CHAPTER 41
The Talk Before Coffee
Coffee turned out to be easier than courage.
Daniel made it because his hands needed something useful to do.
He measured grounds, filled the reservoir, found two mugs from the cabinet they had bought during a weekend trip years ago, and tried to remember how many ordinary mornings had passed through this kitchen without either of them saying what they wanted.
Behind him, Elise sat at the small breakfast table in one of his shirts, her hair loose around her shoulders, watching him with a quietness that did not feel like distance anymore.
It felt like she was waiting for him to come back from the edge of himself.
He poured the coffee and set her mug in front of her. She wrapped both hands around it as if the warmth could steady the things they had not yet said.
'Tonight,' she said.
Daniel sat across from her. The word had followed them downstairs like a third person. It had waited while he found filters, waited while the machine hissed, waited while the first pale line of morning became full daylight at the kitchen window.
'Tonight,' he repeated.
Elise looked down into her coffee. 'We do not have to decide anything big.'
'Good, because my big-decision muscles are sore.'
Her smile was soft but grateful. 'Mine too.'
Daniel touched his wedding band with his thumb. The motion had become a habit since the event, a way of checking that the symbol was still there after desire had rattled everything around it. The ring had not changed. His understanding of it had.
'I keep thinking about the room upstairs,' he said.
'About Marcus?'
'About you asking whether I was still with you.'
Elise's eyes lifted. 'Were you?'
'Every second.'
The answer made her blink quickly. She took a sip of coffee and set the mug down with care. 'I was afraid you would wake up angry.'
'I woke up scared.'
'That is different.'
'Yes.' He leaned back and forced himself not to soften the truth into something more heroic. 'I woke up scared, jealous, proud, turned on, confused, protective, embarrassed, and then somehow more married to you than I felt two nights ago.'
Elise breathed out a laugh that became almost a sob. 'That is a lot before breakfast.'
'The coffee is helping.'
She reached across the table. He took her hand immediately.
'I need rules,' he said. 'Not because I want to control you. Because if we do not name the shape of this, my fear will make up its own shape and then accuse you of living inside it.'
Elise squeezed his hand. 'Then name them.'
Daniel had expected her to resist the word rules. Instead, she looked relieved. He realized she had been waiting for him to prove that bravery did not mean recklessness.
'No secrets,' he said. 'No private messages with Marcus unless we both know. No meetings without agreeing first. No using jealousy as punishment. No pretending I am fine when I am not. No pretending you are fine when you are not.'
'Yes,' she said after each sentence, steady as a vow.
'And if either of us says guardrail, everything slows down.'
Her mouth curved. 'Our strange little safe word.'
'Very romantic.'
'Extremely.'
They laughed, and the laugh loosened something.
Elise came around the table and sat sideways on his lap, careful with the coffee, not careful with the way her knees framed him beneath the shirt.
Daniel's hands settled at her waist, and the simple contact felt electric because it was theirs, because it had not been diminished by what happened with Marcus. It had been sharpened.
'What do you want tonight?' she asked.
Daniel looked up at her. Morning light softened her face. There was no ballroom, no burgundy dress, no rain against expensive windows. Just Elise, warm and real and close enough for him to feel her breath.
'I want to tell him thank you,' Daniel said.
Her eyebrows rose. 'That is what you want?'
'That is where I want to start.'
She studied him. 'And after that?'
He let his hands tighten slightly at her waist. The shirt shifted against her skin, and his body answered before his voice could. Elise noticed. She always noticed.
'After that,' he said, 'I want to see whether the man who guarded the door can respect the door we build together.'
Elise kissed him slowly. The coffee went cold. Neither of them cared.