Chapter 38
LIAM
Peyton is curled against my chest, one leg slung over my hip, her breath a slow, steady pulse against my collarbone. The same position we wake up in most mornings, only now we’re naked.
My heart rate is still elevated. My lungs haven’t fully recovered. Every muscle in my body is loose and wonderfully heavy. And my mind is quiet. Work, my family, my usual worries have disappeared into the background while I’m holding her.
It’s just us here. Her weight against me. The tickle of her hair against my jaw. The way her fingers trace absent patterns on my ribs.
I press my lips to her forehead, beneath the battered ring of roses still crowning her head.
Peyton sighs and tilts her chin up as if she’s about to make another momentous declaration. Even if, after what we said to each other, after what we just did, I don’t see how she could top it.
Instead, she smirks. “Am I allowed to bring my phone into the bedroom now?”
I laugh. She’s always unexpected. “That’s what’s on your mind right now?”
She presses a finger to my chest. “Do you know how many memes I missed because my phone was exiled to the hallway?”
I kiss the top of her head. Then her temple. Then the bridge of her nose.
“You’re the only person in the world who I’d share a room with and let have a phone.”
Her grin turns smug. I roll away, bending my upper body over the edge of the bed to fish my phone from the back pocket of my jeans that are scattered on the floor, and pull myself back up.
The screen lights up to a barrage of notifications. Missed calls from my mother, mostly.
I clear them with a swipe and turn to Peyton. “Do you want to take a selfie?”
She blinks. “When did you become the selfie type?”
“Never. But I want to send one to Lila.”
I prop myself up against the headboard. “She was at my parents’ house. Mom invited her to the vow renewal. She made me promise to text her when I got you back.”
Peyton sits up, the sheet slipping to her waist, exposing distracting curves. My attention drifts. I’m lost staring before she scolds me.
“Eyes up here.”
I drag my gaze to hers. “Lila wanted to check on you,” I continue heroically despite the temptations she puts in front of me. “But my mom wouldn’t tell her where she had you stashed. She was about to storm every room in the house when I got there and got your text.”
“I’m sorry I made you worry.”
“Don’t be, it’s not on you, remember?”
Peyton nods and glances down at herself. “But you want to traumatize Lila with a photo of us naked in bed?”
“Not with anything indecent exposed.” I hold up the phone. “But it would sort of… summarize the situation.”
Peyton smiles. She yanks the sheet up to her chin and drops her head on my shoulder, tipping her face toward the camera and flashing the goofiest grin—teeth bared, nose scrunched, eyes crinkling.
I bend my head closer and snap the photo.
My hair is wrecked, my jaw dark with stubble, and I don’t recognize the sheer happiness on my face. I’ve never seen it before. Beside me, Peyton resembles a deranged chipmunk. It’s the least flattering selfie, and the best photo I’ve ever taken.
I send it to Lila, followed by a second message:
Liam
You were right, but don’t be too smug about it
My phone pings back in under ten seconds.
“What does she say?” Peyton cranes her neck to read.
The first text is an unhinged string of emojis. Hearts, fireworks, champagne bottles, crying faces, more hearts, and a cat for some reason.
A second message follows.
I read it aloud.
“‘I’m not smug, I’m just exhausted from being right all the time. It’s a burden, really.’”
“Gosh, I love her.” Peyton laughs. “When did she say we should be together?”
“The day we went to the pumpkin patch.”
“Ah.” She chuckles. “When she caught us making out in the corn maze?”
“Actually, before that.”
Peyton frowns. “Before? How could Lila know before?”
I smirk. “I’m not exactly the festival-going, pumpkin-carving kind of guy.”
The furrow deepens. “Then why did you come with me that day?”
I trace a finger along the line of her shoulder. Her skin is impossibly soft. I’ve wondered about it for weeks, and now I can touch her whenever I want. That freedom is dizzying.
“I went because I didn’t want you to go alone.” My finger trails down to the crook of her elbow. “And because I wanted to spend time with you.”
And my best friend saw what I couldn’t admit yet. She saw the reason I’d spend a Saturday at a farm, covered in gourd guts, just to be near a woman I’d married on a Zoom call.
“And the second time?” Peyton asks.
“That was purely to have my way with you in the corn maze.”
Her mouth drops open before she beams at me. “You naughty, naughty husband.”
The callback hits me with a shot of adrenaline.
The first time she said those words to me, she was standing in my study, wearing nothing but my suit jacket, patting my chest with a smirk designed to detonate my self-control.
Now she’s naked in my bed, flushed and glowing and mine.
Only this time I’m free to follow through.
I kiss her.
She kisses me back.
We don’t talk for a while after that.
* * *
In fact, we spend most of the weekend in bed.
We make love and catch our breath and make love again, the urgency softening into a slower, more thorough exploration. In the spaces between, we lie face-to-face on the pillows, inches apart, doing literal pillow talk.
Meaningless conversations that only happen in the strange, timeless cocoon of a bed where two people have stopped hiding. We confess more of our secrets. The small ones and the medium ones and the ones we’ve never told anyone.
She tells me about the time she set off a fire alarm at her college dorm while making a grilled cheese sandwich at three in the morning.
I tell her about the summer I was twelve and built a raft to cross the lake.
It sank forty feet from the dock, and they had to send out a search party and found me floating halfway to the next town.
She tells me that for a long time she fantasized about moving to Scotland and running a bookshop in Edinburgh.
I tell her I used to dream about being a park ranger.
“Tell me a secret no one else knows,” I say. “Not even Emma.”
Peyton covers her face with both hands and shakes her head.
“I can’t. I can’t confess this one.”
“Now you have to.”
“No.”
“Whatever it is, I promise I won’t judge you.”
She groans into her palms. Then she drops her hands, stares at the ceiling like she’s making peace with the heavens, and says, “I’ve never read Pride and Prejudice. I’ve only watched it on TV.”
“You have never read the most famous romance novel in the English language? That is quite scandalous.”
“I know what happens! I’ve seen the Keira Knightley version and the Colin Firth one. Multiple times. I just never got around to the actual book.”
“Just when I started to think you were tolerable,” I say, shaking my head.
“I still get the reference, and you’re an ass.” She shoves my shoulder. “Your turn. Tell me yours.”
“I can’t watch Terminator 2 without crying.”
“Why?” she asks, pressing her lips together, not to laugh, presumably.
“The Terminator sacrifices himself. He lowers himself into the molten steel to save humanity.”
Her shoulders shake. “Do you cry before or after the thumbs up?”
“That’s what gets me every time.”
A strangled noise escapes her throat.
“Go ahead.” I sigh. “Let it out.”
Peyton explodes in a full, hiccupping laughter. “You—” She wheezes. “You absolute softy.”
I roll on top of her, pinning her beneath me. My hands block her wrists against the pillow. My hips press her into the mattress.
Her laughter dies mid-breath. Her eyes go wide, pupils expanding.
“If you want,” I murmur, lowering my face until my nose brushes hers, “I can show you how much I’m not soft.”
Her chest rises against mine on a sharp inhale.
“Yes, please,” she whispers.
She lifts her chin and catches my mouth, and the kiss dissolves whatever was left of my willpower. Her wrists twist free from my grip. Her fingers slide into my hair, nails scraping my scalp, pulling me closer, deeper.
I kiss her jaw. Her throat. The dip of her collarbone. I trace the path down with my mouth while her breathing turns ragged above me, her fingers tightening in my hair.
She arches beneath me, and the sounds she makes—low, broken, needing—are the best thing I’ve ever heard.
I tell her she’s beautiful. I tell her she’s perfect. I tell her I love her again and again because the words are new in my mouth and I can’t stop saying them.
And when she whispers them back, I know I want to spend the rest of my life listening to her say those three words.