I felt like I was a mess all through dinner. I had already pulled Emery aside and told her I wanted to talk. That was a great start. But more importantly, it stopped me from chickening out of talking to her.

We were back now, and our pressing timeline had been addressed. We no longer had the demonic sect in the Dying Lands breathing down our necks. We could finally take some time and work on other things.

Like our feelings.

I internally laughed, imagining how Emery would react if I walked up to her and said, ‘We need to talk about our feelings’. I was almost sure she would burst into laughter at the notion, though she had certainly surprised me before. I had to admit, I honestly had no idea how she would approach feelings of like, love, or lust. At least, not when they no longer needed to be put on the back burner to save lives.

I tried to keep myself focused on the chatting around the table as we all ate. We all sat at a lovely round table, with the younger girls between Emery and I. Cierra and Stena had acted as only children could, and already looked like they were as friendly as could be. They were even sharing food between their plates, and it was so cute I couldn’t help but smile.

More than once throughout the meal, I had met eyes with Emery while smiling at the girls. Every single time, without fail, she would smile at me before turning back to her food or the girls, and my stomach would flip.

It was more difficult to keep myself concentrated on the meal and conversation around this table than it was to keep myself together against the demons we had just fought. Emery just had some kind of hold on me I couldn’t shake - probably because of the recent danger and heightened emotions. And even though I knew that, it didn’t help me stay in control.

The worst part of it all was my inability to read how Emery felt. Sure, she smiled at me regularly, but that could be entirely unrelated to me, especially given the adorable little girls currently being cute sat between us.

As dinner drew to a close, I drank nearly an entire glass of water because my mouth kept going dry. Eventually the conversation broke up and people started getting up to clean the dishes and do other after dinner chores.

“I’ll help!” Cierra shouted happily, as Vale carried a stack of dishes into the kitchen.

Vale laughed, happily accepting the girl’s assistance. “I swear, Cici, those must be your favorite words.” And as Cierra trotted off behind Vale, Stena was trailing on her heels holding onto the back of Cierra’s top.

Before Talya got up to do whatever it was she was going to do, Emery stood and walked over to me. She gave a little tug on the shoulder of my shirt while addressing Talya. “Sorry, Talya. Avuri and I need to go do something really quick before we do anything else. We’ll be back in a bit to grab Stena, and maybe Cierra too, for a bath.”

“Sure, that’s fine.” Talya said, looking up at Emery confused. “Just make sure you do wash, because all three of you stink of sweat and travel.”

Emery chuckled as I nervously got to my feet. “Trust me, I plan on soaking for a while tonight. No need to make me.”

And then Emery gently ushered me out of the room, down the stairs and to the outside. She finally stopped just outside the doorway to the house.

“You said private. How private? Want to go sit on the playground?” Emery asked with a smile.

The sun was beginning to set, and the way the last rays of the day filtered through the canopy of trees and hit Emery made her look absolutely ephemeral, complete with a beautiful halo of light. I caught myself staring and had to force myself to look away. “Yeah, the playground is fine.” I said, and started to walk off in that direction.

Emery, the infernal woman, decided that would be a good time to step up beside me and hook one of her arms through mine. I glanced at her, but she was just watching ahead of us with a faint, content smile. If she had had any other expression, I would’ve sworn she was purposefully messing with me - but that serene expression felt so genuine that I just let it go.

She eventually led me to the far side of the playground, where we had fashioned a couple of cut logs into benches. Through the magic of Emery’s unnaturally sharp weapons, they had been carved and sanded down to perfection and were far more comfortable than wooden benches had any right to be.

Emery deposited me in one seat, then sat next to me. We sat in silence for a minute or two, looking up at the fading sunset. She didn’t push me to talk and just sat waiting patiently.

I leaned back on my hands and kicked my legs like a child. “I honestly don’t know how to begin. There’s a lot that I feel like we need to talk about.” I said, trying to sound chipper.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Emery snickered. “I have a pretty good idea of some of what you want to talk about.” She said, smiling into the distance.

I took a really deep breath and let it out slowly. “I figured you might.” Another short silence followed while I tried to decide where to start. I figured starting with a vague statement would do.

“So…we did what we set out to do. There’s no more Dying Lands sect for us to focus on.”

Emery snorted, holding back a bit of laughter. “Mhm, that’s true.”

I gave her a flat stare. “That’s not helping, Emery.” I said flatly.

“You’re right, sorry. Please continue.” She responded, still watching the sunset.

I eyed her for a moment more, took a deep breath, and said, “I think we should discuss where we go from here. As a couple, I mean.” I added, just to clarify.

A warm smile appeared on her face then. “I’ve told you before, Avuri. I’m a very straightforward person. I’m bad at keeping secrets, and I don’t like dealing with nonsense drama.” She turned to me then, and her smile showed genuine affection. “Talking about what’s next after all that was always the plan.”

“Right. Yeah.” I said, looking down at my hands as I nervously poked at my nails. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to start?”

“I could, but I thought you wanted to talk first? Considering that you’re the one who called me out here.”

“Dug my own grave there, didn’t I?” I said ruefully, and Emery laughed. I let out another breath in a single puff of air.

“Alright! Alright.” I said, finally. I turned in my seat to more fully face Emery. “We don’t need to focus so single-mindedly on advancement anymore. The threat we were working on has been dealt with.” Another deep breath. “Emery, I really like you. But given our current living arrangements, I don’t really know what we should do from here.”

“Just to be perfectly clear, I really like you too, Avuri.” Emery said, her smile still radiant.

“Well that’s good. I’d be rather lost at this point if you didn’t.” I chuckled. “But I still don’t know what our next steps are.”

“Well…” Emery began, then paused to think about it a moment. “For starters, I think we should stop doing Paired Cultivation for a while. Maybe even stop connecting our Domains for a bit.” She paused, then clarified. “I don’t want the emotions from Cultivation to play a part in whatever might come next.”

I nodded. “That was always the plan.”

“I would also like to mention that I would very much like to Cultivate together again down the line, if things go well.” Emery said, very matter-of-factly. “But, yes, I do think we should stop for the time being.”

“Right. So, the next order of business then.” I said, trying to order my thoughts. “Where does that put us right now? We’ve done everything up to now so wildly out of order, I’m not sure where we stand with one another.”

In a slightly awkward effort to further explain, I added, “Like I said, I like you a lot Emery. But we’ve also been living closely together - even sharing a bed - for months now. Cierra - who is technically only your daughter - also calls me Mom. And then together we just picked up another kid.” I sighed. “I won’t lie to you, my mind is all kinds of jumbled up right now.”

Emery giggled as the words tumbled out of me. “Well, let’s see if we can’t put some things straight, yeah?” She reached over and placed one of her hands over mine. “I realize that our situation is certainly unusual, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Far from it, really.”

“Hm…” Emery thought for a moment, a thumb brushing over the back of my hand tenderly. “Avuri, I know I’ve told you I’m not great at talking around things. Can I be blunt?”

I fought against my stomach bottoming out at those words, but nodded. “Yeah, sure. That’s how all this started, anyway.”

Emery nodded and grinned. “Open book, no bullshit.” She said quietly, and squeezed my hand. “Yes, we’ve definitely done things out of order. But I haven’t been thinking about it that way for a while now. Us living together, the way you treat the girls, all of that - for a while now, I’ve been considering it as a dry run for the real thing.”

“I’ve learned a lot about you along the way. All kinds of important stuff. Like that we can live together without getting on each other’s nerves. I learned that you would be a great mother to any kids that we might pick up along the way.” She laughed a little awkwardly, as I just continued to stare at our entwined hands, and her thumb gently stroking the back of my hand as I listened. She took a breath to say something else, then stopped. I looked up at her face then, and met her eyes.

Without warning, she popped up to her feet with a sudden, sharp laugh. “Oh, fuck this! I said I was going to be blunt, then kept dancing around it anyway.”

Emery still held my hand in hers, and used it to pull me up to my feet. I stood, a little bewildered, as she swung me around to face her straight on. She snickered again, and muttered, “Damn, you’re tall,” as she had to actively look upward when we were this close.

That got me laughing too.

And then she tugged me down toward her by the collar of my shirt and kissed me.

It wasn’t a cute, chaste kiss either. It was a searing, passionate kiss that made my knees weak. My head went blank by the time we parted but she kept herself pressed up against me, with her arms settled around my waist in an embrace.

She laughed as she all but held me up while my brain reset. When I was functional again, I held up a single finger between us. “Hold on, just a second.” I said, sternly. Emery looked up at me doing her best to project doe-eyes. “First, I think being blunt suits the two of us very well. Second, you’re going to have to do that again, because I was woefully unprepared.”

I couldn’t turn away from Emery’s face, my eyes focused on burning her beautiful affectionate smile into my mind.

“I’m sure we can make that happen.” Emery said, and tugged my face down to hers once more.