The smell of breakfast filled the Carter mansion.
Not the usual breakfast—not Linda's really good pancakes or the Homebots' efficient, good but soulless nutrition optimization.
This was something else entirely; Peter's cooking.
And it was, as always, divine.
He stood at the stove, shirtless because the kitchen ran hot and because he could, flipping the last of the French toast while eggs sizzled in another pan and bacon crisped to perfection in a third. Muscles shifted beneath golden skin with each movement.
The kitchen had become his domain for the morning, and he moved through it with the same fluid grace he brought to everything else now.
Linda sat at the table, looking better than she had last night but still fragile. Still processing. Still carrying their secret beneath her heart. Her eyes tracked her son's movements—her son, her lover, the father of her unborn child—and something warm settled in her chest despite everything.
