23. Az
— ? —
Az
The rain starts as we get back from Ventura and pull up beside the barn with the supplies.
This isn’t the gentle kind, not the misty drizzle that makes the dahlias look like something out of a painting. This is real rain, hard and fast, drumming against the metal roof of the truck like it’s trying to get in.
“So much for a quick trip.” I lean back against the passenger seat as Eli turns off the engine, both of us still damp from loading at the warehouse. Water drips from his hair onto his collar. From mine onto the leather seats. The baby kicks, probably annoyed at being jostled.
“We can wait it out.” He leaves the engine off and watches the water sheet down the windshield. “No rush.”
Thirty-three weeks. My belly is huge now, big enough that I can’t see my feet when I stand straight, big enough that getting in and out of the truck has become a production.
The nursery glass has been replaced. The fence is solid.
The sheriff’s car comes past when a unit is available, supplementing Dez’s people.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, Brynn’s threat still echoes.
I’m going to take everything from you.
But not today. Today is just rain and a truck cab and my husband beside me, and for some reason I can’t stop looking at him.
“What?” He catches me staring.
“Nothing.”
“Liar.” He grins. “Your forehead’s crinkling. You’re thinking something you’re not going to say.”
“I’m not-” I stop. Laugh. “Okay, fine. I was thinking… it’s so easy when she’s not around.”
He goes still. The rain drums. “What do you mean?”
“Brynn, the press, all of it.” I turn in my seat, as much as I can with this belly, and face him properly. “When you’re not on tour. When it’s just this. The farm and the goat and the supply runs and the fights about fence posts. This is the man I fell for.”
He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. Just looks at me with those blue eyes that still knock me a little sideways, even after seven years, even after everything.
“I lost the plot.” His voice is quiet. “Somewhere along the way. The first album was one thing; it was me, it was real, it was the music I wanted to make. And then it got big, and there were people telling me what to do and where to go and who to be, and I just… let them. Because it was easier than fighting. Because I thought that’s what success looked like. ”
“It’s not your fault that-”
“It’s not about fault.” He shakes his head.
“It’s about choices. I made choices. I chose tour dates over anniversaries.
I chose press junkets over phone calls. I chose being Elliot Jackson, rock star, over being Eli, your husband.
And I told myself it was for us, for our future, for the life I was building, but it wasn’t.
It was for me. My ego. My fear of slowing down and finding out I had nothing without the noise. ”
I reach over and take his hand. It’s wet from the rain, warm underneath.
“I know what matters now.” He threads his fingers through mine. “You. Her. This farm that smells like goats and dirt and the best dahlias I’ve ever seen. That’s it. That’s the whole list.”
“Eli-”
“I’m sorry.” He brings our joined hands to his mouth, presses a kiss to my knuckles.
“For all of it. For letting Brynn stay when I should’ve cut her off years ago.
For not seeing what was happening in my own house.
For being so wrapped up in my own bullshit that I missed the fact that my wife was drowning. I’m sorry.”
I don’t say it’s okay, because it’s not. I don’t say I forgive you, because I’m not there yet. What I say is: “Not yet.”
He nods. “I know.”
“But…” I take a breath. The rain is slowing now, the drumming fading to something gentler. “I want you.”
His eyes snap to mine. “Az-”
“I know it’s complicated. I know we’re not…
I haven’t said the thing, the thing you’re waiting for me to say, and maybe that’s not fair, to want this without being able to give you that.
But I’m sitting in this truck with rain on the roof and you’re right there and I’ve spent months trying to keep my distance and I’m tired, Eli.
I’m so tired of not letting myself have the one thing I actually want. ”
He’s very still. “What do you want?”
“You.” The word comes out simpler than I expected. “Just you. Right now.”
For a second I think he’s going to argue.
Going to be noble and say we should wait, we should talk, we should be sure.
But instead he leans across the console and his hand comes up to cup my face and he’s kissing me, soft at first, then deeper, and I’m kissing him back like I’ve been starving for it, which I have, which I absolutely have.
The rain picks up again. We don’t notice.
“We should-” He pulls back just enough to speak against my mouth. “Not here. Not the truck.”
“The barn.” I’m already reaching for the door handle. “It’s closer than the house.”
“You sure?”
“Run.”
We run.
It’s ridiculous, me at thirty-three weeks, him trying to shield me from the rain with his jacket, both of us laughing like idiots as we splash through puddles and nearly slip on the wet gravel.
By the time we reach the barn we’re soaked again, breathless, and the baby is kicking like she’s got opinions about the jostling.
Inside, the rain sounds different, softer, filtered through old wood and hay and years of memory. Eli pulls the door shut behind us and for a moment we just stand there, dripping and panting and looking at each other in the dim light.
“Hi,” I say, which is stupid.
“Hi.” He’s smiling. “You okay? The running-”
“I’m fine.” I step closer, close enough to feel the warmth coming off him even through our wet clothes. “Stop worrying.”
“Never.”
He kisses me again, gentler this time, his hands sliding into my wet hair. I press myself against him as much as the belly allows, which isn’t much, but he adjusts, tips my chin up, changes the angle, makes it work. He’s always made it work.
“Upstairs,” I murmur against his mouth. “There are blankets in the loft.”
“Stairs?”
“I can do stairs.”
He doesn’t argue. Just takes my hand and leads me to the ladder, not really a ladder, more of a sturdy staircase built into the corner, probably specifically because someone anticipated hay-loft activities that required safe passage.
We climb carefully, his hand on my back the whole way, and at the top there’s the loft I remember from childhood summers, wooden beams, stacked hay bales, and a pile of old quilts in the corner that Lupe keeps clean for exactly no good reason.
“Here.” Eli grabs the quilts, spreads them out, creates a nest of sorts against the hay bales. “Come here.”
I go.
We sink down together onto the blankets, the rain drumming above us, and for a long moment we just lie there, face to face, his hand on my belly, our foreheads almost touching.
“I love you,” he says into the rain-soft dark of the loft, quiet and simple, forehead nearly touching mine, hand spanning the thirty-three-week curve of my belly like he’s reading braille written in kicks.
The rest of it lives in his eyes even when he doesn’t unpack every clause, doorstep morning, courthouse, every wrong turn between then and this quilt nest. I close my eyes because looking at him while he offers me forever makes the unsaid thing in my chest ache like a splinter I keep working.
“And I love you now,” he adds, thumb tracing slow circles just above my navel. “Even if you can’t say it back. Even if you never do. I’m not going anywhere. You don’t have to be ready for the sentence to be ready for my hands.”
I want to say it. The words sit in my ribs where they’ve lived for seven years, polished smooth by use and disuse. Instead I kiss him deep and slow and pull his soaked shirt over his head, and he lets the declaration hang between us without demanding an echo, without turning it into a test.
“Truck first was a bad idea,” I murmur against his mouth between kisses. “Too many gearshifts. Too little room for June. My center of gravity is currently a conspiracy.”
“Barn was the right call.” He’s smiling, rain still beading in his hair and dripping onto my collarbone. “Loft. Quilts. You on top so I don’t crush anything precious. Tell me how you want it and I’ll build the whole architecture out of wet denim and bad decisions.”
“I want you looking at me. I want you cataloging what changed without the pity voice. I want filthy honesty about this body.” I shove at his wet jeans; the zipper sticks; we both swear. “And I want it while the rain is still loud enough to hide how much I need this from you.”
We undress in awkward laughing stages, his jeans glue themselves to his calves, my maternity shirt catches on my elbow, I nearly tip into a hay bale and he catches me with a yelp that makes Elliot the goat complain downstairs like a chaperone with opinions.
When I’m finally bare he goes still, kneeling on the quilts, rainlight silvering the ink on his shoulders and the water still tracing his spine.
“Can I look?” he asks. He waits for my answer.
“That’s why I said catalog. Be thorough. Be filthy. Don’t you dare say ‘glowing’ unless you mean sexually.”
He does look. Slowly. Reverently and filthy at once, like he’s writing a song he’ll never play onstage.
“Your breasts are heavier. Veins like rivers under the skin. This line down your stomach…” He traces the dark seam from sternum to belly button with a fingertip that trembles.
“is new. It’s fucking beautiful. Your hips got wider and I want to set my teeth in them.
Your ass sits different. Your cunt…” His fingers brush between my legs, find me wet already, swollen.
“looks like it wants my mouth before my cock. Darker. Slicker. May I put my mouth on you before you ride me stupid?”
“Yes. Then I ride you. Then you say filthy things about how pregnant I am while you’re buried in me. Deal?”
“Deal. Best contract I’ve signed since the one that ruined us, and this one might un-ruin a corner.”