Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
CADE
Her forehead rests against mine, and I don’t move. I don’t trust myself to.
Emmy’s hand is still in my hair. Her fingers tremble against my scalp, soft, familiar, and impossible after all these months of empty rooms and locked doors. My palm stays spread over the small curve of her belly, waiting for another movement like a man waiting for mercy.
“I love you too,” she just said.
The words are still in the room. I’ve stood under spotlights with fifty thousand people screaming my name, but nothing has ever made me feel less steady than four quiet words from my wife.
I close my eyes. “Say it again.”
Her breath catches. I hate myself a little for asking. Not because I don’t need it, but because I do.
Emmy’s fingers tighten in my hair. “I love you.”
My hand shakes against her belly. “God.”
I bow my head until my mouth touches the back of her hand, the one resting over mine.
I kiss her knuckles once, then twice, and she makes a small sound that goes straight through me.
Not desire first. Grief first. Then desire, low and hot and careful, rising out of the place where grief’s been sitting for months.
I lift my head. “Can I kiss you?”
Her eyes shine in the porch light, brown, wet, and braver than I deserve. “Yes.”
I stand slowly because she’s right here, the baby is right here, and my body has a lot of old habits I don’t get to obey without asking anymore. When I reach my full height, Emmy tilts her face up to me.
For one second, I remember every kiss I took for granted: kitchen kisses, hotel hallway kisses, half-asleep kisses before flights, quick pecks while looking at my phone, her mouth offered to me while my mind was already somewhere else.
I put one hand along her jaw and make myself look at her before I close the distance. “I’m here,” I say.
Her eyes close. “Then kiss me like it.”
So I do.
The first touch of her mouth almost takes my knees out. For once, I have no poetry for it. I only have my hand shaking at her cheek, her fingers clutching the front of my shirt, and the rough sound that leaves me when she kisses me back.
She doesn’t come to me soft. She comes to me shaking. She comes with hurt still in her body.
I pull back first, barely. “Are you sure?”
Her lashes lift. “Cade.”
“I need to hear it.”
Something in her face changes. The old impatience is there, but underneath it is tenderness. “I’m sure. I want you. I want this.”
My chest aches. “If anything feels wrong, you tell me.”
“I will.”
“If you need to stop—”
“I’ll tell you,” she says, her thumb brushing over my bottom lip. “But I don’t want to stop.”
I kiss her again, slower this time. She melts by degrees. Her shoulders loosen. Her hands slide up around my neck. When my arms go around her, I hold her carefully at first, but Emmy makes a frustrated sound and pulls me closer.
“I’m not made of glass,” she whispers against my mouth.
“No,” I say, my hands spreading over her back. “You never were.”
That undoes something in her. I feel it in the way she exhales, the way her forehead drops briefly to my chest, and the way she lets herself lean her weight into me.
I hold her there in the unfinished entry of the house I built from a promise I broke. Her belly rests between us, the truth of her warm through both our clothes.
I lower my hand to it again. “I missed this.”
Her breath stutters.
“I know I didn’t know,” I say, my voice rough. “I know. But I missed it anyway. Every morning. Every doctor visit. Every time you got scared. Every time you felt sick. Every time your body changed, and you had to look at it alone.”
Her fingers curl into my shirt.
“I’m going to hate that for the rest of my life,” I say. “But I’m here now. I won’t miss another moment you let me have.”
She looks up at me, lips swollen from my kiss. “You can’t promise perfect.”
“No.” I touch her cheek. “I can promise present.”
Her eyes close again. I kiss the corner of one, then the other, then her mouth, softly enough that she’s the one who deepens it. She’s the one who steps into me and takes what she wants.
I let her. I let her lead until her breathing turns uneven and her hands start searching, until she tugs at my shirt and laughs once against my mouth, wet and overwhelmed.
“There’s nowhere to sit,” she says.
I look around like I haven’t built every inch of this place and still failed to put a bed in it. Plastic sheeting covers the living room floor. Sawhorses stand where a couch will go someday. The kitchen has cabinets without doors, and the hallway is stacked with trim.
Then I look up toward the raised nook over the kitchen. The reading nook.
It has a wide built-in bench under the windows, finished first because I couldn’t help myself.
The cushions are still wrapped in plastic in the corner, waiting for fabric Emmy picked at nineteen without knowing I kept the note.
There are folded drop cloths, a clean quilt from the truck, and enough space for her to stretch out without the floor, the dust, or my stupidity getting in the way.
“There,” I say.
She follows my gaze, and her mouth trembles. “My nook.”
“Your nook.”
I get the quilt from the truck. I shake it out twice on the porch, then again inside, because I need something to do with my hands that isn’t grabbing for her like I haven’t learned anything. Emmy watches me with her arms wrapped around herself, eyes bright, hair loose around her shoulders.
When I come back, I lay the quilt over the cushions and smooth it with ridiculous care.
“You’re fussing,” she says.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Her mouth curves, small and real. “I missed that.”
I stop smoothing the quilt. She looks away like she didn’t mean to say it.
I cross to her slowly. “I missed everything.”
Her eyes come back to mine. I offer my hand, and she takes it.
We climb the few steps to the nook together. The windows look out over the old dogwood, bare against the dark yard. Moonlight and porch light mix on the glass. The whole house is quiet around us, unfinished and waiting.
Emmy sits first, careful as she lowers herself to the cushions. I kneel in front of her and take off her boots one at a time while she watches me. I press my mouth to the inside of her ankle.
Her fingers flex against the quilt. “Cade.”
I kiss her calf through her jeans, then look up. “Tell me if I get it wrong.”
She swallows. “You won’t.”
That faith hits harder than any accusation.
I rise onto my knees and slide my hands up to her waist. She lifts her arms when I touch the hem of her sweater, but I pause there. “Can I?”
“Yes.”
I draw it over her head carefully. Her hair falls around her face. Underneath, she wears a soft camisole that shows me what she’s been hiding from rooms, cameras, and me: fuller breasts, softer waist, and the roundness of our child low beneath her navel.
My throat closes. Emmy crosses an arm over herself.
I catch her wrist gently. “No.”
Her eyes flash, wounded and wary.
"Let me see you," I say, never pressing. "You're far too beautiful to hide."
A tear slips down her cheek. I kiss it away, then kiss her mouth, then her jaw, then the hollow beneath her ear. She shivers. I move slowly, giving her time to stop me, but she doesn’t. Her hands come to my hair again, pulling me closer when I kiss the slope of her shoulder.
I touch her like every inch of her deserves an apology I can’t speak without ruining the quiet: her neck, her collarbone, the soft swell above her camisole, and the curve of her belly, where I rest my mouth and go still.
“Hi, baby,” I whisper.
Emmy lets out a broken little laugh and covers her face with one hand.
I kiss the place where our child sleeps beneath her skin. “I’m your daddy,” I say, so quietly I barely hear myself. “I’m late. I’m sorry. I’m here.”
Emmy’s hand drops to my shoulder, her nails pressing through the cotton of my shirt.
I look up at her. “And your mama is the strongest woman I’ve ever known.”
“Cade.”
“She is.” I kiss her belly again. “She’s stubborn, too. You’ll learn that.”
A laugh gets through her tears. I smile against her skin because I’ve missed that sound enough to live on the echo.
I rise from her belly slowly, kissing my way up: the curve beneath her breasts, the hollow of her throat, the underside of her jaw.
Her camisole is still on, and I don't remove it yet.
I don't remove anything yet. I just learn her again with my mouth, my hands, and the patience I should have brought to every single night of our marriage.
She reaches for my shirt, and I let her pull it over my head. Her palms flatten against my chest, warm and searching. I close my eyes because the touch of her hands on my bare skin after all these months is almost too much.
"Hey," she says softly.
I open my eyes. "Hey."
"You're shaking."
"Am I?"
Her hands slide over my shoulders, down my arms. She pulls me toward her, and I follow, carefully laying her back across the cushions. The quilt bunches beneath her shoulders. Her hair spills dark against the pale fabric. Moonlight catches in her eyes.
I settle beside her first, not above. My arm goes around her, my mouth at her neck, and I feel her body against mine. She's familiar and changed all at once, softer in places, fuller in places, carrying a weight I wasn't here to help her carry.
"Tell me what you need," I say against her skin.
"You. Just you."
I unbutton her jeans, slow, watching her face. She lifts her hips, and I slide them down, taking my time. I press my mouth to each new inch of her I reveal.
Her fingers twist into the quilt when I settle between her legs. I look up at her once. She meets my eyes, and there's no hesitation in her face. Only want. Only trust.
I lower my mouth to her.
She gasps, and the sound breaks open something I've been holding locked in my chest for months.
I take my time. I learn her with my tongue, slow and deliberate, listening to every sound she makes.
The sharp inhale, the whispered fragments of my name, the broken moan when I find the place that makes her hips arch off the cushions.