I love the way you answer with narrative, I feel like I'm reading tiny fics!😩 Can I ask about Mia's first relationship or kiss and if Will knew that and he reacted? -🪿

Mia learned about love the way she learned everything else…through Will.

She was six the first time she saw him kiss someone. A redhead, the neighbor. Just a passing moment on the front porch, nothing serious, nothing deep. But Mia had stood there, frozen, eyes wide with fury, demanding an explanation like he had just betrayed something sacred.

Will had laughed. She was so dramatic. He told her that’s how adults kiss.

That seemed to satisfy her, until she saw a pair of teenagers tangled together in a park, mouths locked, hands wandering.

“You said that was for adults.”

He glanced at her, unimpressed. “They’re criminals.”

And she believed him.

For years after, she would point at couples making out in public and declare them outlaws, sometimes even scolding them outright. Will thought it was hilarious. Until she came home one day, around eleven.

She had seen a teacher kissing a student. Mia confronted the student, trying to make sense of it, and the girl told her that’s just what people do when they love each other.

So Mia had come home and told Will, with complete conviction, “You don’t love me.”

The absurdity of it made him laugh. But beneath the amusement, something curdled. What teacher? He had her tell him everything. What she said, what she saw, who it was. He handled it. It turned into a mess. The man was arrested. It should have ended there. But it stuck with her. The way she held herself afterward. The way she looked at people. The way guilt gnawed at her.

She never talked about it.

At thirteen, she kissed a girl friend. She told Will, and he told her not to do that in public because people were cruel. Then she kissed a boy, and he yelled at her.

She was confused.

He never answered. Just apologized, like that could undo it. He pulled her from school soon after.

She learned to hide things from him.

The first time she was with a man, she came home shaking, bile rising in her throat. She locked herself in the bathroom, threw up, cried until her face was raw. Then she found him and spat the words like they were poison—this is your fault.

He didn’t understand. Couldn’t. She wouldn’t explain. Just curled into herself like something had broken inside her.

Years passed before he found out.

When he did, it unraveled something in him so violently that Mia locked herself in her room for two days.