Chapter 21 #2
I hold her steady. I don't rush. I let it build in her like it deserves to build, like she deserves to be wanted this thoroughly.
When she comes, her hand flies to my head, gripping my hair, and her whole body tightens and releases in a wave that I feel against my mouth. She says my name like a prayer and a curse in the same breath.
I press a kiss to the inside of her thigh and lift my head. "Are you okay?"
Her chest rises and falls. Her eyes are glassy. "Cade."
"We can stop." I say it because I mean it. "If you want—"
"I want you." She reaches for me, her fingers curling around my arm. "I need you. Please."
I can't believe I've been lucky enough to get another chance at this. At her. At us. I won't ever do anything that jeopardizes that. Not again. Not ever.
I move carefully.
For once, I know exactly what to do, guided by some instinctual intuition that is likely older than any of us.
I position her on her side, facing the windows where the moonlight comes through. My arm goes around her, my mouth at the back of her neck, and I feel her settle against me with a sigh that sounds like coming home.
"Okay?" I whisper.
"Okay." She presses back against me.
I reach around her, my hand finding her hip, steadying her. I'm slow, agonizingly slow, as I enter her. The first inch steals my breath. She makes a sound that's somewhere between a gasp and my name, and I stop.
"Emmy."
"Don't stop." Her voice is thin. "Please don't stop."
I push forward until I'm fully inside her, and we both go still. Her hand finds mine on her hip and laces our fingers together. I feel her body adjusting around me, warm, tight, and impossibly right.
I start to move. Slow. Savoring. Each thrust deliberate, measured, my mouth against the curve of her neck, her shoulder, the sensitive spot behind her ear that makes her shiver.
I memorize the sounds she makes. The hitched breath, the low hum, the way she whispers yes and there and Cade like she's forgotten every other word.
I love the feel of her changed body. The fullness of her breasts beneath my palm. The roundness of her belly under my forearm. The way her hips are wider, softer, cradling our child and still making room for me.
She reaches back, her hand finding my hip, pulling me deeper. "More," she whispers.
"Emmy."
"More. Please. I need—"
I speed up. Not much. Just enough. She gasps, and I feel her clench around me.
But she doesn't let me be careful forever. She pushes back against me, meeting my rhythm, and soon we're both gasping, both chasing something that's been building for months.
"Cade," she says, and it's not a question. It's not a request. It's a full sentence. It's I love you and I'm scared and don't leave and I'm yours all in one word.
I come inside her, holding her to me, my face buried in her neck, my arm tight around her waist. The release moves through me in waves, and I breathe her in.
We stay like that, joined, breathing, neither of us moving to separate. Her hand stays locked with mine on her hip. My lips rest against the knob of her spine.
After a long time, I whisper, "I love you."
"I know," she says. And then, softer: "I love you too."
I pull out slowly, carefully, and she makes a small sound of loss. I arrange the quilt over us both and pull her back against my chest. The baby shifts beneath my palm, and Emmy laughs, wet and exhausted.
"I guess he's been waiting on you," she says.
"He?"
She goes quiet. "I don't know. I just...I think so."
I pull her to me and hold her, letting her breathing go deep and settled.
And I think, I'll never let this go.
Near dawn, Emmy sleeps against me in the reading nook, wrapped in my shirt and the quilt from the truck.
I have my back to the wall, one arm around her shoulders and one hand resting low on her belly. Every so often, the baby moves. Small, rolling shifts beneath my palm. Each one knocks the breath out of me all over again.
The windows have gone gray. Outside, the dogwood stands black against the morning.
Emmy stirs. “You asleep?”
“No.”
Her eyes open halfway. “Cade.”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I brush her hair back from her face. “I was busy.”
“With what?”
“Meeting our baby.”
Her mouth softens. She looks younger like this. Tired, bare-faced, warm from sleep, with my shirt slipping off one shoulder. Then something cautious moves through her eyes.
I touch her cheek before she can retreat behind it. “Don’t hide from me.”
“I don’t know how to do this yet.”
“Me either.”
Her gaze searches mine.
“We’ll relearn,” I say.
The baby moves beneath my hand.
Emmy laughs quietly and covers my fingers with hers. “Bossy already.”
“Gets that from you.”
She gives me a look. I kiss her before she can decide whether to be offended. She smiles against my mouth, and the morning opens around it. Soon, we'll have to move, before the morning crew shows up. But for now, I just hold her.
That night, I sit in the WHLR booth with headphones around my neck and my hand wrapped around Emmy’s. Pop stands on the other side of the glass pretending not to cry. June is in the corner with her arms folded, watching me like she still might throw me through a wall if I blink wrong. Fair enough.
The red light comes on.
Emmy leans toward the mic, her wedding ring glinting on the hand.
“Good evening, Harmony Ridge,” she says, her voice steady and warm. “It’s Emmy Sutton. I’ve got two announcements tonight.”
My throat tightens.
“The first is that Backroad Country is going to be heard in a few more places soon,” she says. “We’ll talk about that more tomorrow.”
Pop presses his hand over his mouth. Emmy looks at me through the glass.
“The second,” she says, softer now, “is that I’m having a baby.”
June cries first. Pop goes next.
I watch my wife in the room where her voice belongs and listen to the silence after her words fill the county.
Then Emmy smiles, small and sure. “And before anybody asks, yes. Cade knows.”
She turns her face toward me, still on air, still entirely herself.
“He’s right here.”