18. Sophie
Sophie
Ilove you too.
I feel the words leave my mouth before I've fully decided to say them, and then they're just out there, sitting in the dark of my living room next to the succulent and the ache still sitting low in my chest from a day that tried, in every possible way, to convince me I wasn't worth this.
“Now shut up and hold me, Guilligan,” I say, wet-eyed and only half joking. “You’ve done enough talking for one day.”
He does. Arms tight around me, chin resting on the top of my head, and for a minute that’s all it is—just being held, just breathing, just letting the day finally finish happening to me instead of bracing for the next hit.
But something shifts, slow, underneath the comfort of it.
I feel it in the way his hand stills against my back, in the way his breathing changes, and I recognize it because the same thing is happening in me—grief turning into something else, something with teeth, something that wants very badly to prove a point to a man three states away who doesn’t get a say in any of this anymore.
I pull back far enough to look at him.
“I want you,” I say. “Right now. Not gentle. Not careful. I want to feel like myself again, and I don’t feel like myself when I’m careful.”
Something flares in his eyes—dark, immediate, all the careful restraint he’s been holding onto since he walked through the door burning off at once.
“Yeah?” His voice has gone rough.
“He doesn’t get to decide what this is,” I say. “He doesn’t get to put his ugly little theory in my head and have it live there rent-free for the rest of my life. I want to remember what it’s supposed to feel like. Show me.”
I don’t have to ask twice.
He kisses me—hard, no build-up, no patience, the exact opposite of every unhurried, deliberate thing he’s ever done to me before—and it knocks the breath clean out of me.
One hand fists in my hair, the other grips my hip hard enough to bruise.
I kiss him back with everything the day left in me, teeth and want and something close to fury, and he groans low against my mouth like he’s been waiting all night for permission to stop being careful.
We don’t make it off the couch.
He yanks my shirt over my head. I go for his belt at the same time, both of us clumsy and urgent in a way we’ve never once been together.
Every previous time between us has had some thread of restraint in it.
Tonight there’s none. Tonight it’s just skin and heat and the specific, defiant relief of two people proving with their bodies what words already promised.
“Sophie.” My name comes out wrecked against my throat. “Look at me.”
I do. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, and there’s nothing careful left in his face at all—just heat, and certainty, and something fierce that matches the thing living in my own chest.
“Say it again,” he says.
“I love you.” It comes out steadier this time. “I love you, and Chris doesn’t get an opinion about it, and neither does anyone else in this entire town.”
“Say the other thing.”
I know exactly what he means. “This is ours.”
Something breaks loose in him at that. His hands go rougher, more certain.
He gets my bra off and his mouth is on me before the fabric even hits the floor—no slow build, no patient cataloguing, just hunger, focused and immediate.
He sucks hard on one nipple, teeth grazing just enough to make me gasp, while his hand works the other, rough and possessive.
I arch into it, already aching for more.
He pulls back only long enough to strip the rest of his clothes.
I shove my own jeans and underwear down and kick them away.
Then he’s on me again, pinning me into the couch cushions with his full weight, the thick, hard length of his cock sliding against my stomach, already leaking.
It’s not gentle. I don’t want gentle. I want exactly this—proof, physical and undeniable, that whatever Chris tried to plant in my head today is a lie.
“Tell me you believe me,” he says, hand sliding between us. He finds me soaked, open, desperate, and makes a low, rough sound at the evidence. Two fingers push inside me without warning, curling hard, and my hips jerk up to meet them. “Tell me you know this is real.”
“I know.” My voice is already breaking. “I know, Grant—please!”
He doesn’t wait. He pulls his fingers free, lines himself up, and drives into me in one long, hard thrust that punches a cry out of me loud enough that I’d worry about the neighbors on any other night.
Tonight I don’t care. He’s thick and deep and relentless, and the stretch of him after the day I’ve had feels like being claimed all over again.
Something in his rhythm turns almost punishing after that—deep, fast, no patience left in it. The couch creaks under us. Every thrust drives me harder into the cushions. I wrap my legs around him and dig my heels into his back, urging him deeper, and he gives it to me without hesitation.
“You feel that?” His voice is rough against my ear, every word landing between hard thrusts. “That’s real. That’s not a math problem. That’s not a father-shaped hole. That’s me, choosing you, over and over, every single day since a wedding five years ago.”
“Grant.”
“Say you believe it.”
“I believe it.” My nails drag down his back hard enough to leave marks and he groans, hips snapping even harder into me. “I believe you, I believe this, I believe us.”
He shifts the angle, one hand hooking under my knee to open me wider, and the next thrust hits so deep I see white.
I come apart first—hard and sudden, crying out something that might be his name and might not be a word at all, clenching down around the thick length of him while the orgasm rips through me.
He doesn’t stop.
He’s still hard and relentless inside me when the last of it rolls through, fucking me through the aftershocks like he’s determined to drive every last scrap of doubt out of my body.
Only when I’m shaking and oversensitive and still somehow wanting more does he finally go still, breathing ragged against my throat.
Then, he sits back on his heels and pulls me up with him.
“Not done,” he says, voice still rough. “Get up here.”
I understand what he wants before he finishes asking. I climb into his lap, knees braced on either side of his hips on the couch cushions, and sink back down onto him slow. I can feel every thick inch of him like this, the way I’m the one setting the pace for a moment.
“There,” he says, hands settling on my hips, guiding without controlling. “That’s it. Take what you need.”
I brace my hands on his shoulders and move exactly how I want, exactly how deep I want. His head drops back against the couch, jaw tight, watching me through half-closed eyes like he’s committing every second to memory.
“You’re so fucking beautiful like this,” he says, low. “Riding me like you own it.”
I ride him harder, chasing the second climb, and then his hands tighten and the control shifts.
“Turn around,” he says. “Hands on the arm of the couch. I want you from behind.”
The order lands hot and immediate. I don’t hesitate.
I lift off him, turn, and brace myself on the armrest on my knees.
He moves in behind me without wasting a second, one hand pressing between my shoulder blades to keep me arched, the other guiding the thick head of his cock back to my entrance.
He pushes in hard, one long thrust that makes me cry out, and then he’s fucking me deep and steady from behind, the new angle hitting places the first position didn’t.
“That’s it,” he growls, one hand fisting in my hair, the other gripping my hip. “Taking Daddy’s cock so well.”
The word hits me like it always does—sharp and filthy and exactly right. I push back to meet every thrust, already shaking.
His hand leaves my hip. I feel his thumb, slick with how wet I am, press against my ass.
He circles once, deliberate, then pushes the tip inside while his cock keeps driving into me.
The dual sensation—thick cock stretching my cunt, the slow burn of his thumb working deeper into my ass—makes my arms nearly give out.
“Oh my god!”
“Feel that?” His voice is pure gravel now, right against my ear as he leans over me. “Daddy filling both. You like that, baby girl? You like me in your ass while I fuck this tight little cunt?”
“Yes—fuck, yes!”
He works the thumb deeper in time with his thrusts, not rough, just relentless, opening me while he pounds into me from behind. The wet, filthy sounds of it fill the room. Every time he bottoms out I feel him everywhere, and the stretch of his thumb makes the drag of his cock feel even thicker.
“Grant, fuck, Daddy! I’m close!”
“I know. I can feel you clamping down.” He fucks me harder, thumb still buried, his other hand sliding around to rub tight circles on my clit. “Come for me. Come on Daddy’s cock with my thumb in your ass. Let me feel it.”
I do. It rips through me harder than the first one.
It’s violent and full-body, my cunt pulsing around him while my ass clenches on his thumb, a broken cry tearing out of me that doesn’t sound like my own voice.
The orgasm keeps rolling, longer and wetter than anything earlier, and he doesn’t ease up until I’m shaking so hard I can barely stay on my knees.
Only then does he follow, slamming deep one last time and coming with a low, guttural groan of my name and the word he’s claimed, cock throbbing as he empties into me in thick pulses while his thumb stays seated in my ass through every aftershock.
We collapse forward together onto the couch, a tangled, sweaty mess, his chest against my back, both of us breathing like we’ve run somewhere. He eases his thumb free carefully, then wraps both arms around me and just holds on.
“Well,” I say eventually, voice thoroughly wrecked. “That was not gentle.”
“You asked for not gentle.”
“I did. I stand by the request.” I trace a lazy line down his forearm where it’s wrapped around my middle. “Ten out of ten. Would defiantly reclaim my sense of self again. Possibly review the choreography for future use.”
He laughs and presses a kiss to my shoulder, softer now, the fierceness of a few minutes ago settling into something quieter.
"I meant what I said," he tells me. "Every word."
"I know."
We sit like that a while, quiet, his hand tracing absent shapes on my stomach.
"Can I ask you something that has nothing to do with today?" I say.
"Always."
"The house thing. When you said, back at the site, before all of this — you closed the laptop on a listing you didn't want me to see." I feel him go very slightly still behind me. "You looked at houses."
"I looked at one house." He sounds almost sheepish, which is a tone I've never once heard from Grant Guilligan. "Three-bedroom. Good yard. Ten minutes from Mom's, five minutes from the clinic. I told myself I was just curious about the market."
"Were you?"
"No." His arms tighten around me. "I was doing math on a life I hadn't asked you if you wanted yet. Which, in retrospect, might have been getting slightly ahead of myself."
"Slightly."
"I panicked a little."
I twist around to look at him, delighted despite the exhaustion pulling at every part of me. "Grant Guilligan, did you house-hunt for me before we'd even said I love you?"
"I'm efficient. I don't like wasting time once I know what I want."
"That's either the most romantic or the most terrifying thing you've ever told me, and I genuinely cannot decide which."
"Both," he says. "Probably both."
"Send me the listing."
"Yeah?"
"Not tonight. Not — I'm not saying yes to a house at eleven PM after the day I've had. But send it to me. I want to look." I settle back against him. "I want a lot of things I've been too scared to say out loud. Might as well start with a listing."
"Camden mentioned Chris might actually visit again before Christmas," he says, after a moment. "If tonight's dinner was any indication. He asked about my job like he actually wanted to know the answer, not like he was performing interest."
"Progress."
"Slow progress."
"Still progress." I yawn, unable to fight it any longer, the day finally catching all the way up to me. "Tell me something boring. Something with no emotional content whatsoever. I need my brain to stop for a minute."
"Deb thinks the western trench line needs to be rerouted around the old Hendricks property because the soil survey came back showing more clay than the original engineering report accounted for."
"Perfect. More."
"It affects the timeline by maybe two weeks, but it's better than hitting groundwater we didn't know was there halfway through—"
I fall asleep somewhere around groundwater, tangled in him, the succulent watching over both of us from the windowsill, and for the first time since Diane poked her head into the supply room that afternoon, the ugly thing Chris tried to plant in me finally, quietly, goes still.
Not gone. Probably never fully gone.
But quiet enough, tonight, to let me sleep — lulled, in the end, not by declarations or proof or even great sex, but by the low, steady sound of the man I love talking about clay soil like it's the most important thing in the world.
Maybe, tonight, it is.