Chapter 11 Annabelle
T he bedroom is wrapped in moonlight and hush. That kind of hush that makes you believe in sacred things. In second chances. In men who kiss bruises and scars away.
Silver light spills through gauzy curtains, draping across the wood floor and over the bed like a blessing. The air holds a faint mix of cedar and cinnamon—Derek’s skin and the ghost of pies from the kitchen below. It smells like home. Like him. Like us.
He carries me across the bedroom’s threshold like some kind of storybook, but the look in his eyes isn’t fictional. It’s full of reverence and restraint and the sort of quiet promise that doesn’t need words to be believed.
He lowers me onto the bed. His eyes stay locked on mine as he kneels, placing his palms on either side of my calves, thumbs brushing slow circles over my skin. My pulse skitters. I should be used to his touch by now. But there’s something different tonight. Something deeper. More raw.
“You okay?” His voice is low, nearly lost in the sound of the breeze outside.
I nod, but it’s not enough. A lump catches in my throat, thick with everything I haven’t said. Everything I should have. The forged divorce papers. The risk. The fact that we might’ve married on a lie.
Please let them have gone through.
Please let this be real in every way that matters.
Because tonight, I don’t want guilt clinging to my skin. I want to be his. Completely. In truth and in heart, even if I’ve falsified the paperwork.
“It’s not you,” I whisper.
His hands pause, but only for a second. Then one of them slides up to cradle my cheek. His thumb sweeps across my jaw, patient and sure.
“I know,” he says gently. “But it’s us now. You’re not carrying anything alone anymore.”
A single tear slips down my cheek. Not out of fear. Out of sheer, overwhelming relief. I close my eyes and lean into the warmth of his palm.
“I just…” I open my eyes and find his. “I can’t believe this is real.”
“It is,” he whispers. “You’re my wife now. Mine. And I’m yours, Annabelle. Always have been.”
Those words shatter something inside me. Not like glass, sharp and painful. Like ice thawing in spring.
“I’ve never wanted anything like I want this,” I murmur. “Never.”
He kisses me like he’s reading my soul with his lips. His mouth moves against mine in soft, deliberate presses, no urgency, just a quiet claiming. The kind of kiss that says, I’m not in a rush to have you. I’m in this until the end.
His hands dip under the hem of my dress. I raise my arms, and he lifts the fabric with the kind of care usually reserved for museum glass or antique lace. It flutters to the floor in a sigh.
I wait for the sting of shame to come. For the voices in my head to tell me I’m broken or not enough.
But all I feel is his gaze.
It lingers on me like a caress, soft and burning, all at once.
“You’re so goddamn beautiful,” he rasps, brushing his fingers over my waist, then the swell of my hip, the curve of my stomach.
He touches me like he’s mapping out constellations. Like every mark and stretch and freckle is a star in a sky only he sees.
I reach for the hem of his shirt, tugging it up, my fingers grazing his stomach as it lifts. He shrugs it off. My breath catches.
Derek is broad and solid, all working-man muscle and sun-browned skin. There are scars, old ones and faded, but I know them all. I trace one just under his ribs, the one he got fixing his neighbor’s tractor as a teenager.
“I used to dream about this,” I whisper.
His mouth curves, wicked and sure. “And I tend to make all your dreams come true, Honeycrisp.”
I laugh, soft and breathy, but it dissolves when he shifts closer, his body heat wrapping around me.
He leans over, pressing a kiss to my shoulder. Then lower. Over my chest. Down the line of my ribs. Each kiss is a promise. A benediction.
“I love you,” I whisper, the words slipping out like breath.
He stills.
Then he lifts his head, eyes blazing. “Say it again.”
“I love you, Derek Fields.”
His kiss this time is wild. Less cautious. More hungry. His hands slide down my thighs, grip my hips, drag me closer. Our bodies slot together like they’ve been waiting years to realign.
And maybe they have.
He moves over me like he knows every place I’ve ever ached. Every wound. Every wish. We melt into each other, all breath and heat and tangled limbs.
And when he finally enters me, slow and deep and perfect, I forget how to think.
Every thrust is a vow I didn’t know I needed. Every gasp, a prayer. Every breathless whisper of my name, an anchor to this moment—this man—this impossible, gorgeous truth: he’s my husband now.
My forever.
Because I’ll be damned if those divorce papers aren’t backdated by the universe itself.
Our bodies collide and dissolve, caught between tension and surrender.
His weight presses into me, and my legs wrap around him like instinct.
My hips lift to meet his, and the fullness of him inside me pulls a sound from my throat that would embarrass me if he didn’t echo it with a groan that vibrates through my bones.
He moves with intent now, measured and unrelenting.
Like he’s trying to mark every inch of me from the inside out.
My fingers scramble across the sheets, seeking anything to hold onto.
The quilt’s gone, kicked to the floor. A lamp crashes to its death somewhere to the left, but neither of us stops.
Not even when the bed slams against the wall hard enough to rattle the window.
Not even when the footboard gives a mournful creak and splinters beneath his hand.
I grip at his back, nails dragging down the muscles that tense and ripple beneath me. His mouth crashes to mine. It’s all teeth, heat, and desperate need. His hand cradles the back of my head like he’s terrified I’ll break. Like he knows I already have, and this is how I get put back together.
“Fuck, Annabelle,” he rasps into my neck. His voice wrecked. “You feel like heaven. Like mine.”
“I am,” I gasp, my whole body pulsing around him. “I’m yours.”
He groans, thrusts again, and the rhythm falters, tips over the edge.
Pleasure slams into me like a supernova. I cry out, a sound that sounds more like release than any word ever could. I lock around him as he follows with a growl pulled straight from his core. Our bodies shudder, then collapse into stillness.
The room is wrecked.
So are we.
We lie tangled in the aftermath, chests heaving, sweat cooling between us.
My limbs feel like they’ve melted into the mattress, boneless and warm and useless.
Derek's weight settles on me like gravity itself—comforting, heavy, solid.
His head is tucked into the curve of my neck.
His heart beats against mine, steady and slow.
He kisses my temple. Then my cheek. Then the hollow of my throat, like he can’t decide which part of me he wants to worship next. “You okay?” he murmurs, the words thick with tenderness.
I nod, dazed and buzzing. “Better than okay. You?”
He pulls back just far enough to look me in the eyes. “Honestly?”
“Mmhmm.”
“I thought I’d have more impressive lines than ‘I love you so much I forgot which leg goes where.’”
I laugh into his shoulder, loose and unfiltered. “You were very... enthusiastic.”
“Enthusiastic?” he says, mock-offended. “That’s like calling a drag race ‘a spirited drive.’”
“You’re my spirited drive,” I tease, tracing circles across his shoulder with my fingertips.
He chuckles. “Well, in that case, hold on, Honeycrisp. I’ve got excellent torque.”
“Oh my God.” I roll my eyes, smacking his chest with the back of my hand. “Stop talking dirty to me about auto parts.”
He kisses my forehead and says with a grin, “Never.”
The silence that follows is softer. Heavier. The kind that hums with meaning. With truth.
“I imagined this,” I whisper. “But I never thought I could have it. I never thought we could do this.”
His arms tighten around me. “Well, you’ve got it now and you should believe it.” He lifts my hand to his lips and kisses the inside of my wrist with a kind of fragile devotion that cracks something in my chest. “Believe it so hard you never doubt it again.”
And just like that, I do.
He brushes a damp strand of hair from my cheek and murmurs, “Let me take care of you.”
Before I can answer, he’s already moving, scooping me into his arms like I weigh nothing, like he can carry the world as long as I’m in it. One arm behind my knees, the other beneath my back. His chest is warm against mine, heartbeat steady as thunder beneath my palm.
He carries me into the bathroom. The tile is cool beneath my thighs when he sets me gently on the counter. The light is dim. The faucet hisses as he wets a cloth under warm water, his eyes never leaving mine.
The first swipe of the cloth between my legs makes me shiver. Not because it’s cold. Because of him. Because this is gentleness wrapped in reverence. Care disguised as devotion. He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t rush.
“You didn’t have to,” I whisper, throat tight.
“I wanted to,” he says, voice low and husky, like his chest can’t contain the weight of what he feels. “You gave me everything. Let me give it back.”
When he’s done, he drops the cloth into the sink, but he doesn’t back away.
He leans in and presses a kiss to the inside of my knee. Then another, higher. And another, trailing upward with agonizing tenderness.
“Derek…”
He slides my legs apart with a groan that feels like it’s been building since the day we met. Steps between them. His hands curl around my hips and draw me to the edge of the counter.
“I can’t get enough of you,” he murmurs, voice dark with hunger and thick with love. “I want to feel you again. Hear you. Watch you come undone.”
My fingers tangle in his hair as his mouth crashes to mine. This kiss is edged with rawness. Brimming with hunger. Like we’re both starving for something we only just found.
He pushes inside me with a sharp gasp, and I arch against the mirror, thighs clamped around his waist.