Chapter 40 The Eighth Minute
The Eighth Minute
ADRIAN
Afew months later, life settled into something easy—comforting in a way that had once felt impossible. The kitchen became the heart of the house: the place where Sunday pancakes happened, where late-night talks stretched past midnight, where we slow-danced or kissed more than we cooked.
One ordinary Thursday evening, I pushed open the front door, exhausted from a double shift, my scrubs wrinkled and my hair a lost cause. I dropped my bag by the wall and inhaled the mouthwatering aroma of garlic and tomatoes.
I stepped into the kitchen and found Eli stirring a pot on the stove, barefoot, humming to himself. The sight hit me so hard in the chest I had to stop for a second.
“Hey, handsome,” he said, reaching for me before I could even catch my breath from the shift. “You’re home early.”
He didn’t look surprised, just pleased. My showing up on time had become a reliable part of our life instead of a rare victory.
“I am.” I moved behind him, sliding my arms around his waist, resting my chin on his shoulder. “Traffic loved me today.”
He let out a soft, disbelieving laugh. “Miracles do happen.”
I kissed a spot just under his ear, his favorite and mine. “Had my check-up today.”
He stiffened slightly in concern. Then he turned in my arms, brows raised. “Well?”
I pulled the folded printout from my pocket and held it between us. His eyes scanned the numbers. They widened. Then softened.
“Adrian, this is… incredible.”
“Normal range. Turns out sleeping, eating actual meals, and not trying to save humanity seven days a week is good for the heart. Who knew?”
His laugh broke on a breath, a sound I used to hear right before he cried. But he didn’t cry now. He reached for me, pulling me into a slow kiss that tasted of relief, pride, and everything we’d fought our way back to.
Behind him, something hissed on the stove.
“Your pot’s about to boil over,” I murmured against his mouth.
“So stop it,” he murmured back.
“I’m busy,” I said, and kissed him again, deeper this time.
“Dinner’s going to take another ten minutes.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I only came home for you, anyway.”
He rolled his eyes, looking fond, a bit flustered, and unmoving from my arms.
The song playing softly from the Bluetooth speaker changed to something with a slow sway. My hands dropped to his hips, tugging his shirt free to slide inside his waistband.
He slid his hands around my shoulders. “Dance with me?”
“I look like I survived a minor war.”
He rolled his eyes, already tugging me toward him. “Adrian. You’re perfect.”
I slid my knee between his thighs to rub against him.
“Adrian,” he warned, already fighting a smile, “I’m cooking.”
“You’re also dancing,” I corrected, maneuvering his hips.
He let out a breathy laugh as I spun him in a lazy circle, and he melted into me. The pot on the stove hissed louder, bubbling dangerously close to overflowing, but neither of us looked.
I held him close, swaying back and forth with no rhythm, no purpose except having Eli warm in my arms, my nose buried in his hair, and the world finally quiet.
Then the pot boiled over with a loud, angry splatter.
Eli yelped. I laughed. He shoved my shoulder, grinning. “You’re a menace.”
“Worth it,” I said, kissing the corner of his mouth before reaching to rescue the stove.
He watched me with that expression I’d never quite gotten used to—soft, certain, and full of something that felt suspiciously like peace. For the first time in my life, I understood what real abundance felt like.
“How come all my best memories are in the kitchen?”
I couldn’t swallow the laugh that bubbled out. I turned to him, pointing the wooden spoon accusingly. “Not the bedroom?”
His eyes twinkled. “Nope. The kitchen. Maybe I’m aroused by the smell of garlic?”
Ass. I set the spoon down and stepped closer. “Maybe we should make some new ones. Spread the love.” I peered past his shoulder. “Against the wall in the hallway, or maybe the dining room?”
His laugh was contagious. “The dining room?”
I nodded. “The table folds out double with the leaf. We could really spread out, get down to it.”
He tried to say shut up, but his laughter ruined it.
And somewhere between the spilled sauce, our tangled hands, and his quiet, breath-stealing smile, it hit me.
This was the eighth minute.
Not the dramatic ones we used to bleed for, or the unforgettable ones that shaped our lives. Not the seven he replayed while unconscious, that were so full of love they brought him back to me.
But the extra one—the one we built with trust, slowly, carefully, touch by touch.
The one where he didn’t doubt me walking through the door.
The one where I didn’t doubt our future.
A single, ordinary minute where we chose each other without hesitation.
Every day.
Every time.
And one day, when it was my turn to watch my reel at the end of a long, well-lived life, I wouldn’t ask for those seven minutes back. Not if I’d spent every day living the eighth one loving him.
I never claimed to understand interior design.
Half the time, I couldn’t tell a backsplash from a backboard.
But when Eli stood in the hardware store with his hands on his hips, studying tile samples like they were holy scripture, I knew one thing with absolute certainty: whatever made his eyes light up like that, I was going to make happen.
Which was how I ended up spending an entire weekend in paint-splattered scrub pants while our kitchen looked like a crime scene where drywall had gone to die.
Plastic sheeting crinkled under my socks as I stepped around the unplugged stove sitting uselessly in the middle of the room.
The new cabinets were half-installed, which meant they hung on the wall like crooked teeth.
Eli stood beneath them, stretching up on his toes to reach the top corner with a paint roller.
His shirt rode up, exposing a thin strip of skin above his waistband. My favorite strip of skin. And just like that, my focus was gone.
“Hand me the roller?” he asked, not looking down.
I passed it over and bent to kiss the warm patch of skin before he could pull his shirt down. He shivered and shot me a look over his shoulder.
“You promised not to distract me.”
“I promised to try,” I said. “You knew what that meant.”
He dipped the roller back into the tray, then flicked paint directly at my chest. A perfect, deliberate streak of pale blue splattered across my scrub top.
“Oops,” he said, failing miserably to suppress a grin.
“Uh-huh.” I caught his wrist gently and tugged him closer. “Purely accidental."
Eli opened his mouth to defend himself, but I kissed him before he could finish. He melted against me, soft and warm and familiar. The roller slipped from his hand and clattered to the drop cloth with a wet splat.
“Now look what you did,” he murmured against my lips, smiling.
“Still pretty sure that was your fault.” I kissed him again, slow and deep, a kiss that made the half-finished room around us disappear. We stumbled a little, bumping the unfinished counter frame. The whole thing wobbled alarmingly.
We froze. Then burst out laughing.
“This kitchen is a death trap,” Eli said.
“Worth the risk,” I answered. “You’re getting the kitchen you always wanted.”
His gorgeous face softened. The laughter faded into something quieter, something that tugged at my heart.
“This isn’t really about the kitchen,” he said. “It’s… building something with you.”
I slid my paint-stained fingers into his hair, gazing into his warm eyes. “Then we’re doing exactly what we should.”
He leaned in, kissing me again, gentler this time, grateful in a way I felt down to my soul.
The cabinets hung crooked, paint streaked the floor, and I had blue drying on my shirt.
But it didn’t matter. The room already felt like ours.
Not because of the tile, or the layout, or the shiny appliances.
But because inside all the mess, we were building something solid.
One brushstroke, one mistake, one kiss at a time. Imperfectly perfect, like our marriage.
Eli’s mouth brushed mine again, softly, testing. A kiss that asked a question I’d been answering every day for years.
I slid my hands beneath his shirt, palms gliding over tight nipples and warm skin. He sucked in a breath. That sound always made my pulse trip.
“Adrian,” he warned, except it didn’t sound like a warning at all. More like encouragement disguised as sanity.
“Mm?” I tugged the shirt higher, exposing him inch by inch.
“We’re supposed to be painting.”
“Then we should take a break,” I murmured, kissing down the column of his throat. “Safety hazard, remember?”
He let out a shaky laugh that dissolved into a sigh when I pressed him back against the unfinished counter frame. My mouth trailed down his chest, my fingers hooking into the waistband of his paint-smeared jeans. Christ, he had the sexiest hipbones. They absolutely begged for my tongue.
His voice dropped, low and wanting. “You’re impossible.”
“Good thing you married me anyway.”
I lifted him onto the counter, and though it sat crooked and half-installed, it was solid enough for what I had in mind.
He wrapped his legs around my waist, tugging me closer until there wasn’t a breath between us.
Our kiss turned hungry, needy. After years together, he still tasted like a promise I was desperate to keep.
Paint smeared across our skin as we moved, our hands everywhere, laughter tangled with heat.
The plastic sheeting crinkled under our shifting weight.
A cabinet door rattled loose above us. It didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered except the way he moaned into my mouth and pulled me closer, not able to get enough.
“God, I love you,” I breathed against his lips.
He licked the shell of my ear, shooting desire straight to my balls. “I know,” he whispered. “But now isn’t the time for declarations. It’s the time to show me how much you need me.”
I answered him with my hands, my mouth, my entire body, giving him everything he asked for, right there in the sanctuary of our unfinished kitchen.
Dropping down between his spread legs, I finessed the button and zipper of his jeans until I had him exposed.
My mouth worked his cock, my hands stroking him with a tight grip, squeezing all the blood in his shaft to the tip.
It became so engorged, so sensitive, that he cried out with every flick of my tongue.
And when I hollowed my cheeks and sucked him to the back of my throat, Eli released his load in a shuddering breath, clutching my hair tightly between his fingers.
By the time we were done, the paint had smeared, the counter frame was slightly more crooked than before, and Eli was curled against my chest, flushed and boneless and impossibly beautiful.
“Worth it,” he murmured.
I kissed the top of his head. “Every time.”
We’d absolutely defiled the drop cloth. I started gathering up the rollers and ruined towels, tying the trash bag closed.
“I’ll take this out,” I offered.
“Wait.”
I stopped. Eli never said wait unless something mattered.
His expression changed from open and satisfied to determined.
He rushed out of the room, and I wondered what he was up to.
He came back holding the stack of divorce papers we’d shoved in the drawer almost a year ago.
The sight of them hit me like blunt-force trauma. All the air left my lungs.
“Eli…” I breathed, not trusting myself to say more.
He didn’t speak. He stared directly into my eyes, lifted the first page, and tore it clean down the middle. The sound cracked like bone under pressure.
I didn’t stop him. I couldn’t. My throat burned. My eyes grew watery.
He kept tearing—halves, quarters, smaller still—his hands shaking by the end. Every rip felt like a release valve opening in me, pressure bleeding out of old wounds I hadn’t realized were still festering.
Finally, he dropped the scraps into the trash bag I was holding.
I managed, “You sure?”
Eli stepped into my space. He cupped my jaw—right over the streak he’d left there—and kissed me, slow and sure and claiming.
“Never been more sure about anything,” he murmured against my lips. “Well… except maybe marrying you. Falling in love with you. Promising you for—”
I kissed him before he could finish, laughing into his mouth because the alternative was crying. Or both. Honestly, both were likely.
Eli grabbed my shirt and pulled me even closer. His smile pressed into mine, warm and certain and bright enough to light the entire damn room.