat bloomed across my chest and settled, heavy and aching, between my legs.