Chapter 22 #3
The first tear falls before I can stop it. Rourke doesn't reach for me. He sits with the booties in one hand and the ultrasound in the other, his own tears quiet on his face, and he waits.
So I cross the distance. I fold myself into his arms.
He gathers me carefully, the booties caught between his fingers, the picture held safe against my shoulder. His chest is solid beneath my cheek. His breath shudders once. For the first time since I left, I let my full weight rest against him.
He bows his face into my hair. “I need to say things,” he whispers. “And I’m not asking you to answer tonight.”
I nod against him.
His hand spreads over my back. “I’m yours, Mallory. I've always been yours, but I did a piss poor job of showing you that.”
My fingers curl into his shirt.
“I treated your presence like it was a given,” he says. “Like something I could count on no matter what. Losing you taught me that I don't give a damn about expansions or bottom lines or whether or not I live up to my father's legacy."
I close my eyes.
“I will never again let work, another woman, ambition, fear, pride, or my family’s version of legacy reduce you to a footnote in my life again.
” His voice turns rougher. “I don’t want you to come back to the penthouse and become the old Mrs. Carmichael.
I don’t want that life if the cost is you having to survive it. ”
I lift my head. He looks wrecked.
“I want to become your husband in the life you chose,” he says. “I want ordinary mornings. Market Saturdays. Bad diner coffee. Muddy boots by a door I probably forgot to close. Nights where nothing more important happens than dinner together and you falling asleep before the end of a movie.”
A wet laugh catches in my throat.
“I don’t want gratitude for giving up the empire,” he says. “I want the chance to become a man who no longer needs it more than he needs his family. I can’t promise I’ll never make another mistake. I can promise you will never again have to disappear before I notice you’re hurting.”
The room blurs around him. He shifts, setting the booties and ultrasound carefully on the side table, then takes both my hands.
“I don’t want to give you another life and ask you to fit inside it,” he says. “I want the life you chose. I want to wake up wherever you are and know I was wise enough to stay there.”
My tears slip down my chin. “Do you understand what you’re promising?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“The farmhouse isn't a romantic weekend.”
“I know.”
“Juniper Bend isn't a temporary escape from your real life.”
“I know that, too.”
“The market starts early. The house needs repairs. The porch hates everyone. The baby is going to be loud, exhausting, and inconvenient, and there will be no staff keeping ordinary life from touching us.”
His thumb moves over my knuckles. “Ordinary life with you is the thing I nearly lost while chasing everything else.”
I shake my head once because the words are beautiful, and beautiful words have fooled me before. “I can’t be who I was,” I say. “I can’t go back to arranging myself around you. I can’t be grateful for scraps of attention and call them a marriage.”
“I don’t want to go back to what we were. And I don't want you to go back to being someone you weren't truly.”
My breath stops.
Rourke’s eyes hold mine. “I want you.”
Those three words untie the final knot in my chest. He came before he knew about the baby. He stayed in Juniper Bend without demanding I change things to suit the version of him I left. He rejected Jocelyn in a room where he didn't know I was listening.
“I want to try,” I whisper.
His grip tightens, then eases immediately, as if even joy has to learn gentleness.
“Not go back,” I say.
“No.”
“To build something new.”
“Yes,” he says. “Anything you’ll let me build with you.”
I touch his face. He turns into my palm and closes his eyes.
The kiss begins with a question. Rourke’s forehead rests against mine, his breath uneven, his hands still holding mine. “May I kiss you?” he asks, the words brushing over my mouth.
“Yes.”
The kiss isn't the same as it was before I left. This is more tender, more asking and less taking. For a second, neither of us moves beyond the press of our lips together.
Then I lean closer. His breath catches, and I kiss him back.
The sound he makes is low and broken, running through me with startling heat.
Weeks of wanting him and refusing to let want make my decisions rise inside my body all at once.
The ache of missing him. The anger. The loneliness.
The relief of his hands on me. The relief of wanting him without Jocelyn’s shadow standing at the edge of the room.
I climb carefully into his lap. He steadies me by the waist, then freezes. “Is this okay?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me if anything feels wrong.”
“I will.”
His hands stay exactly where I allowed them, warm through my dress. I take his face between my palms and kiss him harder.
This time, the tenderness catches fire. Rourke doesn't hurry.
Even when his breathing changes and his body goes tense beneath mine, he waits for me.
He lets me set the pace, lets me decide how close, how much, how fast. His mouth moves from mine to my jaw, my throat, the sensitive place beneath my ear that makes my fingers tighten in his hair.
“Mallory,” he says against my skin.
I pull back enough to look at him. His eyes move over my face, my hair, the dress wrinkled beneath his hands, the faint stains at my fingertips from flowers I stripped that afternoon.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
I almost look away, but he catches the movement and stops touching me except for his hands at my waist. “Not because you’re mine. Not because you’re carrying our baby. You. Like this. Here. Being who you were made to be.”
My lips part.
“I see you,” he says. The words are quiet, going through me like a key turning. "And I've never wanted anything more."
I kiss him again because I can't survive standing outside this moment any longer.
We make it to the bedroom in pauses. His hand in mine, a kiss against the hallway wall, my fingers fumbling with the buttons of his shirt while he asks, once, twice, whether I'm sure. I answer him with words every time because I need him to hear them and I need to hear myself saying them.
Yes. I want this. I want you.
In my room, the lamp is low. The curtains move with the night air. Rourke stands before me with his shirt open and his chest rising hard, and he still waits.
So I go to him.
His hands skim my arms first, then my shoulders, then down to my hands. He kisses my knuckles, the faint green stain near my thumb, the small scrape where a rose thorn caught me earlier. His mouth lingers there like even the evidence of my work deserves tenderness.
He undresses me slowly, watching my face more than my body. When the dress slips away, he doesn't look at me as if pregnancy has made me fragile or strange. He looks hungry. Reverent. Shaken by the privilege of being allowed a second chance.
My body has changed in small ways. There's tenderness where there used to be none, a fullness low in my belly that I can see because I know to look. For weeks, I've dressed around it, hidden it, protected it from becoming information someone else could use.
Rourke lowers to his knees in front of me. My breath catches.
He looks up. “May I?”
My breath catches. Then I nod.
He places his palm beneath mine, gentle enough that I feel the warmth more than the pressure. His face changes, grief and awe passing through it together. He lowers his mouth to my stomach, over the place where our child is still too small to make herself known.
“Hi,” he whispers.
My fingers slide into his hair.
His voice breaks. “I’m your father. I’m sorry I missed the beginning.”
The room takes on a watery sheen.
“Your mother is the strongest person I've ever known,” he says, each word rough and careful.
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of both of you.
You're already loved. So loved.” He pauses, pressing his cheek lightly against me.
“But she was loved first. I came for her before I knew about you, and I will never let her doubt that again.”
A sob leaves me.
He looks up immediately. “Are you okay?"
“Yes.” I pull him to his feet. “And no.”
Then I'm kissing him, and he's kissing me back. The old ghosts recede into the edges of the room and then disappear altogether.
We gravitate toward the bed where I’ve lain awake, wondering if my body would ever feel the warmth of his hands again. He gently guides me down to the mattress. There's no pushing, no rushing. When his body settles over mine, I sigh.
His hands map my body like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he blinks. The pads of his fingers trace the new softness of my breasts.
“You’re so beautiful, Mallory,” he murmurs against my collarbone, his breath hot. "I've missed this. I've missed you."
I gasp as he rolls his hips against mine, the hard length of him pressing exactly where I need. My nails dig into his shoulders, and he groans, low and wrecked.
“Tell me what you want,” he demands, his voice rough.
I swallow. “I want you to touch me, Rourke."
He smirks, but it's not arrogant. It's knowing.