Chapter 27
Jane
W hen I wake up on Saturday morning, Evan is next to me in bed. I smile, and that smile broadens as I remember last night.
My husband loves me.
Until yesterday, I didn’t know what it was like to love someone like this and have that love returned. Not everyone wants this kind of relationship, but I always did, even if I sometimes pretended otherwise.
And now, I finally have it.
My mood darkens a little as I remember my father’s visit, which quashed the silly hopes that I tried not to have. It was good to get it out, though, and I feel like that will help me move on.
Will I still talk to him a couple of times a year? I haven’t decided, and that’s okay. But I know I want a relationship with Peyton. I’m not sure exactly what it will look like, since we’ve only just start connecting outside of my rare visits to Calgary, but I’m looking forward to getting to know her beyond my father’s bragging. Maybe I’ll start talking to Kaden, too.
One step at a time.
I know my life might seem small to some people. I don’t go out or travel a lot. I don’t have a career that I find especially fulfilling. But at thirty-three, I’m happily married and own a house, and that seems like enough of a miracle.
Not wanting to wake up Evan yet—it’s only eight and he had a long day—I reach for my phone and notice that I got a text late last night. DAD: Your mother would be proud of you.
A number of people have said that to me over the years, despite the fact that most of them had never met her. But coming from my father, it’s different.
What was their marriage like?
I hope you were happy, Mom.
In my memories, except those at the very end, she’s always smiling, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she was happy with him.
It briefly occurs to me that my father’s words could be sarcastic, but I don’t think they are. I think he means them. Yet it’s not lost on me that he invokes my mother without saying he’s proud of me.
I pad out of the room to grab the framed picture of my family. I return to Evan’s bedroom—our bedroom—and set it on the bedside table. Next to me, he stirs.
“Hey.” He pulls me close, my chest against his.
We did a lot of snuggling last night, but I still want more. There’s nothing quite like mornings in bed with him.
I roll onto my side. As I adjust my position, I feel a certain part of him responding. I wiggle my ass against him. In turn, he slips his hand under the hem of my shirt and cups my breast, giving it a squeeze. Then his hand lazily wanders between my legs.
I made a strange noise in the back of my throat, and I can feel his rumble of laughter. He slides his finger inside me, and his thumb brushes my clit. Gently, just the way I like it.
When he withdraws, I moan in protest. He makes quick work of my clothes before sliding down my body and setting his mouth on me. I moan for an entirely different reason, and he lifts his head and gives me a wicked smile that I find endearing.
I am immensely fond of him.
When I grip his hair and push his face down, he laughs and gets back to work.
Sex used to be more complicated for me. In one way or another, it seemed like my feelings toward it weren’t quite what people wanted them to be—and my body was so damn picky . But with Evan, it doesn’t feel like that. It never did, not even at the beginning when we were figuring out what the other person preferred.
And now, it just feels right.
He laps at me, his tongue moving over my pussy, and when I’m almost there, he stops.
I give him a thoroughly unimpressed look and smack his ass, which I suspect is what he wanted. He also knows that I usually prefer to finish later, even if it frustrates me.
As he takes off his clothes and reaches into his bedside table for supplies, I reach over to my table and turn the picture away. Heh.
In addition to the condom packet and lube, Evan holds up the butt plug that I used on him before, and I nod. He passes it to me, and when our hands brush, I feel a spark of electricity.
Once I’ve got a proper grip on the plug, I lube it up, and he gets on all fours and I tease his opening, his whimpers urging me on. Finally, I push it all the way in, and he groans.
He raises himself up on his knees, and I join him, my chest against his. He puts one hand on my cheek and the other on my back before kissing me like he can’t get enough of me. I thrust my fingers into his adorably mussed hair and return the kiss in exactly the same way. His erection is pressed between us, and God, I want him.
I lightly push him backward so that he’s lying on his back. He crosses his arms behind his head, and I admire him for a moment before stealing another kiss. When I slide down his body and take his cock in my mouth, he groans again and throws an arm over his eyes. I cup his balls as I shift my mouth to his inner thigh. I suck on his skin, drawing it into my mouth, and nibble.
“Jane…” It’s the first thing he’s said in a long time, and it feels like he’s imbuing my single-syllable name with so many emotions.
Love. Wonder. Desperation.
Once I’m satisfied I’ve done enough to leave a mark, I roll on a condom and slowly sit on his cock, moaning when I’ve taken all of him inside me. He really is just the right size. I ride him leisurely, and he smiles up at me. Then I roll my hips hard against him and pick up the pace, in a way that has made him lose his mind in the past—and I’m not disappointed. He’s practically flailing beneath me, and I feel like the most powerful person in the world. How am I able to do this to him?
A moment later, I’m on my back, not quite sure how I got here, and he’s above me, urgently thrusting. My hands are all over him; I feel like I can’t touch him enough.
“Jane,” he says again, then thrusts into me one more time…and holds.
Once his orgasm has ebbed, he pulls out of me and immediately slides down my body. Two fingers in my pussy and a gentle suck on my clit are all it takes for me to pull his hair and cry out his name.
After we clean up, we return to bed. It’s nine o’clock, and I’m usually up by this time on the weekend, but I don’t care.
“I love you,” I tell Evan again, and he smiles at me like it’s the greatest news ever, even though he’s known it for…well, about twelve hours.
“I love you ,” he says.
He pushes aside the sheet and brushes his fingers over the faint bruise on his inner thigh. He hisses out a breath.
Yeah, I was right. He totally likes hickeys.
We lie there in silence, his fingers running through my hair, for a few minutes before he says, “So about having children…”
I release a startled laugh.
“Have you changed your mind?” he asks.
“No, but I still think we should wait until next summer. I want some time just for us.”
“I agree.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “You weren’t going to suggest we start trying right away?”
“Not going to lie, a part of me wants to, but I think waiting is the right call. I just wanted to check in, since we haven’t actually talked about it for a while.”
Even though we’re not trying yet, having kids now feels more real than it ever did before. It’s not a hazy image in my brain, but something I can really imagine happening…with him.
“Just one thing,” I say. “Don’t get me wrong, I have faith you’ll be a good parent, but promise that if something happens to me, you won’t do what my dad did. I’m not saying you should never remarry, but I hate to think of our kids feeling like they aren’t wanted, or don’t have a family, or…”
He doesn’t say that nothing will happen to me, which I appreciate. I know he wants to, but he understands this is important to me. While I don’t expect the unlikely to occur, I still feel the need to discuss it. Just in case.
“I promise,” he says solemnly.
We stay in bed for another half hour. Then Evan gets dressed and heads downstairs to make coffee while I jump in the shower.
And as I stand under the spray, I think, I feel in love just right .
After I sit down on the back patio with my coffee—which Evan has poured into a new penguin mug that he got in Montreal—I turn to look at Watson. He’s wearing a pink scarf.
“What do you want to do today?” Evan asks.
“I didn’t have any particular plans,” I say. “Though I do need to cut the grass at some point this weekend. Probably won’t have to do that too many more times.”
“I’d offer to cut it, but you seem to enjoy it.”
“I do.”
“And truth be told, I like watching you. I found myself staring at your ass while you were cutting the grass several weeks ago, and I felt guilty about it.”
“You don’t have to feel guilty anymore,” I say, but then I frown.
“What is it?”
“I just remembered. When your parents were here, I told them the truth about why we got married. Your mom said, ‘I can’t understand why my son married you—’”
“ What? ” Evan is pissed on my behalf, and I admit, it’s rather gratifying.
“She assured me that she likes me; she just knew we weren’t in love, and she thought maybe a honeymoon would help us grow closer. I suggested that things might be changing, but that’s it. I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to say.”
“I can’t believe she brought it up when I wasn’t there.”
“She was asking about my father’s visit and…yeah.”
He touches my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I totally understand why you said something. I also confessed the truth to Max. I needed to talk to someone because I wasn’t sure what to do, whether to reveal my feelings to you. He said I should.”
It is a little weird that more people know than we’d initially intended, but it’s hard to care too much when I’m so happy to be with Evan.
“Your mom also told me,” I say, “that she was supposed to marry someone she hated—the son of her parents’ friends—but she ran away with your father instead.”
Based on Evan’s expression, this is news to him. I wonder if any of his brothers know.
“I…well, that does explain a few things,” he says at last. “About my grandparents, as well as a few other conversations I’ve heard over the years. If I saw it in a drama, I’d find the whole thing rather romantic.” His lips curve upward, and another wave of fondness rushes over me. I’m lucky to just be sitting here, drinking coffee with my husband. “But thinking of how they must have pressured her…it’s appalling.”
“Were you close with your mother’s parents?”
He shakes his head. “They didn’t live here, and even when we went to Hong Kong, we wouldn’t spend a lot of time with them.”
I reach out and take his hand. I feel like I’m smiling for no reason, which isn’t like me. But it’s not for no reason: I’m in love with my husband and he’s in love with me. I never thought this would happen, yet it did.
It still feels new and special and miraculous. I know everything won’t always feel as easy as it does now, but I hope I won’t forget how lucky I am. While I’m sure we’ll have challenges, I feel good about our ability to face them together.
“Let’s go on a honeymoon,” I say. “I want to take a trip to see Claudia this fall, and we could combine it with that, or we could go somewhere else. If you can get the time off.”
“If it’s not more than a week, it shouldn’t be a problem. Maybe somewhere to enjoy the fall colors? New England, or up north?”
Long after the coffee is finished, we sit in our backyard, making plans for our future.
That afternoon, Evan and I do something we’ve never done together before: we go for a walk around our neighborhood. He goes for walks every day, and I’ve been for the occasional walk, too, but we’ve never done it together, our hands clasped. The leaves on a few trees are turning red and gold, and it’s a perfect afternoon outside.
As we walk through a small park, a little pup on a long leash runs up to us, and Evan crouches down to pet it. I open my mouth to protest—why is he petting a strange dog? Then I realize he knows this dog and has pet it many times before. He introduces me to the dog, Peaches, and then the owner.
“You didn’t tell me about Peaches,” I say to my husband, once the pup is out of earshot.
“Was I supposed to?”
“Yes! You’re supposed to tell me about all the dogs you see each day. I thought that was one of the perks of marriage.”
“I’ll be sure to do that from now on.”
“See that you do.” I might be speaking in a comically huffy tone, but I lean forward and plant a kiss on his lips.
We soon encounter two more dogs; Evan knows one of them, but not the other. We also encounter two humans unaccompanied by dogs, and Evan introduces me to them.
As we turn onto another street, Evan points out a house that had beautiful pink hydrangeas earlier in the year. He waves at a woman in her front yard and tells me that she’s a high school teacher. Apparently, while going for his daily walks, my husband has been getting to know the neighborhood in a way that I haven’t. It reminds me of something I want to ask him.
“Remember when I said you could go out without me? You seemed a little uncomfortable with the conversation, and I was wondering…” I keep my tone gentle. “Why don’t you have as much of a social life as you used to? I worry you feel like you’re doing people a favor by not texting them and making plans.”
Evan gives me a startled look and stops walking. “What makes you say that?”
“Sorry, I could be wrong. It was just a feeling.”
Though as soon as I say it, I’m positive I’m right.
He continues walking but at a slower pace. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s weird to hear someone say that out loud, rather than inside my head. It sounds more logical in here.”
That this kind, wonderful man could ever think such things about himself…
“When my depression was at its worst and it was difficult to see people—you know, the pandemic—I gave up on many friendships.”
“But not ours,” I say.
“No. After all, we had a marriage pact, which helped me imagine a future for myself when that was a difficult thing to do.”
My heart clenches. I can’t put everything I’m feeling into words, so I settle for squeezing his hand.
“Though sometimes, I felt bad about possibly shackling you to me. Not anymore, don’t worry.” He sighs. “Yeah, I should reach out to some friends. A few people, though, I think it’s best to let go of. But not all of them.”
“I’m happy you’re here with me now.”
“Me, too.”
We feel safe to be vulnerable with each other, and that’s a lovely thing.
By the time we return to the house, Evan is sweaty, even if it’s not very warm. I kiss him right inside our front door, and as I do, I think of how beautiful a word it is.
Our home. Our family. Our love.
Once upon a time, I felt like I didn’t have a real home or family. But now, I’m putting down roots where I belong.
With Evan Mok.