Is obsessive questionnaire allowed?

What’s an example of a time Mia tested Will just to see how he’d react?

Has Will ever gone too far in one of their interactions and regretted it?

How does Mia react when Will tries to assert control over her in a more traditional parental way?

Does Mia ever fear Will, or does she feel completely safe with him no matter what?

It is welcomed!

1- It was summer when she did it. The sky was a bruised shade of violet, cicadas humming, the heat still clinging stubbornly to the air. Will had been inside, waiting, watching through the half-open blinds. And there she was Mia, his Mia, on the front porch, with some nameless boy, some pretty-limbed idiot who had no idea what he was walking into.

She kissed him. A lazy thing, effortless, as if she were offering nothing more than a passing thought. But Will knew better. He saw the way her fingers twisted in the fabric of the boy’s shirt, the way she angled her head, not toward the boy, but toward the window.

For him.

And something ugly, something ancient and terrible, ignited inside him.

He didn’t remember opening the door. Didn’t remember crossing the space between them. But suddenly, he was there, and suddenly, the boy wasn’t. He had stumbled back, some mixture of confusion and nerves flashing across his face, and Mia, standing perfectly still, that lazy little smirk playing at her lips, just watched.

She was waiting.

And it got ugly.

—

2- The regret comes like a shadow, slinking in the spaces between breath and bone.

He always regrets it.

It stains him. She stains him. A burden, a sickness, a beautiful, untouchable curse. He carries it for her. For the way the world would sink its claws into her, rip her apart if he let it.

It is his sacrifice.

And it burns.

—

3- She knows when to obey. It is an art, the way she slips back into place, the way she tilts her head, widens her eyes, plays the role she was made to play. His good girl.

But only when he forces it. Only when he grips her chin, when his voice drops into something hard and unrelenting. Then, and only then, does she listen.

But she is not afraid.

Not really. How could she be?

There are moments, fleeting, where she looks afraid, her breath caught in her throat, her fingers twisting against the hem of her dress. Moments where something inside her flickers, like a deer watching the flash of a hunter’s knife.

But she never runs.

Never from him.

Always to him.