Chapter 44
David
There’s a beautifully deranged moment in every headlong fuck where time collapses to a high, thready pulse and every other reality is forced out by the single, relentless truth of her above me.
Nora’s hands braced on my chest, her hair wild, her mouth, moaning.
She rides me like she can unwrite gravity, like she can erase the years from my body with every snap of her hips.
Her rhythm is punishing, precise. I can’t decide whether I want to drag her down and chain her to my mouth or let her ride me straight through the mattress until we both come undone.
I hold her hips, fingers tight enough to leave impressions even as I desperately try not to lose it before her.
She’s close. Every muscle in her body telegraphs it—her thighs shaking, her hand fisting, her voice going sharp at the edges.
I stare up at her, absolutely fucking wrecked by the sight.
The flush over her chest, the dark heat of her eyes, the way sweat, tears, and last night’s proposal have made her a portrait of beautiful ruin.
“Nora.”
She bares her teeth in a grin, then clamps down around me so tight my head slams back into the pillow and all words flatten to groans.
“Come with me,” she says, words so low and rough I almost don’t hear them. “Don’t you fucking leave me behind.”
It’s not even a decision. It happens in one motion, a full-body detonation that leaves me gasping and shaking under her, hands desperate on her hips to hold her through it.
She bites my lower lip, hard, as she comes, her whole body shuddering.
The sight and feel of it shoves me over the edge.
Everything goes white behind my eyes, every muscle pulled taut as I follow her.
She collapses forward and buries her face in my neck, trembling and still cursing softly.
I smooth my hand up her spine, palm flat between the ridges of her shoulder blades.
Her hair is damp and tangled, her skin hot and slick against mine.
I wonder whether there’s a single cell in my body that isn’t now attached to her.
Eventually, I find my voice. “Fucking my fiancée first thing on a Sunday morning is now my new favorite thing.” I kiss the top of her head.
She snorts, breathing still unsteady. “Technically, I was the one doing the fucking that time. But, yes.”
I laugh, the sound soft. Warm. Happy.
She finally rolls off me, flopping onto her back, arm thrown across her eyes. I prop myself up and look at her, stunned again by the fact and the miracle of her in my life. For a while we just lie there, skin cooling in the open air, hearts battering wildly at our ribs.
“We should get up soon,” I say, even though I want to stay like this, tangled up with her, for the next six or maybe forty years. “If we don’t, Michaela’s going to eat all the frozen waffles, and Marta’s going to text us increasingly well-worded threats.”
A rough, affectionate laugh from the pillow. “Marta is the only true power in this family.”
I nod solemnly. It’s true. Since her return, our house has been less a democracy than a benevolent dictatorship. And we’re all happier for it.
Nora turns her head, pushing her hair out of her eyes, and looks at me for a solid five seconds.
“What’s on your mind?” I ask, knitting my brow.
“You should go home before she wakes up,” she says. “Alone.”
I freeze.
For an idiot second, some primitive part of my brain interprets this as rejection and starts compiling a hot, acidic panic. I nearly say something defensive. Then her hand finds mine and she tugs, gently.
“Hey,” she says. “Not because I want you to be gone. Because you need to talk to her.”
“About the proposal.”
“About the fact that you want to make us official. That you want me in her family. I really, really don’t want to be the reason your daughter wakes up and feels like the last to know.” She gives a wry half-smile. “Or the last to get a say.”
I look at her, that hard, bright logic cutting through every shadow of my own self-doubt.
My mouth goes dry at how much I love her for forcing the point. I should’ve known she’d see this angle. It isn’t even about optics, not really. It’s about Michaela—who lost more than she could name, and who deserves every possible reassurance she won’t lose again by accident.
“You’re right,” I say, my voice rough. “She should hear it from me.”
Nora sighs and props herself up on one elbow, sheet sliding off her bare shoulder. “Plus, you already know what she’ll say.”
“I’m betting on an excited squeal that takes out my eardrums, or a very droll, ‘finally, I’ve been waiting for you to catch up for months.’”
Nora laughs. “That sounds like our girl.” She stretches, spine arching as she sits up, then leans over and kisses me, sleepy, reckless, full of every good thing.
“Go. Be a good dad. I’m going to caffeinate and try to fix my hair before encountering any living witnesses—aka my sister, who’ll be desperate to know what the VIP section was like last night. ”
“Tell her you’re engaged.”
She grins. “I was planning to.”
I watch her pad naked into the bathroom, hair a disaster, face stripped of all defenses, and think about how completely I’ve lost my mind over her. And how none of this—none of it—would be endurable or even real without what I’m about to do.
Michaela’s awake when I get home, curled on the kitchen barstool in pajamas and a hoodie, a book in one hand and a mug in the other.
Archie’s stationed at her feet, nose angled pointedly toward the open bag of animal crackers on the counter.
Marta’s at the stove, humming off-key and flipping frozen waffles.
I drop my keys on the counter and brace myself. “Morning, Monster.”
She looks up, eyes bright. “Morning!”
Archie lopes over, tail thumping against my leg until I scratch his ears.
“Did you sleep at Miss Nora’s?” Michaela asks. I pause, bracing for parent trap number one.
“Yeah. We stayed up late talking. Didn’t want to wake you when I came in.”
Marta snorts, not even pretending to be subtle. “The best conversations always happen at two in the morning,” she observes, flipping three waffles at once before turning to survey me. Her eyes scan my face, then the collar of my shirt, then my shoes. “You look tired.”
“I am tired,” I say, pitching my voice low in the way I hope signals to Michaela that this is a ‘grown-up tired’ and not a ‘sad tired.’
She marks her place in the book, then looks right at me. “Where’s Nora?”
I touch the top of Michaela’s head and push the hoodie back so I can see her properly. “Marta, can you give us a minute?”
She reads the room instantly. “Of course. I’ll take Archie for a walk.” She switches off the burners and collects Archie, disappearing toward the front door while Michaela watches with increasingly narrowing eyes.
“OK. Now I’m worried,” Michaela says as I take a seat on the stool beside her.
“You don’t need to be. I just want to talk to you about something.”
Her face changes, taking on a wariness that’s above her years.
“Is it bad?” she asks.
“No.” I reach across the counter and take her hand. “It’s good. It’s really, really good.”
She studies me. Giving me the space to speak in my own time, the way I’ve always given her space. Because we understand that words matter and deserve to be chosen well.
“How would you feel if I asked Nora to marry me?”
Michaela’s face goes through approximately seventeen expressions in two seconds. I watch every one of them—surprise, joy, disbelief, more joy, a flash of something that might be fear, and then joy again, winning so decisively that everything else is buried under it.
She blinks, then says in a perfectly flat, even voice, “You mean like, forever forever? Not just living together and sharing custody of Archie forever?”
“Forever in the full, legal, astonishingly binding sense,” I say. The words catch in my throat because it’s actually happening. I’m saying it out loud, not just about the woman I love, but to the little person who’s the heartbeat of my life.
Michaela blinks again, huge-eyed. Then she launches herself at me so fast the barstool nearly tips, arms flung tight around my neck, book dropping to the floor. “OH MY GOD,” she screeches in my ear. “You’re going to propose to her? Did you already? Did she say yes?”
“Hey, easy,” I manage, stunned by the force of her enthusiasm and the surprising wet burn behind my own eyes. “I did ask. She said yes.”
Michaela lets go and pushes back to arm’s length, studying my face for traces of possible lies. “Are you sure? Because sometimes people say yes when they mean maybe, but then they get cold feet and back out right when you’re counting on them.”
The sentence hangs there, whiplash sharp, her eyes wide and guileless. She means it literally, logic and trauma mashed together. Kelsie. The cold feet. The years of wishing. I swallow hard.
“She meant yes,” I say. “She never says things she doesn’t mean. Least of all to you.”
That’s all it takes. Her face breaks open in a grin so wide I see every one of her canines, every gap in her teeth, and the total, terrifying hope I tried for years to protect.
“Can I be your best man?” she asks, straight-faced. “Or at least, like, an assistant to the best man? A junior associate?”
I laugh, tension draining out of me all at once. “You can be whatever you want. If you want to walk Nora down the aisle, I bet she’d say yes.”
She goes a little soft at that. Visibly, physically soft, her body slumping against my chest, her cheek mashed into my shoulder. I wrap both arms around her and just revel in the moment.
“She’s going to be my mom,” Michaela sighs, and the words are muffled but absolutely certain.
If you think that wouldn’t split a man open, you’d be wrong. It splits me apart in all the best, worst, and truest ways.
Not because I ever thought Nora couldn’t be Michaela’s mother.
She always was, in the molecules of their casual alliance—protective, affectionate, sometimes exasperated by one another, but bound tight in that way people only get when they’ve seen each other at top volume and bottom shelf.
But hearing it out loud—hearing my daughter say those words, so proud and so matter-of-fact, as if every loss before this was just the dress rehearsal?
Yeah. I’m going to remember that until they plant me six feet under.
I tighten my hold and just breathe in the smell of her—orange juice, animal crackers, the sharp, untamable kinetic voltage that is my kid at her happiest.
“If that’s what you want,” I say, fighting tears.
She lifts her face and looks at me, all sincerity. “It’s what I want. I know Kelsie is my biological mom, and that if the judge gives her back her rights then Nora can’t adopt me. But I still want her to be my mom. I used to think I didn’t need one. But I do. I need Nora.”
“OK,” I say, blinking back my tears harder now. “Then she’ll be your mom.”
Her grin somehow gets even bigger. “Can I give her a ring too?”
“What?”
“A ring. Like you. Because she’s not just marrying you, Dad. She’s marrying me. And Archimedes. We’re a package deal, and I think that should be acknowledged with jewelry.”
“You want to give Nora a ring.”
“Yes. Not a big one. Something nice. Maybe with a dog on it. Or an octopus. Gerald would approve.”
I’m going to lose it entirely in this kitchen. “We can figure out the ring situation.”
“Good. I have design ideas,” she says, untangling herself and jumping down from the stool. “Can we call her? Right now? I want to tell her I said yes, too.”
“You said yes?”
“To the marriage. Obviously. I’m part of the decision-making body.”
“Obviously.”
I pull out my phone. Michaela’s vibrating beside me—physically vibrating, the energy of a child who’s been waiting for this moment and now that it’s here cannot physically contain it. She’s bouncing on her toes, reaching for the phone, already composing what she’s going to say.
The buzzer sounds.
We both freeze.