18. Blair #3
I’d always assumed I was like that too. That love was supposed to be consuming, all-encompassing, the kind of thing you couldn’t survive losing.
Now I wasn’t sure about anything.
“Blair?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry. For everything. Not because I want you to forgive me. Just because I need you to know it’s true.”
I didn’t answer. There was nothing left to say, not tonight. We’d done the autopsy. We’d examined the wounds. Now we just had to lie here, three feet apart, and wait for morning.
“Goodnight, Will.”
“Goodnight, Blair.”
I closed my eyes.
I woke at three in the morning to his hand in my hair.
He wasn’t grabbing or pulling. Just touching. His fingers threading through the strands, gentle, almost reverent. The kind of touch you’d give a fragile, precious thing you were afraid of breaking.
I kept my eyes closed. Kept my breathing even.
I could feel the tension in his body, feel the restraint radiating off him.
He was lying on his back, I could tell from the angle of his arm, his free hand probably fisted in the sheets, his jaw tight with the effort of not pulling me closer.
Every line of him was rigid with wanting, with holding back, with the war between what he wanted and what he had the right to take.
He thought I was asleep.
He was touching me the way he used to, in the early days of our marriage, when he’d wake in the middle of the night and reach for me just to make sure I was still there.
I’d forgotten about that habit. Forgotten the way his fingers would trace patterns on my skin, soft and wondering, as if he couldn’t quite believe I was real.
Forgotten how it felt to be wanted so much that someone couldn’t stop themselves from reaching out, even in sleep.
His hand stilled in my hair. I felt him watching me, felt his gaze in the darkness.
And my body answered him even while I lay there faking sleep.
My nipples had gone tight under the thin cotton.
My thighs had pressed together somewhere in the dark without my permission, and I was slick between them, aching, from nothing but his fingers in my hair and the sound of him breathing.
It was humiliating, how little it took. One touch and I was wet for a man I was supposed to be furious with.
I pretended to be asleep.
He didn’t stop touching me. Just let his hand rest there, tangled in my hair, connection without demand. I lay there feeling his fingers, feeling his longing, feeling the years of history between us condensed into this single point of contact.
My throat ached with everything I couldn’t say.
I wanted to turn into his touch. Wanted to curl against him and let him hold me the way he used to, before everything broke.
Wanted to pretend, just for tonight, that we were still the people we’d been before Trip’s return, before the suspicion, before the question that had shattered everything.
I didn’t move.
Neither did he.
The storm raged outside, wind and rain battering the windows, but inside our room everything was still.
Just his fingers in my hair. Just the sound of his breathing, careful and controlled.
Just two people who had loved each other for fifteen years, lying three feet apart in the darkness, pretending.
Neither of us slept again.
In the morning, the pillow wall was demolished.
I didn’t remember moving. Didn’t remember crossing the barrier, seeking warmth, curling into the familiar shape of him. But here I was, my head on his chest, his arm around my waist, his heartbeat steady under my ear.
The storm had passed sometime in the night. Pale sunlight filtered through the windows, illuminating the room, making it impossible to pretend this wasn’t happening. I was pressed against my husband, our legs tangled together, the pillow wall reduced to a scattered pile of cushions on the floor.
I started to pull away.
“Don’t.”
His voice was rough with sleeplessness, with wanting, with three months of grief compressed into a single word.
“Will.”
“Just… One more minute. Please.”
I should refuse. Should get up, put distance between us, maintain the boundaries I’d been building. Should remember all the reasons this was a bad idea, all the ways he’d hurt me, all the work I still had to do before I could trust him again.
I gave him three minutes.
Three minutes of lying there, listening to his heart, feeling his chest rise and fall, remembering what it was like to wake up next to someone who loved you.
Three minutes of pretending that everything was okay, that we hadn’t broken each other, that this was just a normal morning in a normal marriage.
His arm tightened around me. I felt his lips brush the top of my head, the lightest touch, barely there.
Then I got up.
I didn’t look back. Walked straight to the bathroom, closed the door, turned on the water. I gripped the sink and stared at my reflection in the mirror, at the woman looking back at me with wild eyes and tangled hair and a heart that didn’t know what it wanted.
I could feel his eyes on me the whole way.