47. Avery
AVERY
For two weeks, Declan uses the white-capped key as if it belongs to me instead of him.
He texts before every visit, waits for my answer, and comes through the door only inside the time I gave him.
Twice I ask him to leave before we planned because exhaustion makes conversation feel like another thing pressing on my bladder, and both times he puts on his boots and goes, and the only thing he says at the door is what time he will call.
He uses the guest room for three nights, leaves before breakfast once because I withdraw the invitation, and passes the bedroom door with his hands full of whatever he carried in.
The ordinary tests are harder than the dramatic ones, because they arrive on a Thursday and cost him something small every time.
When Gage changes a driver meeting and it cuts across our Thursday dinner, Declan calls before the conflict becomes a late truck in my drive.
He tells me the meeting can happen without him, tells Gage the choice himself, and arrives with no story about how much the club lost because he ate reheated soup at my table.
When the meeting is moved again, he shows me the complete message instead of the part that makes him look loyal.
He goes the next morning after confirming I did not need him for the appointment I had never invited him to attend.
Dating him feels nothing like being married to him and too much like it.
We eat at a small restaurant where he reads the menu with his phone beneath the table, then brings it above the table after noticing he is hiding.
He asks about the foreclosure file and remembers the inspection charges.
I ask about his literacy lesson and let him take the whole minute he needs to explain the difference between two route instructions.
The first time he kisses me at my front door, I tell him both hands may touch my waist. The second time, I put one against the baby when a kick interrupts us, then remove it when the movement becomes too much to share.
Declan thanks me for the moment and puts his hands back in his pockets.
Tonight he is in the nursery attaching the changing pad to the dresser while I sit in the rocking chair and pretend I have not spent the last hour watching his hands.
The sleeves of his charcoal hoodie are pushed above his forearms. It is not the grey one Sasha wore.
That hoodie went into an evidence bag after the safehouse search, and when the property was finally released, Declan told me he burned it.
This one is new and belongs only to tonight, but the sight of him reaching across the dresser makes me want him anyway.
“The strap goes behind the back panel,” I tell him, angling the instruction sheet toward the lamp. “If it comes over the top, the pad can slide.”
Declan studies the diagram, then works his hand down behind the dresser and leaves it against the wall. “There’s no opening.”
“There is. I checked before I bought it.” I push myself out of the chair, and he steps away rather than taking my arm.
At thirty-eight weeks pregnant, standing has become a group project my pride keeps assigning to one person.
I brace one hand against the dresser and find the narrow slot hidden beneath the top edge. “Here.”
His fingers follow mine into the opening, and the split at the base of my thumb catches on the metal lip. The backs of our hands touch. Heat travels up my arm fast enough to embarrass me, and Declan pulls back first because an accident is not an invitation. “I found it.”
“Finish the strap.” I return to the chair before he can notice how badly I want him to stop being careful the second I say so.
He threads the end through, reads the warning twice, and tightens it until the changing pad refuses to move.
Then he puts the instruction sheet, extra screw, and tiny wrench into the labeled nursery box instead of leaving them on the dresser for me to organize.
I have watched him learn this house one permitted object at a time.
He knows where the baby detergent goes, which cupboard holds the bottles, that the first car-seat base has been in my car since the night we lost an hour to its manual, and that the hospital bag stays beside the office door because I still check it whenever I pass.
The top dresser drawer has stayed shut since he got the key, and one set of ultrasound pictures is still locked in my office with no question attached to it.
“Done,” he says, pressing the pad once more. “I’ll be in the hall.”
I look at the hoodie, his bare forearms, and the mouth I have allowed to kiss me without letting it go lower than my neck.
I want him more each time he leaves space for me to choose.
The wanting follows me to bed after he closes the guest-room door, wakes when I hear the shower, and becomes anger whenever I remember he once took this same hunger from our marriage to Sasha.
I can be angry and want him. I can trust the man he is becoming and still distrust every memory my body kept.
I don’t have to settle either fact before I choose what happens tonight.
“No.” I move toward him, using the dresser when my balance shifts. “Take off the hoodie.”
Declan’s hands stop near the strap. He looks at my face rather than assuming the order means what he wants it to mean. “Here?”
“Here.” My heartbeat has climbed into my throat, and I check the feeling as carefully as I would check a file: fear would have sent him home an hour ago, and gratitude would have made me say something kinder than take off the hoodie.
He secured a changing pad, kept two weeks of promises, and told me the truth about a work conflict.
None of those things earns sex. I want him because I have watched him bent over a dresser for an hour and imagined pulling that hoodie over his head until he had to come closer. “I want to touch you.”
Declan grips the hem and lifts. The T-shirt beneath catches with it, exposing his stomach before both shirts clear his head, and my body reacts before I can stop it.
I once knew his body better than my own.
His shoulders carry new marks from the office floor and old scars I used to find in the dark.
I hate that Sasha touched them. The thought arrives ahead of my hand, and I let it stand there.
Then I put my fingers against the center of his chest and feel his breath stop beneath them.
“You may touch my waist,” I say, letting my hand travel over the warm skin that has been his alone since the affair ended. “If I want something else, I’ll tell you.”
“Your waist only.” Declan sets both hands where the green dress curves above my hips. His fingers stay closed until I lean into him, and then they open.
I kiss him in the nursery we prepared for a child conceived while he was lying to me, and there is no way to make the place innocent enough for desire.
The crib waits behind us. The grey and white socks remain tucked into their torn sleeve on the dresser.
I know where the yellow one is. I know Sasha saw the test before Declan ever heard me say we were having a baby.
The facts hurt, and my mouth opens beneath his anyway, and when he makes that rough sound against my tongue, I pull him closer because I pull him closer because I know everything now and still want him.
Declan’s hands tighten at my waist, then ease before pressure becomes assumption. I slide one of them lower to my hip. “There. Keep the other where it is.”
He follows the instruction, kissing me while I map the difference between remembered hunger and what I want tonight.
His beard catches lightly against my chin.
His body is hard where the baby keeps distance between us, and the knowledge sends heat through me with no connection to forgiveness, repair, or motherhood.
I want my ex-husband. I want the man who has spent months learning how to hear no.
I want to take him to the room I kept locked and find out whether my body can choose him without becoming evidence against me.
I end the kiss and step back. Declan releases me before I move far enough to force it. “Come to my bedroom.”
He takes one breath that moves his entire chest. “What do you want to happen there?”
“Sex, unless I stop.” Saying it plainly steadies something inside me. “I control the pace. You ask before changing what you’re doing. If I tell you to stop, you move away from me before you ask anything.”
“Yes.” He picks up his T-shirt, then leaves it on the nursery chair beside the hoodie when I shake my head at both.
I take his hand and put it at the back of my waist, granting the touch while we cross the hall.
The bedroom door stands open because I opened it before he arrived tonight, a choice I made before watching him secure anything.
Declan pauses at the threshold until I pull him through, and that last piece of waiting almost undoes me.
The office door across the hall stays locked. I lead Declan to the edge of the bed and make him sit while I stand between his knees and unbutton my dress.
His gaze moves with my fingers. His face shows everything he wants, but his hands stay clamped around the edge of the bed.
The sight makes me feel beautiful in a body that has become heavy, swollen, sore, and more public than I ever wanted.
Some men would say glowing. Some would make the baby the reason.
Declan watches the dress open and looks at me the way he did before every part of our life became about what my body could produce.
“Tell me,” I say when the last button opens. “Not what you think I need to hear. Tell me what you want.”