Chapter Thirty-Two
Wren came to the guest room on a Tuesday night, after Theo was down, and stood in the doorway for a long moment before she spoke.
“I’m ready,” she said. “If you are.”
?
I want to describe this honestly, because everything else in this story has been honest, and this shouldn’t be the exception.
It wasn’t like June. June had been easy, unbruised, two people who hadn’t yet learned what the other could survive. This was slower. Careful. She watched my face the entire time, the way you watch someone you’ve learned, the hard way, not to assume anything about.
?
“Tell me if this is too much,” I said, my hand at the hem of her shirt.
“Tell me if you’re thinking about anyone but me,” she said back, and I understood it wasn’t really a joke, not entirely, and I answered it the only way that mattered.
I kissed the two days of surgical scars along my own side, faded now, where a piece of me had gone to save someone else, and then I kissed the same line on her stomach where a piece of her had been opened to bring our son into a world I’d chosen to be absent from.
?
“I’m not thinking about anyone but you,” I said. “I haven’t, since November. I just spent four months pretending otherwise, to both of us.”
?
Later, in the dark, her head on my chest, she said, “That’s the first time since the glovebox I’ve felt entirely like myself with you. Not managing you. Not grading you. Just—here.”
“Here,” I agreed, and meant every version of the word.