38. Cali #2
"I know," I say again, and it's true, it's finally true. The engine of my self-worth has been running in the background all along and it just finished calculating. "Now, I do."
He kisses me on the front steps under the streetlight, slow. I feel it everywhere, head to toe, like shimmering fire racing through my veins. I'd kiss him like this for hours if he'd let me, necking in the shadows like teenagers. In fact, that's exactly what I intend to do.
But then he pulls away.
"I got you a present," he says.
I laugh in confusion. "You got me a present? We just burned our whole tragic history off the front steps, and you got, what, a bouquet of daisies for the occasion?"
"Something a little more thoughtful than that. It's inside." He stands and pulls me up with him. "Come on."
"Ronan—"
"Trust me."
Okay, fine. I guess I will.
He leads me inside past the vault-heavy door and up the stairs. I'm confused on where he's taking me, especially when he pulls me into the master bathroom.
It's only when we stop in the doorway that I realize what he's done.
There's a box leaned against the wall. And beside it, tools laid out neat on a towel—a level, a drill, a little baggie of anchors and screws.
"It's a mirror," I say.
"Correct." He crouches and pulls the packing away, and there it is—not the old one he stole, not the one he crated in Red Hook and hung back overnight.
A new one. Bigger. A beautiful frame, gilded and hand-crafted.
"You broke the old one to pieces. Which I respected, for the record.
But I thought maybe this time, instead of me deciding what glass you get to have—"
"We hang it together."
"Correct again." He looks up at me. "You get to choose whether it goes up at all. And if it does, you get to choose what you see in it. I just want to be standing next to you while you look."
My eyes sting. "You ass," I accuse with a giggle. "You're playing dirty."
"I assure you, Ms. Meadows, I can play much dirtier than this."
We proceed to hang it together. He does the drilling and I hold the level and tell him it's crooked when it isn't, just to watch him adjust it anyway, because I like how his strong hands look when he does manly handyman type things.
The whole process takes twice as long as it should because we keep stopping to kiss.
But eventually, it's up. Level. Solid.
And there we are in it.
Both of us are bright and clear in the frame. The woman who once stood in a Phoenix hotel and catalogued everything wrong with her belly and her hips and her thighs, alongside the man who couldn't stand to watch her do it, so he stole every mirror in the house. Side by side and equal.
I look at myself. I wait for the old criticizing voice to speak up, but it doesn't come.
She's gone now, that self-hating version of me.
Simply gone. There's just the happy version now, flushed and laughing with drill dust on my hands, and this huge, blue-and-gray-eyed wonder of a man behind me with his chin on my shoulder, watching me look.
"I'll never stop telling you you're beautiful," he murmurs against my ear. "But in case I'm ever not around, you can always come here and see for sure."
I turn in his arms and kiss him.
He kisses me back slow at first, then not slow at all. His hands find my hips and pull me in, and I feel him everywhere. The drill dust is still on my fingers when I slide them up under his shirt.
"The kids are with your mother?" he asks.
"All night."
"God bless that woman. I'm going to build statues in her honor."
He spins me back around to face the mirror. His arms come around me from behind, one hand flat on my stomach, and he watches me watch us in the glass.
"Keep your eyes open," he whispers against my neck. "I want you to see every last detail."
He works the buttons of my blouse loose one at a time.
When it falls open, he pushes it off my shoulders and lets it drop to the bathroom floor.
Then the bra, unclasped with two fingers.
I watch it all happen in the mirror, my own body appearing piece by piece, and Ronan behind me, his eyes never leaving my reflection.
"Look at you," he praises. "The most beautiful thing I have ever put my hands on."
He's said it before. I believe it now.
His hand moves lower, past my stomach, unbuttoning my jeans and sliding them down my legs until I step out of them. Then I'm just standing there in the light, in front of the biggest mirror in the house, and I don't want to fold up small. I want to be exactly this size.
"Watch," he tells me again.
His fingers slip between my legs and I gasp, gripping the edge of the sink. My knees go a little weak, but his arm around my middle holds me up. I keep my eyes open like he asked, watching my own face come undone, watching his jaw clench with focus behind me.
"You're doing so good," he says. "Look how good you take it."
I can't answer. Thankfully, he doesn't need me to. His fingers work me steady and unhurried, the way he does everything, and I feel it building fast because I've been thinking about this for weeks, because I love him, because there's nowhere left to hide and nothing left to survive.
"Ronan—"
"Hush now, kotyonok. The only words I want to hear pass your lips are 'I'm coming.'"
Well, alrighty then.
I can do that.
The pressure builds and builds until there's nowhere left for it to go. I watch it happen in the mirror—my head tipping back against his shoulder, my mouth falling open, my whole body arching into his hand—and I don't look away from a single second of it.
"I'm coming," I gasp.
And then I do, shattering apart against him, his arm the only thing keeping me upright. He murmurs praise in Russian into my hair while I fly apart, watching, wide open, beautiful, and entirely his.
Before I've even caught my breath, he turns me around and lifts me onto the edge of the counter. He steps out of his own clothes fast, and then he's between my knees. I wrap my legs around him and pull him in.
"Look at me," he says.
I do.
He pushes into me slow, and I hold his gaze the whole time. There's nothing between us, hasn't been since the lake, and I want it that way. I want all of him.
"There she is," he breathes. "My wife."
Not Ms. Meadows. Not kotyonok. My wife. And this time, it isn't for a fed or a room full of criminals. It's just for us, in the bathroom, under the light, in front of the mirror we hung together.
He moves in me slow and deep, one hand braced on the counter and the other cupping the back of my head. I catch glimpses of us in the glass over his shoulder—his back, the scars I know the story of now, my own hands gripping him. I don't look away from any of it.
He drives into me deeper. The counter's cool edge bites into the backs of my thighs, the contrast sharp against the heat pooling everywhere else.
My hands slide from his shoulders down his back, nails catching in the grooves of scar tissue. Each thrust rocks me against the marble, my whole body tilting to meet him, and I don't close my eyes, not once, not even when it feels like too much.
His mouth finds the curve of my neck, teeth grazing, and his hand fists in my hair to tip my head back so my throat is bared for him. He kisses down the column of it, tongue tracing the pulse hammering there, while below, he keeps that slow, brutal rhythm that has me clenching around him.
I hook my ankles tighter at the small of his back, pulling him in with everything I have.
He answers with a groan against my collarbone, his hips snapping harder now, all thoughts of slowness gone out of him.
The mirror rattles faintly against the wall with each drive forward.
I catch our reflection again—his back flexing, the muscles rolling under his skin, my own knees splayed wide around him, my hands gripping his sides—and the sight of it winds me tighter than his mouth ever could.
His thumb finds my clit again, working small tight circles right where I need it. My whole body starts to shake apart at the seams.
He feels it, the way I tighten and flutter around him, and his rhythm goes ragged, chasing it, chasing me.
Sweat slicks between us where my chest presses to his. His forehead drops to mine and we breathe the same air.
I come first, hard, my back bowing up, my heels digging into him, everything in me pulling taut and then snapping loose all at once.
I clamp down around him and hear him swear against my mouth, one broken syllable, before his hips stutter and drive deep and hold there. He spills into me with a low, cracked sound, his hand tightening in my hair, his other arm banding across my back to crush me against him.
He shudders.
Stutters.
And finally, goes still.
We stay like that a long moment, his weight bracketing me, my legs still wrapped around his hips, both of us slick and trembling and breathing like we ran up every one of these stairs.
His heart slams against my chest. Mine answers it. He turns his face into my throat and just breathes me in, as I stroke my fingers up the back of his damp neck. The mirror shows the whole thing, perfectly clear, and for once I don't mind being looked at.
"I love you," I tell his reflection.
"I love you, too, kotyonok," he tells mine.
There's no data point left to check. No receipt left to file. No number to run.
All that's left is this.
All that's left is love.