18. Ophie
Ophie
For the first time since Vegas, being called Mrs. van der Merwe makes my stomach swoop in a good way. Philip’s confession has been slowly melting me from the inside out. At this point, the only thing holding me together might be my skin, and even that is two seconds away from melting off me.
“Are you asking me to date you? Like, officially?” I have to ask. We’ve been so nebulous for so long that all I want right now is clarity.
Philip grabs me by the hips and pulls me over his lap again so we’re eye to eye. “No, Ophelia. We’ve been ‘dating’ for two years. I want to be married to you. Forever. With everything that comes with it.”
I stare into his eyes for a long minute and find nothing but the truth. There’s no hint of uncertainty. There's no sign of the crooked wrinkle between his eyebrows that only appears when he’s unsure of something. There’s just Philip, looking at me like he’s never going to stop.
I know we still need to talk about what comes next. Would he be willing to come to South Carolina with me? Would I be willing to go to Australia or anywhere else in the world with him? Guilt bites at the back of my mind, reminding me I haven’t even told him about my interview with Penny tomorrow. But right now, I don’t care. Right now, all I want is to bask in the certainty that we love each other.
Everything else is just details.
I lean forward and press a kiss to his lips. “I’m in.”
With a whoop, Philip scoops me up and carries me to the bedroom. My dress hits the floor somewhere on the way, his shirt and jeans not far behind. In moments, I’m lying on my back on the bed, staring up at my husband as he climbs over me.
“My liefling,” he whispers into my skin, his lips trailing along my stomach.
“What does that mean?” I push up to my elbows, watching as he nears my pussy. “You promised to tell me.”
He hooks his thumbs in the sides of my underwear, inching them down my thighs. “It means ‘my darling.’”
All the times he’s said it over the years, I always assumed it was a reference to my being short. Or my not-so-secret love of fantasy books. “That’s what you’ve been calling me all this time?”
“Are you upset?” His eyes are glued to mine as he starts kissing up the inside of my leg. The sensation is featherlight but rockets straight to my core, stoking the embers of desire that have been burning there all damn day.
“It’s very hard to be anything other than a mushy pile of need right now.”
Pain and pleasure chase up my spine as he nips the sensitive skin of my inner thigh. “Good. That’s how I like you best.”
He works his way closer to my aching core and I writhe. “Phil-ip.” It comes out with a half whine, half moan as he hooks my leg over his shoulder, his thumbs opening me while he gazes at me.
“I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to learn this most secret part of you, Ophie. I need to study it—I haven’t had as long to learn my way around your pretty pussy.” Before I can object, he dives in, his tongue delving between my labia, mapping every centimeter of me.
The tingling of pleasure that had been building surges through me as he continues to explore. The intensity is different this time. He’s not tentative like the first time or slightly detached like before. This time, he eats me out like he owns me, like my body is his to enjoy. He’s not wrong.
When he finally comes up for air, and I’m a panting mess, he grins at me over the edge of my body. “The first time you moaned my name…I knew I never wanted to hear anyone else say it again.”
It’s my turn to claim him, and I do. I roll him under me, straddling his hips and guiding him inside me. The moment his cock fills me is like putting the final piece in a puzzle—the whole picture becomes clear. “I love you,” I say over and over again as I ride him.
I crest that wave again, another orgasm washing over me as my hips jerk and my fingers grip his chest. Without waiting for me to finish coming, Philip rolls us over, thrusting into me and whispering the words right back.
He keeps the same steady pace, arms caging me in as he makes love to me. “Liefling,” he whispers over and over in my ear, his lips trailing kisses along my jaw and neck.
Another orgasm builds on top of the last, and I wrap my heels around his calves, pulling him deeper with each thrust. “Almost there,” I grunt, shifting my hips to find friction as we move together.
With a groan, Philip pushes up on one hand, using the leverage to scrape my clit with each thrust. His back stiffens as he calls my name one more time, still thrusting as his orgasm pumps into me until I also come apart once more.
Later, golden light drapes across Philip’s shoulders as we lie spent on the bed. The setting sun paints the skin on his back an even deeper tan than normal. Head resting on his arms, Philip faces me, his eyes closed against the bright light streaming through the window.
“I’m not dreaming this, right? This is really real?”
“Yes, it’s real.” I push up to press a kiss to his shoulder blade. “But now we have to figure out what to tell everyone.”
This is the part I’ve been most afraid of. As if he senses the anxiety bubbling up inside me, he reaches over and pulls me against his chest, spooning me from behind.
“What are you afraid of?”
“That this is going to change everything. What if my family thinks it’s a terrible idea?” My words are a whisper, barely audible. “But I can’t bear the thought of losing you. Why does everything have to keep changing on me?”
He squeezes me from behind, pressing a kiss behind my ear. “I hate to break it to you, Ophelia, but you were the one who made everything change. No take-backsies.”
“But—”
He cuts me off, turning my face back to capture my lips. “ You were the one who suggested getting married ‘just in case.’”
“I saw you looking at flights to Australia. I panicked.”
Philip chuckles, the rumble of his chest vibrating against my back. “ You were the one who came home from work and walked naked into my room.” His fingertips trail over my side, lighting my skin on fire.
I squirm, thighs rubbing together to relieve the ache building between them. “You started it.” He was the one who kissed me in the restaurant, making me question everything I’d ever assumed about how he felt.
The one whose accidental kiss left me feeling empowered. I wasn’t the one who changed everything. He was.
Except maybe I was. Maybe every time there was a hint that he might drift away, I’d held on tighter. Given him another reason to stay.
“By spitting toothpaste in your face? I didn’t realize you were into that kind of kink.” He chuckles as he presses open-mouth kisses along the back of my neck.
“No, when you kissed me in the restaurant. I couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant.”
Philip chuckles again. “After you loudly claimed me as your husband.”
I open my mouth to argue, but he cuts me off.
“But maybe I did push it a bit.” He trails his lips and tongue along my naked shoulder. “Maybe I took advantage of the situation to see what you would do if I nudged us over the line.”
I lie there while he peppers kisses along my shoulder and back. If I’m really the one who started it all, who took the first step over the line toward this moment, then Philip has matched me step for step. And so what? All the energy I’ve spent worrying about keeping things the same, and never once did I see that I was the one who kept pulling us down the path.
That every decision I made out of my fear of losing him and our status quo tangled our lives together even more.
“Even if it is all my fault.” I finally break the silence. “What happens now?”
“We prepare for everyone to give us shit for a week or so, and then they’ll be over it. And then we live our life.”
“Our life? I like that.” When he puts it like that, it feels like maybe I was worried over nothing. But then I snort, imagining how my sisters are going to react. “Maybe more like a month.”
Philip’s laughter vibrates against my back. “Cassie is going to gloat for at least a year.”
We rank how long our friends and family are going to give us a hard time for finally admitting our feelings—his family is going to be the easier of the two by far—before Philip’s stomach rumbles so loudly that neither of us can ignore it.
This time, cooking in Jackie and Greg’s kitchen fills me with a sense of rightness. As if we’re on our honeymoon, not hiding away from my sister and her fiancé.
“So, how are you enjoying your job as a pseudo-sommelier?” I ask, slicing up a cucumber.
Philip looks up from his phone, leaning his elbows on the counter to study me. “Actually, I like it more than I thought. Nate was explaining to me some of the different ways they bring in revenue, and it’s pretty interesting.”
He tells me about the rootstock they grow and sell but loses me somewhere between the Italian and French grapes that were devastated by something called phylloxera and German blue slate. I nod and let his voice wash over me as I revel in the peace I feel.
The nagging question of what he’s thinking is gone. When I look at him now, I don’t see a question or a source of anxiety. I see a man who always includes me, who asks for my opinion, who draws me out of my shell and gives me the courage to be myself with more than just him.
No judgment.
No eye rolling when I get excited about a particularly satisfying pivot table.
Someone who enthusiastically jumps on board with whatever I suggest—and asks the same of me.
“We could go anywhere.” I interrupt his detailed monologue about how long it takes the grapes to go from vine to cask during harvest.
“…to harvest grapes? Not really, liefling, we have to be between thirty and fifty degrees latitude.”
Shaking my head, I scrape the peppers I finished slicing into the salad bowl. “No, silly. I mean that we could go anywhere. You and me. I could get a job in South Carolina—” I almost choke on the guilt that pushes the name out of my mouth. I’ll explain while we eat, I promise myself as I cover up my hesitation with more nonsense. “Or you could get a job in—”
“Singapore? Omaha? But what about your family? Your friends?”
“We could visit.” I shrug, feigning nonchalance. Ever since Penny emailed me, I haven’t stopped thinking about what it would mean to move away from the PNW. “I mean, Singapore is kind of far, but you know what I mean. Besides”—I point at him with the tongs in my hand—“ your family is on that side of the world. But the point is, if we’re going to do this—be really for real married. And a couple. Well, what’s to stop us from going somewhere together?”
Philip takes the salad bowl from me and sets it on the table before coming back to grab the cold chicken I’d found in the fridge. “Would you move to Australia? For me?”
I follow and slide into my seat as he sits beside me. “Do you have a job offer there you didn’t tell me about?”
The pink in Philip’s cheeks gives away the truth. “My dad’s firm has been trying to hire me ever since graduation,” he admits. “I never told you about it because I wasn’t planning to take it.”
We serve up our food in silence while I think about what to say. Something tells me that Philip is waiting for me to say something. Something specific, but I can’t figure out what.
Is he waiting for me to blow up at him? Logically, I should be mad that he hid this from me, just like he deserves to be angry at me when I tell him about South Carolina, but I have a suspicion that there’s more to the story.
Finally, I break the silence. “And you didn’t tell me because you knew I would tell you to seriously consider it, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah.” He shifts in his seat, making eye contact as he reaches for my hand. Again, there’s a pregnant pause, like he’s waiting for something, before he continues. “Mostly, I didn’t want to leave you.” His hand is warm and firm on mine, squeezing with reassurance.
“And it wasn’t because you didn’t want to make me feel like I’d married you in Vegas for nothing? That I was possibly committing immigration fraud on your behalf, just for you to go and take off for Australia at the first offer of a job?” I flip my hand over to thread my fingers with his, food forgotten.
“Okay, Ryan Reynolds,” he jokes, but then turns serious. “Ophie, do you really think I could have left you behind? Who would keep me on the straight and narrow? Besides, I can barely go two hours without talking to you. What would I have done with a seventeen-hour time difference?”
Every word he says heaps coal on the guilt burning in the pit of my stomach. I have to tell him about Penny, but the words are stuck in my throat, so I deflect instead. “Did I tell you I almost asked Maggie to check on you when you first moved down here and I didn’t hear from you?” I pull my hand free so I can eat.
“Did I tell you Maggie checked on me anyway? And fed me dinner. Twice. Made me help Olive with her math homework as payment.” Philip grins as he spears food onto his fork and shoves it in his mouth.
I laugh, knowing exactly why my sister arranged that. “My sister hates math with a passion. I used to tutor her on the subject when she was in high school.”
A thoughtful expression fills his face as he chews. “If she was in high school, wouldn’t you have been in junior school?”
“Middle school,” I correct him. “Yeah. But I was in accelerated math classes.” Truthfully, since she had to repeat Algebra and I was two years ahead of my peers, we were working out of the same textbook. I know she would probably be embarrassed about it, but those years of doing our math homework together, me helping her when she struggled, are some of my best memories of spending time with her.
We let the conversation turn to reminiscing about school as kids—Jono and Philip were apparently much more competitive with each other than I was with either of my sisters—and the heavy topic of where we go from here drops. I need to tell him about Penny Zimmerman, but not tonight. Not when everything is new and it might ruin this perfect start.
Despite the fact that we’re house-sitting for practical strangers—I’ve vowed never to own a single piece of rooster decor after this—being here with Philip feels normal. Better than normal, actually. Because when we move to the couch to continue our binge-rewatch of Battlestar Galactica and Philip pulls me into his chest, the tiny voice at the back of my head that used to wonder if there was more to us than I wanted to admit is silent. And I can wrap my arms around his chest and snuggle into his side without second-guessing if it’s appropriate or not.
His lips have tasted every square inch of my skin; there’s no part of my body that Philip hasn’t touched. Doesn’t own.
And when we go to bed hours later, I make sure to brand him with my lips in return. Reveling in the freedom to own my husband as surely as he owns me.