19. Blair
— ? —
Blair
I stood in the bathroom, gripping the sink, trying to remember how to breathe.
The porcelain was cold under my fingers.
The mirror reflected a woman I barely recognized, hair tangled, eyes wild, chest heaving with breaths that wouldn’t come deep enough.
I could still feel his heartbeat under my ear.
Could still feel the weight of his arm around my waist, the warmth of his body against mine, the way I’d fit against him without thinking about it.
Three months of anger. Three months of grief. Three months of rebuilding myself into someone who didn’t need him, who could stand on her own feet, who could face the wreckage of her marriage and say I’ll survive this.
And one night had undone all of it.
His arm around me. His heartbeat. The way I’d crossed the pillow wall in my sleep, seeking him without conscious thought, my body remembering what my mind was trying to forget.
The way he’d said don’t, like losing me again would break him, like those three minutes of holding me were worth more than anything else in the world.
I stared at my reflection. Pale. Exhausted. Eyes red from a night of not sleeping. I looked like a woman on the edge of a cliff, though I couldn’t tell if it was a breakdown or a breakthrough. Maybe both. Maybe they were the same thing sometimes.
The door was thin. I could hear him moving in the bedroom.
Getting dressed, probably. Giving me space.
Being careful, the way he’d been careful for weeks, the way he’d learned to be after I’d laid down my terms on Nan’s porch.
Careful not to push. Careful not to assume.
Careful not to take anything I hadn’t explicitly offered.
I didn’t want careful.
The thought startled me. I’d spent three months wanting careful. Wanting distance. Wanting the safety of walls I’d built brick by brick from my anger and his betrayal.
But standing here, gripping this sink, feeling the ghost of his touch still warm on my skin, I didn’t want safe anymore.
I wanted a thing I couldn’t name, a hunger that had been building since the engagement party, since the ultrasound, since the moment I’d woken with my head on his chest and felt, for one stupid second, like I was home.
I wanted to feel anything other than grief. Anything other than the careful numbness I’d wrapped around myself for protection. I wanted to remember what it was like to be alive, to be present in my body, to feel more than pain or anger or the endless exhaustion of holding myself together.
I wanted him.
I hated that I wanted him. Hated that my body still craved his touch, still responded to his presence, still reached for him in the darkness without my permission. Hated that three months of righteous anger couldn’t kill fifteen years of loving him.
But I was so tired of hating. So tired of fighting. So tired of pretending that I didn’t miss him every single night in that narrow bed at Nan’s cottage, that I didn’t wake up reaching for him and finding empty space, that I didn’t lie awake wondering if I’d ever feel whole again.
I opened the door.
Will was pulling on his shirt, his back to me, the muscles shifting in the morning light. He turned when he heard me, and whatever he was about to say died on his lips.
I must have been a sight. Standing in the bathroom doorway in my rumpled pajamas, hair wild, face set with an expression I couldn’t even identify. He went very still, the shirt forgotten in his hands, his eyes searching my face for some clue about what I was thinking.
“Blair, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. Last night, my hand in your hair, I wasn’t trying to-”
“Stop talking.”
He stopped.
The silence stretched between us. I could hear my own heartbeat, could hear the blood rushing in my ears, could hear the birds outside the window celebrating the end of the storm.
The whole world was waking up, moving on, continuing its endless rotation.
And I was standing here, on the edge of a choice I couldn’t take back.
I crossed the room.
He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Just stood there, shirt half-buttoned, eyes dark with a look I recognized. Want. Fear. Hope. The same cocktail of emotions I was drowning in, reflected back at me.
“This isn’t forgiveness,” I said.
“I know.”
“This doesn’t mean we’re okay.”
“I know.”
“This doesn’t mean anything about the future. Doesn’t mean I’ve decided anything. Doesn’t mean you’ve earned anything.”
“I know.”
“This is just…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Didn’t have words for what this was. Need.
Fury. Three months of wanting him while hating him, missing him while rebuilding myself around his absence.
Grief and desire tangled together so tightly I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. “I need…”
“Tell me.” His voice was rough, scraped raw. “Tell me what you need.”
I grabbed his shirt and pulled.
He met me halfway. His mouth crashed into mine, rough and starving.
This wasn’t a reconciliation kiss, wasn’t the tentative reconnection of two people trying to find their way back to each other.
This was a collision. A reckoning. All the things we couldn’t say translated into teeth and tongue and breath.
I pulled at his shirt, buttons scattering across the floor, my hands finding skin, and I was already wet, already clenching, three months of denying it undone in a single breath.
He groaned against my mouth and walked me backward until my shoulders hit the wall. The impact knocked the air out of me, and I gasped, and he swallowed the sound, his mouth hot and demanding against mine.
“Blair.” My name in his throat, ragged and desperate. “I need you to be sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“If you want to stop. At any point. Any time. I’ll stop. I swear I’ll stop.”
“Will.” I grabbed his face, forced him to look at me.
His eyes were wild, pupils blown wide, the careful control he’d been maintaining for weeks cracked right down the center.
“I don’t want to stop. I want to feel something other than angry.
I want to forget, just for an hour, that everything is broken. I want you to fuck me until I forget.”
His expression cracked open. Permission granted. The last of his restraint crumbled, and underneath it was hunger. Raw, unfiltered, three months of wanting compressed into a single look.
“Hold on,” he said, and lifted me.
My legs wrapped around his waist without conscious thought.
His hands gripped my thighs, holding me against him, and I could feel him hard against me through the thin cotton, thick and urgent, exactly where I was aching for it.
I rocked down against the length of him without thinking, chasing the friction, and felt myself soak through my shorts.
He hissed through his teeth. “Careful.”
“I don’t want careful.”
“Blair.”
“I said I don’t want careful. I want honest. I want you to show me what you’ve been hiding. What you really feel. Stop protecting me and fuck me.”
He groaned, low and rough, and his mouth found my neck. My collarbone. The spot below my ear that ten years of marriage had taught him, the one that made my head fall back and my hips grind down against him. I dug my nails into his shoulders and felt him shudder.
“Mark me,” he said against my skin. “Leave marks. I want to see them tomorrow. I want proof this happened.”
I raked my nails down his back. He pressed me harder into the wall, ground the hard ridge of his cock against my clit through our clothes until stars burst behind my eyes. Not enough. Nowhere near enough.
“Bed,” I gasped. “Now.”
He carried me there without breaking contact, his mouth still hot on my neck, his hands gripping my thighs hard enough to bruise.
He laid me down on the ruined pillow wall, the scattered cushions soft beneath my back, and followed me onto the mattress.
His weight pinned me into the sheets, and I arched up into it, grinding against him, shameless, wet and open and past caring how much I wanted it.
“I’ve missed you.” His voice was muffled against my hip, his mouth tracing down my body. “Every part of you. Every sound you make. Every way your body moves. I’ve been going insane without you.”
“Stop talking and put your mouth on me.”
He did.
His hands were everywhere. Peeling off my top, dragging my shorts and my ruined underwear down my legs and off.
He got a look at me spread out and swore under his breath, filthy and reverent.
“Christ, Blair, you’re soaked.” Then he pushed my thighs wide and put his mouth on me, and I cried out, my hands fisting in his hair, my hips bucking up into his tongue.
He knew my body too well, knew exactly how to take me apart, and I was already close, already climbing, three months of deprivation making every stroke of his tongue feel amplified.
He licked into me, sucked my clit, pushed two fingers deep and curled them until I was shaking, until I was begging, until I was right at the edge.
“Not yet,” he said, pulling back, his mouth wet and gleaming.
“Will.”
“Not without me. I want to feel you break first, right around me.”
He rose over me, stripping off what was left of his clothes, and settled between my thighs. I reached down and wrapped my hand around him, hot and hard and thick in my fist, and guided him to where I needed him. He was right there, notched against me, both of us shaking.
“Look at me,” he said.
I opened my eyes. His face was wrecked, tears and sweat and a rawness that hurt to see. The composed William Beaumont who negotiated deals and charmed society was gone. This was just a man, desperate and wanting, offering himself up without defenses.
“I love you.” His voice cracked. “Whatever happens after this. Whatever you decide. I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’ll always love you.”
“I know.”
He pushed in.