48. Rafe
RAFE
The twins have been campaigning for Dot's sugar cookies with the kind of coordinated persistence only two eight-year-olds working as a team can manage, and by the time Maggie's car rolls out of sight with both of them buckled in the back seat still arguing about frosting colors, Jenna's standing next to me looking like she doesn't quite know what to do with a whole night that isn't scheduled around somebody else's bedtime.
"Dot promised sprinkles," I say. "All three kinds. Told me herself like it was classified information."
"She's spoiling them rotten."
"That's the job now. Grandmother by proxy, no paperwork required.
" I watch the car disappear around the bend, and some old knot behind my ribs finally works itself loose, one I'd stopped noticing until it let go, the particular ease of a man with an empty house and an entire night in front of him and nowhere he's required to be until noon. "Come back to the loft."
"Just like that."
"Just like that." I take her hand, and she lets me, easy, like it costs her nothing at all anymore.
The drive back is quiet in a way that would have wound me up tight a few months ago and now just feels like room to breathe.
Her hand rests on my knee, my thumb tracing slow circles over her knuckles at every stop sign, neither of us reaching for the radio or a topic to fill the silence with something it doesn't need.
The loft looks the same as it always does when I pull in, lights off, porch bulb throwing its usual weak yellow glow across the steps, except tonight it doesn't feel like a place I go to be alone.
It feels like a place we're walking into together, on purpose, for the first time since everything between us broke wide open and then, slower and harder, mended.
"Fourth step still creaks," Jenna says, catching herself on the railing when it groans under her foot.
"Been meaning to fix that for two years."
"You say that every single time."
"I mean it every single time." I catch her around the waist before she can finish the climb, and she laughs, surprised, her hands landing flat against my chest to steady herself, and for a second we just stand there on the stairs with the whole night waiting above us and neither of us moving to close the distance yet, both of us apparently willing to stretch this part out as long as it'll go.
"This is the same step that nearly took me out the first time I ever climbed up here," she says. "You didn't warn me. I about broke my ankle in front of you on our second real conversation."
"I was too busy staring to remember I owned stairs."
"You barely said ten words to me that whole visit."
"I'd rehearsed about forty of them in the truck on the drive over and lost every single one the second you smiled at me on the porch.
" I tug her the rest of the way up, slow, giving her every chance to laugh at me for it, which she does, easy and unguarded, nothing careful left in the sound of it.
"Some things about me haven't changed much. "
"You talk plenty now."
"Only because you stopped making me nervous enough to forget how."
"You're stalling," she says.
"I'm savoring. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Ask me again in five minutes."
Inside, I don't bother with the lights, just the lamp by the window that throws everything gold and soft instead of bright, and Jenna toes off her shoes by the door the way she's done a hundred times now, easy and unthinking, a woman who knows exactly where she is and isn't measuring the exits anymore.
I remember the first night she stood in this same doorway, both of us too careful, too polite, apologizing over nothing, tripping over words we'd rehearsed and then couldn't say right when it mattered.
None of that's left in the room tonight.
What's left is just us, unguarded, no script either one of us is working from anymore.
"You're staring," she says.
"I'm allowed. Nobody's timing me."
"That's a new development."
"Everything about tonight's a new development.
" I close the distance she left on the stairs, slow enough that she has every second to change her mind and doesn't, and when I kiss her it isn't the careful, testing kind from months ago, checking for permission with every inch.
It's certain. It's a man who's stopped guessing at all and just wants the pleasure of hearing her confirm it out loud.
"Rafe."
"Yeah."
"Stop talking."
"Copy that."
She laughs against my mouth, and I feel it more than hear it, and whatever nerves either of us walked in carrying dissolve somewhere between the door and the couch we don't quite make it to, trading her jacket for my hands and my shirt for hers, unhurried, neither of us racing toward anything, both of us finally sure enough of what's waiting on the other side that we can afford to take our time getting there.
"You're smiling," she says, breathless, drawing back only enough to see my whole face.
"Hard not to."
"You used to look like this was a mission briefing. All focus, no fun."
"I was terrified of doing something wrong."
"And now?"
"Now I know you'll tell me." I catch her hand before it finishes untucking my shirt, press a kiss to her palm, feel her breath hitch under it. "That's the whole difference. I stopped guessing and started asking, and it turns out asking works a lot better."
"Radical concept."
"Revolutionary." I walk her backward, slow, laughing when she catches her heel on the rug and nearly takes us both down, both of us grabbing for the same doorframe at the same second, foreheads knocking together hard enough to sting.
"Ow."
"Sorry."
"You did that on purpose."
"I absolutely did not." I press my mouth to the spot on her forehead like that'll fix it, and she's laughing again, warm and unguarded, the exact sound I used to have to work for and now get just by being ridiculous in a doorway with her. "Are we blaming me for gravity now."
"I'm blaming you for everything tonight. Get used to it."
"I can live with that."
I remember the very first time we ended up in this loft together, both of us so careful we practically apologized our way through the whole evening, me asking three separate times if she was sure, her laughing at me for asking a fourth, neither one of us able to relax into it until the lights were off and the nerves finally had nowhere left to hide.
There's none of that tonight. Neither of us hovers.
Neither of us checks in every ten seconds like the ground might give out from under us.
It's just the easy, certain rhythm of two people who've already survived the worst versions of themselves and came out the other side wanting exactly this.
The bedroom's dark except for the last of the evening light through the window, and neither of us bothers reaching for a switch, both of us apparently agreeing without saying so that we don't need to see everything to know exactly where we are.
She pulls me down with her, laughing once more when my knee catches the nightstand and the lamp wobbles, and I catch it before it falls, and she calls me smooth, and I tell her I've got excellent reflexes for exactly this kind of emergency, and then the jokes run out entirely for a while, because there isn't room left for cleverness once her hands find my skin and mine find hers and every careful wall either of us used to keep standing between us finally, completely, comes down.
I take my time with her, more than I ever have, because for once there's nowhere else either of us needs to be and nothing waiting outside this room that can't hold until morning.
I map her slow, deliberate, the curve of her shoulder and the soft skin below her ear and the spot low on her ribs that makes her breath catch and her fingers dig into my back, learning her all over again like she isn't already the most familiar thing in my life, and every gasp I pull out of her feels like its own small victory, hard won and worth savoring.
She's not shy about telling me what she wants, never has been, not since she stopped being scared of wanting anything at all, and I like her best like this, bold and unhurried and utterly certain of me, her hands sliding under my shirt and dragging it up and off like she's done it a hundred times and still can't quite believe she gets to.
"You're overdressed," she says against my throat, and there's nothing shy left in her voice at all, just heat and certainty and a low laugh underneath it.
"Working on it."
"Work faster."
"Thought we weren't racing tonight."
"I changed my mind." She pulls me back down to her, and whatever answer I had ready dissolves somewhere against her mouth, and after that neither of us bothers with words for a long while, just heat and breath and skin, the slow drag of her hands and the low sounds she makes that I feel more than hear, every one of them stripping away another year I spent convincing myself I didn't deserve this.
It isn't rushed. It isn't careful either, not the old kind of careful, the kind built out of fear instead of tenderness.
It's slower than that and more certain, her name the only word I manage for a long stretch, her hands fisting in the sheets and then curling tight around my forearm like she needs somewhere sturdy to hold on while all that heat burns through her, her breath catching against my ear every time I find a spot that used to make her laugh and now makes her arch and go quiet and still instead, both of us trading the last of our guardedness for something neither of us has any interest in taking back.
She says my name again, rougher now, a low, ragged demand with nothing careful left in it, and I give her exactly what that tone's asking for, slow and thorough, until the sound she makes isn't a word at all anymore, just my name breaking apart into something wordless and low and entirely mine to hear.
When she finally comes back to herself enough to say my name whole again, low and unraveled, her whole body still trembling under my hands, I finally get what people mean when they say someone can feel like home.
Afterward we lie tangled together, her head on my chest, my fingers moving slow through her hair, both of us quiet in the particular way that only comes after everything's finally been said and done and neither of us has to perform recovery for the other.
The window's gone fully dark now, just the porch light bleeding faint gold along the far wall, and I can feel her heartbeat starting to slow back down under my palm, matching mine somewhere in the middle.
"You're thinking loud," she says, tracing a lazy line down my forearm.
"I'm always thinking loud. You just usually can't hear it over the twins."
"What's the thought."
I let the quiet stretch a second longer, easy between the two of us now, like we've finally found the right fit, and I think about how many nights it took to get here, how many versions of myself I had to burn down and rebuild before I could lie in this bed with a woman I love and not feel like I was one bad decision away from losing it all.
Gunny always says a man only gets a handful of nights in his whole life worth remembering on purpose.
I intend to remember this one for the rest of mine.
I almost let it wait. I've got a whole plan sitting in a drawer at the brewhouse, a ring I've kept tucked in my jacket, ready and waiting since the morning after the treehouse, like a coward, waiting for the right night, the right words, some version of perfect I keep talking myself out of trusting.
This isn't that. I know it isn't that, and some old careful part of me wants to hold the real question back until I've got it dressed up properly.
But there's a smaller question underneath it that's been sitting in my chest for weeks, one I don't have the patience left to keep quiet, not tonight, not with her curled against me like she belongs there because she does.
"Would you want to be mine," I say. "Officially. You and the twins both. Paperwork and all, my name next to yours on something that makes it permanent instead of just true."
She goes still against my chest, and for one second I think I've moved too fast, said it wrong, ruined the easy weight of the whole night with a question I should've saved.
"Rafe Montgomery." She props herself up on one elbow, looking down at me, and her eyes are wet, and she's smiling anyway, the kind of smile that undoes a man faster than tears alone ever could. "Did you just propose to me lying in bed with no ring and no plan."
"That's not a proposal."
"It sounded like one."
"It's a preview." I brush a strand of hair back from her face, and my hand isn't quite steady, and I don't bother hiding it, because there's nothing left in this room worth hiding anymore.
"I've got a ring. I've had it since the day after I showed you that treehouse.
I'm not asking you the real question tonight, because you deserve better than pillow talk and no plan behind it.
I just couldn't hold that one in any longer. "
"So ask me properly next time."
"I intend to."
"Ask me properly, Montgomery," Jenna says, laughing through tears, her palm settling warm against my jaw like she needs to feel me smile to believe it. "Don't you dare do it halfway."
I grin, actually grin, none of the old grimace left in it, nothing careful or braced or waiting for the ground to shift under either one of us.
"I intend to," I say again, and this time I mean it as a promise instead of a preview, and she pulls me back down against her like she believes every word of it, because neither one of us has a single reason left not to.