Page 132 of Cohesion

“I blend in.” He wasn’t offended that Peyton eclipsed everything. He did for Will too. He was Will’severythingand had been from the very first night they’d met. He’d had to run down the street after a drunk Peyton, who had just randomly left the bar with no idea where he was going, and that had been it for Will.

“I do love you, Will. It hasn’t been long enough for it to be like Sebastian, or like Peyton, but it’s there, and I want to spendtime with you, nurture it, and learn more about you.” He cupped Will’s cheeks, smiling warmly, the corners of his eyes wrinkling, and that gorgeous grey shining under the kitchen lights. “I see you, and I don’t ever want to stop looking at you.”

“I want that too.” With all of them. With time, the love they each shared would grow and mature, and each facet of it would look different, and Will thought that was just the most beautiful thing. They were creating a flower together, each petal different than the last but no less important for the beauty of it as a whole.

Quinn kissed him slowly, taking his time to explore, every stroke of his tongue brushing Will’s soul and warming him up like soup on a cold day.

“We should see what we can find for food,” Quinn said. “I think there’s some coffee in there we can make for all of us.”

Will brightened. “For me too?”

“It’s decaf, so yes, I think we can make an exception.”

Will snickered, thinking about the face that Sebastian would make at that revelation. It had been a while since Will had drunk coffee—hestillmaintained the riot wasn’t his fault, nor had it been the result of coffee—but the taste didn’t really do much for him. It was pleasant and whatever. A hot chocolate was worlds better. Still, he wanted to sit at the adults’ table tonight.

Will checked out the pantry, clicking his tongue against the top of his mouth as he searched for something useful.What to make, what to make, what to make. Decisions were hard, and his brain was spaghetti.

“Okay,” he said finally. “What do you have in the freezer?”

“Um…” Quinn rustled around. “Vegetables. Ice cream. Fish. Out-of-date blueberries.”

“Out of—what?” How did frozen blueberries go out of date?

“I think they were from a drinking session with my sisters a couple of years ago. We had the bright idea to mix a lot of alcohol and a lot of fruit in one giant punch bowl. I don’t recommend it.”Quinn pulled them out and looked at them. “Oh. No. They still have another year to go.”

Drinking session with his sisters. Giant punch bowl? “You have three, right? Sisters?” Will asked. “That sounds like a big night.”

“The headache I had for three days certainly thought so. One of my older sisters, Sophie, travels all over the world for her work, and sometimes we don’t see her for a while. She’s been out of the country for over a year; last time it was closer to three. We celebrated when she got back. Not sure we even made it to our beds. Just passed out on the floor in the living room. The rug in the living room, I’d like to note. Not the floorboards.”

“Noted. You really love them.”

Quinn smiled indulgently. “They’re a pain in my ass sometimes, but they’ve been there for me my whole life. I’ve been very lucky to have a family like them.”

“And the wild grandma,” Will said, lips curling.

“Grandma Ethel; my dad’s mum. Ava, the youngest of us four kids, got her spirit. Hailey and Sophie got her fierceness. I was born in a cabbage patch, remember?”

“I remember.” They’d had to explain what a Cabbage Patch Kid was to Peyton. “I think you’re plenty fierce.” He winked, and Quinn chuckled. “Okay, what kind of veggies are in there?”

“Some peas and corn. I really need to do a shop.”

Will looked forward to walking around a supermarket with him. With all of them. So many trolley holders. “Those’ll do. Get ’em out.”

“What are we making?” Quinn asked curiously, pulling them out and putting them on the bench.

Will grabbed two packets of two-minute noodles, a bag of self-raising flour, sesame oil, soy sauce, and vegetable oil. He awkwardly juggled them to the kitchen bench and then dropped them. He managed to snag the soy sauce before the bottle ranoff the side. “Uh. Some kind of fritters?” Those were always nice and easy to make, and there were no rules about what he could throw in. He pulled eggs and a cheese block out of the fridge and surveyed his catch. Yeah, this would do.

“Fritters?”

“We’ll break the noodles up and cook them, then mix them with all this other stuff until it’s thick like a batter, and then we’ll fry them up like pancakes. They’ll be delicious, trust me.”

“I trust you.”

Now he needed to make sure they were delicious. He went back into the pantry and grabbed the brown sugar for a little dash of sweetener.

There were a lot of baking staples in there. Did Quinn bake? Maybe his wild grandma Ethel did.

Will found a cast-iron skillet in the cupboard and got that heating on the stovetop—it would take time to get it to the right temperature for them to cook, but it would hold its heat great once it got there—and then got the noodles going on the stovetop while Quinn went looking for a knife and chopping board. Together they made short work of getting all the ingredients into a mixing bowl.

---