Epilogue #2
“I mean it.” I lift his forearm and press my lips to the first scar, the pale ridge near his elbow where the fire took the most. “You walked into a burning building for me.” I kiss the next one.
“You went back into a burning house for a ring.” And the next.
“You carried this so I could be free. I am not going to look away from it.”
His breath goes unsteady above me. “You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
I kiss every mark the fire left on him, unhurried, until the tension drains out of his shoulders and his good hand comes up to cradle the back of my head.
When I finally lift my mouth to his, he’s looking at me the way he looked at me in the garden an hour ago, down on one knee with the ring shaking in his fingers.
We undress each other slowly. We have time now. The green silk pools at my feet and his hands learn the new shape of me, the curve where our daughter is growing, the fuller, heavier weight of my breasts.
“You’re staring,” I say.
“I’m allowed.” His thumb traces the swell of me, reverent, then drags up to circle one tight nipple. “I helped.”
“You did a lot more than help.”
He laughs, low, and draws me down onto the bed.
He takes his time getting me ready, though I barely need it, my body already slick and humming for him before he has properly touched me at all.
He works me open with his fingers first, slow, until I’m rocking against his hand, and only then does he settle over me and push in, slow and deep, filling me by inches until he’s buried to the hilt.
He stays there, forehead resting against mine, both of us breathing the same air.
“Don’t move,” he murmurs. “Not yet. Let me have this.”
So we stay. Joined and still, his cock throbbing deep inside me, his heart pounding against my chest and mine answering, the lamp warm and gold on the scars I kissed and the ring new on my finger.
“It happened early,” he says quietly, his voice rough with wonder. “Those first weeks. When every doctor in the city had told you it was impossible.”
“I know.”
“You’re carrying my daughter.” He draws back and pushes in again, slow and deep, and the words land in my chest as much as in my body.
“You’re going to wear my name. You’re already mine, and in the spring you’ll be mine in front of God and a church full of people, and I still cannot believe I get to keep you. ”
“You get to keep me.” My voice breaks. “For good.”
He moves unhurried now, because for once we have all the time in the world.
Long and deep and easy, his cock dragging against every nerve, his hand sliding between us to work my clit, and when I crest the first time it rolls through me warm and endless, a tide with no edge that keeps pulling me under.
He doesn’t stop. He works me through it and past it, gentle and relentless, until I’m trembling and oversensitive and gasping his name into his throat.
“One more,” he whispers. “I’ve got you. One more.”
“I can’t.”
“You can. I’ll catch you.”
And I do, because he asks, because for the first time in my life being asked is a gift and not a debt.
When he finally lets go it’s deep inside me with my name on his lips and his face buried in my hair, and afterward he doesn’t roll away or reach for his phone or remind me he has an early meeting.
He stays. He gathers me against his chest and spreads his hand wide and warm over our daughter, and I fall asleep listening to his heartbeat, safe in a way I’d stopped believing I’d ever get to be.
***
Four months later, our daughter is born.
The labor is long, eighteen hours of contractions and pushing and moments where I’m absolutely certain I can’t do this, but Tom stays with me the whole time. He holds my hand and wipes my forehead and tells me I’m strong, I’m beautiful, I’m doing so well.
And then, finally, she’s here.
Seven pounds, four ounces. A shock of dark hair, exactly like Tom’s. Eyes that will probably be mine once they settle from that newborn blue.
“Hope,” I whisper, cradling her against my chest. “Hi, Hope. I’m your mama.”
She blinks up at me, her tiny mouth working, and a locked thing inside me breaks open, all the fear, all the longing, all the years of wanting, and reforms into a new shape. A whole one.
“She’s perfect.” Tom’s voice is thick with tears. He’s sitting beside me on the hospital bed, his arm around my shoulders, his eyes fixed on our daughter. “God, Carrie. She’s absolutely perfect.”
“She has your nose.”
“Poor kid.”
I laugh, a weak, exhausted laugh, but real. “Your nose is cute.”
“My nose is crooked.”
“Endearingly crooked.”
He kisses my temple, then leans down to press the gentlest kiss to Hope’s forehead. She makes a small sound, almost a sigh, and her tiny hand closes around his finger.
“Hi, sweetheart,” he whispers. “I’m your daddy. I’m going to spend the rest of my life protecting you. And your mama. And anyone else who comes along.”
“Anyone else?”
He grins at me. “Eventually. When you’ve recovered. And only if you want to.”
“Ask me again in a year.”
“Deal.”
The nurse appears in the doorway, her face soft with the smile people wear around newborns.
“Ready to go home, Mrs. Donnelly?”
I look at Tom. At Hope. At the ring on my finger and the future stretching out before us, full of sleepless nights and first words and first steps, full of joy and fear and love so big it terrifies me.
“Yeah,” I say, leaning into Tom’s embrace. “I’m ready.”
He helps me into the wheelchair, carefully transfers Hope into my arms. We wheel through the hospital corridors together, past the nurses who wave goodbye, past the waiting room where new parents pace with nervous energy, through the automatic doors and into the bright spring morning.
Tom’s truck is parked at the curb. The car seat we spent three hours installing is waiting in the back.
“Here we go,” he says, helping me into the passenger seat while he secures Hope in her carrier. “Our first trip home as a family.”
Family.
The word blooms warm behind my ribs. The thing I’ve wanted my whole life and finally, finally have.
“Let’s go home,” I say.
Tom starts the engine. Takes my hand. Smiles at me with so much love I can barely breathe.
“Let’s go home.”
And we do.
THE END