Chapter 20 #4
“Give me a few minutes, and we’ll do something about that.”
“You do know I’m not eighteen. We might need a bit longer.”
“Thank god,” I breathe. “I haven’t even got a tiny spurt left in me. I was really giving you false hope there.”
“You’re always such a giver, Xavier Conway.”
I kiss his chest where I can feel his heart beating strongly, and he gathers me closer as if he knows what I’m thinking. Then we snuggle together, a relaxed quiet descending on the room.
Eventually, I stir. “I think we should get a sponsorship deal with Lurpak after this.”
He chuckles. “I’m always at my best when I’m improvising,” he says in a terrible impression of an American advert.
“It’s a bit messy, though. Grey is totally going to kill you. We’ve completely destroyed these sheets.”
He drops a kiss on my shoulder. “I’m going to steal them and frame them.”
“You can hang it next to my nude photos that you rather creepily kept in an odd sort of spank bank.”
He laughs and hugs me closer, settling his head on mine with a contented sigh.
“I don’t think we ever did it like that before,” I say, and hesitate because I can’t quite find the words to fully describe how that sex felt so different from everything that came before.
He knows what I’m trying to say. Of course he does. He’s the other half of me. “We were never naked with each other, were we? We might have stripped off our clothes, but we didn’t really show ourselves.” I nod. “We were fools,” he finishes gruffly.
A thought suddenly comes into my head, the echo of an earlier conversation. I come up on one elbow and regard him curiously.
“Oh no,” he immediately groans. “What now?”
“Nothing.” I run my fingers through his chest hair. “It was just something Grey said.”
“Which bit? It appears to me that he’s said entirely too much.”
“Oh, chill out. I made him tell me.”
“Why did you?”
I shrug. “You don’t like hurting me.”
He ducks in and kisses me, his lips soft and full. “It still should have been me who told you. It was my responsibility.”
I groan and fall to my back. “Yeah, I think we’ll stop that habit of taking on the whole world as your personal responsibility. It’s boring.”
“Just like that?”
“I’ll help.”
“That makes me nervous.”
“It should do.” I kiss his chest and bite his nipple, chuckling as he hisses and shoves me before immediately pulling me close again and arranging me so I’m curled into his side. “I’m simply going to take care of you and watch out for you.”
“Haven’t you always done that, even when you were mad enough to kill me?”
I blink. “Have I?”
“Yes, I seem to recall it was you who came to my hotel room in Positano when I fell ill with the flu. I’m equally sure that it was you who looked after me, got me medicine, and stayed until I was better.”
“Hmm. I’m sure that wasn’t me. Maybe I just wanted to make your hotel bill even more incredibly expensive than it was.” He laughs, and I pinch his nipple. “I’m not that silly soft person you seem to be implying.”
“You totally are, but don’t worry. I’ll keep your secret forever.”
“Anyway, getting back to Grey.” He groans, and I smile. “He told me you hadn’t fucked anyone since we got married.”
I expect him to say something sarcastic, but instead, he just shrugs. “Of course not.”
“So, it’s true?”
“If the speed at which I just came didn’t alert you to the fact, then I don’t know what will.” He holds up his hand. “Please allow me to introduce you to the second Mrs Langley.” He makes his hand into a puppet and says in a squeaky voice, “Nice to meet you.”
I snort but then hesitate and whisper, “I wasn’t a very stellar first Mrs Langley, was I?”
His eyes are impossibly soft. “Because you weren’t married in your heart, Xavi.” He hesitates. “But I think maybe now you are.”
“I am.” His smile is like the sun coming out—warm and cautiously bright.
“There won’t be anyone else now,” I say quietly, the words falling into the soft quiet of the room.
“Not for the rest of my life.” I reach out and hook his chain.
The wedding ring runs down until it touches my finger—a tiny metal kiss.
“How about we put this back where it belongs?”
“I would like that more than anything,” he says huskily.
He sits up and unfastens the chain, handing it to me.
I take the ring from him and put it back on his finger, dropping a whimsical kiss on the knuckle where a scar lies, a relic from some long-ago accident I still haven’t heard about.
“Back where you belong, little ring,” I whisper.
He cups my skull, his fingers fisting gently in my hair.
Then he leaps out of bed. He goes immediately to my jeans lying on the floor and rummages through the pocket until he finds the pouch.
When he comes back to me, he climbs onto the bed, kneeling amongst the sheets, his face suddenly solemn.
His hair is wild, his eyes gleaming bright, and he has never looked more beautiful to me.
He pushes the ring onto my finger and stays still for a second, looking down at my hand.
“I promise to love you forever and ever,” he says hoarsely.
“Right back at you,” I say softly, my whole heart in my voice. “Always, Roo.”
His face twists, and he pushes me down to lie on my back. He comes down on top of me and lays his head on my chest. I can feel the tickling flicker of his eyelashes and the hot dampness on my skin. I clutch him close, pressing kisses into his hair, and we lie close and warm.
Eventually, I stir. “I’ve been a very successful model for years and won most of the jobs I ever went for. And some of them were major accounts.”
He doesn’t protest the abrupt subject change. Just says wryly, “Are we still not mentioning the Burberry business?”
“That was an accident that could’ve happened to anyone.” I pinch him. “How do you fucking know about these things?”
“I told you that I always kept an eye on you.” His wry expression tells me my delight at that statement has been very poorly concealed.
I hug him. “Despite all those big accounts, you were always the only call back I ever wanted.”
He leans in to kiss me. “I’m sorry I left you alone for the year.”
“Why did you?”
He bites his lip. “I was tired,” he finally says. “And so weary of the heartache.”
“I’m—”
He puts his finger over my lips. “Don’t say sorry. I’ve had enough of that word now. I told myself it was hurting you just as much as me, and maybe you’d be able to move on if I wasn’t around for you to hate. Even if it meant I never saw you again, if you were happy, then I could bear that loss.”
“How did I ever end up with someone like you loving me?”
“Because you are, to use your own words, completely fucking epic.” He kisses my forehead, nosing in amongst my hair and inhaling.
“I suppose this is just manifesting in action.”
He cranes his neck to look up at me. “What the fuck is manifesting in action?”
I spin my ring idly on my finger. It feels strange but the right kind of strange, as if it’s been waiting to go home. “I’m not entirely sure. Pip’s always going on about it. I think it’s to do with wanting something hard enough that you write it down and then you make it come true.”
“Did you write me down?” He’s managing to sound both touched and like he wants to laugh.
I roll my eyes. “Of course not. I just kept fucking you into mattresses around the world and making myself far too interesting to ignore.”
His laughter is loud. “You’re the Antichrist of manifesting.” He raises my hand and kisses my wedding ring.
We snuggle back down, wrapping the sheets around us. We’re warm and snug, and the noise of the sea is almost hypnotic. I can feel my body growing lax, the tension draining from me.
“So, no more secrets,” I finally say. Tiredness is making my words slow.
I’m almost asleep when I finally hear him reply. “I still have a lot of shit in my head, but they’re secrets you don’t ever need to know.” He kisses my cheek. “Sleep, baby. It’s all fine.”
I lie quietly listening to his breathing even out into the peace of sleep. I stare out of the window at the moonlit mass of the sea and stroke my fingers down his chest gently enough not to wake him. Too much has happened today for my brain to switch off.
My fingers bump against the gnarly scar tissue on his chest and I come up on one elbow staring down at him.
The terrible scar is dark on his skin in the moonlight.
I could have lost him then. The knowledge is stark.
He’d have been gone and I’d only have known when I read about it in the news—everything that was him boiled down to a dry newspaper article. Just like Jez.
I drop a kiss over the scar. He twitches in his sleep, and I hold my breath thinking I’ve woken him, but he carries on sleeping peacefully.
It seems to be a rare occasion for him, and I feel a surge of happiness that I’ve contributed to it in some small way.
I’m going to keep doing that. Things are going to be different from now on.
He’s not the only caretaker in this relationship. I can do that too.
“I love you,” I whisper fervently. His nose wrinkles, but he doesn’t wake. “And don’t you worry. I’m going to look after you. It’s my turn now.”