33. Heidi
HEIDI
On Saturday night, Beau stands in our bedroom holding a sock he cannot identify.
“Yours?” he asks.
“It has a bear on it.”
“That doesn't exclude you.”
“It's the size of your thumb.”
“A further clue.”
I smile from the bed. Ivy is asleep in her bassinet in the nursery tonight, the monitor beside us carrying the soft quiet of her room. We have been home together for three nights. I am still learning the pleasure of finding him in an ordinary doorway without having to decide when he will leave.
He puts the sock on the dresser and turns toward me.
The look between us changes.
I am wearing the soft robe he remembers.
Beneath it, my body is different from the one he knew before pregnancy.
Softer through the middle, breasts fuller and sometimes tender, a faint line still running below my navel.
Nearly thirteen weeks since Ivy's birth, and some days I feel familiar to myself. Some days I feel newly introduced.
Tonight I want to be touched by the man who has come home.
“Come here,” I say.
He does, sitting beside me on the bed. I bring his palm to my cheek. The pale scar near his wrist catches the lamplight.
“I want you,” I tell him.
His breath changes. “I want you too.”
“I know. You've been remarkably obvious about it.”
“I was hoping for mysterious.”
“You should have chosen a different face.”
He laughs, and I kiss him before he can answer. His hand moves to the back of my head, fingers finding their way through my hair. I lean into him with my palms against his shoulders.
We have talked about comfort and protection. Tonight is not a medical appointment. The things we need are in the bedside drawer. I have said I want to go slowly. He has said we can stop. Now I want to stop talking about wanting and have him close enough to feel.
I open the robe. Beau's eyes move over me, and I let him look.
The room is warm, but my skin prickles.
Beau has seen every version of this body. He watched my stomach grow. He rubbed oil into the places that itched and kissed the line beneath my navel. He held my breasts when they hurt and laughed when Ivy kicked his hand away from where he wanted to touch me.
He did not see what birth changed.
“Say something,” I tell him.
His gaze comes back to my face.
“You're beautiful.”
“That was safe.”
“I'm trying not to make a speech.”
“Good instinct.”
He smiles, but desire remains open in his expression.
“I want to touch you everywhere you'll let me,” he says.
“Start here.”
I bring his hand to my waist.
A small nervousness rises as I slip the robe off and let it fall behind me on the bed. I almost cover myself out of habit. Then he kisses the place where my neck meets my shoulder, and I tilt my head for more.
“Yes,” I whisper.
He kisses me again, slower.
I lift the hem of his shirt. He helps me take it off, and I run my hands over his chest and the solid warmth of his stomach.
He is familiar too, but the months have changed the way I look at him.
I see the body I missed, the man inside it, and the desire he lets me see while leaving the decision with me.
He undresses beside the bed. I pull him back toward me.
For a moment we lie together without doing anything except kissing. His skin is warm against mine. I feel the strength of him and the care he is taking not to turn carefulness into distance.
“You can hold me,” I say.
His arm closes around me. I move nearer, letting him feel how much I mean it.
The pillow goes beneath my bent knee because it feels good there.
I settle partly on my side, angled across the bed, and Beau comes close from the open side where I can see his face.
We handle protection and the little practical things with familiar hands and one quiet laugh when the pillow slips and has to be rescued.
“Advanced textiles,” I murmur.
“My weakness.”
Then his mouth finds mine, and the joke goes soft between us.
I move toward him slowly. The first pressure makes me pause, not with pain but with the strangeness of a sensation my body remembers differently. Beau stills at once, one hand warm at my waist.
Fear flashes through me before discomfort has time to become pain.
Beau feels the change.
“We can stop.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to?”
I check the feeling instead of his face. My body is tight, uncertain, but still reaching.
“No. Stay still.”
He does. I breathe until I stop remembering every medical instruction I have ever heard and begin feeling the man beside me again.
“Kiss me,” I say.
His mouth meets mine. No persuasion. No urgency. Just the familiar shape of his lips while I decide what my body wants next.
When I move toward him, pleasure answers the choice.
“Good?” he asks.
“Give me a moment.”
He stays close while I breathe. I change the angle of my supported leg, ease nearer and feel the uncertainty become fullness.
“Yes,” I say.
His forehead rests briefly against mine. I kiss him, then move again.
We find the rhythm together. Small movements at first, enough for me to learn what feels good now. When I want less, he follows the change before I need to explain it. When I want more, I draw him closer and feel his breath break against my cheek.
I have missed this. The weight of his hand. The sound he makes when he is trying to keep hold of himself. The way desire can make his familiar face look suddenly unguarded.
He kisses the corner of my mouth, and I laugh softly because he has always done that when he cannot decide whether to kiss me or look at me.
“What?” he whispers.
“You.”
His eyes soften.
I put my hand over his and guide it where I want the added touch. The pleasure gathers slowly, no longer something I am watching from outside my own body. I move with him, feeling the warmth and pressure build until there is no room left for the careful commentary in my head.
Beau says my name. I hold his shoulder, my fingers tightening as the rhythm carries me nearer.
The release comes with a startled breath and then a shiver that seems to move through all of me. He stays with me while it passes, his mouth against my temple, my hand still over his.
I open my eyes and find him looking at me.
“Hi,” he says, rough and quiet.
I laugh, breathless. “Still your best line.”
“Under the circumstances.”
I kiss him again. I want him close a little longer, want the pleasure of feeling him lose the careful hold he has kept on himself. I move toward him, and he follows, the rhythm slower now, intimate in a different way.
When he comes, he says my name once more and holds my gaze until he cannot. I keep my hand against his cheek, feeling the warmth of his breath, the small tremor passing through him.
For a while we stay close and listen to each other breathe.
The monitor carries one sleepy sound from Ivy, then quiet again.
We both laugh softly at the interruption that hasn't quite happened.
Beau moves away carefully to deal with the protection. I settle onto my back, loose and warm, the pillow still beneath one knee. He brings water and a cloth, and I take what I need without feeling that every small kindness has to be examined for a hidden request.
When he comes back to bed, I lift the blanket.
“Here,” I say.
He gets in beside me.
I put my head on his shoulder. His hand rests over my hair, moving slowly while the room settles around us.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“Good.”
He waits, listening for anything else.
“Happy,” I add, and the word comes out easy.
His hand stills for a second. Then he kisses the top of my head.
“So am I.”
I trace a small line over his chest with one finger.
“I want to do that again,” I say.
His laugh moves beneath my cheek. “I support this ambition.”
“Not immediately. Don't become competitive.”
“I was preparing a dignified expression of enthusiasm.”
“Your face has never been dignified about sex.”
“Your fault.”
I lift my head. He is smiling at me with the private, wicked warmth I fell in love with long before I knew what it would cost to choose him twice.
I kiss him because I like that smile. Because I can. Because tonight I want to spend my wanting instead of guarding it.
Later, Ivy wakes. Beau gets up, brings her to me and settles beside us while I feed her. Our daughter frowns at him over the curve of my breast as if he has interrupted a private appointment.
“She's judging you,” I whisper.
“I'm becoming accustomed to the Dunmore women.”
I laugh, and Ivy pauses to object.
When she is asleep again, he settles her safely in the nursery and comes back to our room. I am drowsy by then, one hand stretched across the sheet toward his side.
He finds it in the dark.
I turn into him without waking fully, and this time there is no cool half of the bed waiting for me after the door closes.