Chapter 2 #2
Savannah said yes before he finished the sentence.
The word left her mouth, patient and sure, and she felt it travel the short distance between them and land in the space where his next word would have been.
He kissed her. The gown pooled around her feet on the dock boards, heavy with beading, and she did not care about the dress, did not think about the dress, would never remember the dress except as the thing she was wearing when she agreed to spend her life with the man whose hand was warm against the small of her back.
The memory settled. The apartment floor came back into focus—the cardboard boxes, the Thai food, Carter with the pasta maker instructions still upside down in his hands. The gold ribbon lay between them, innocent and gold, and Savannah looked at it and thought: I said yes. I meant it.
She still meant it.
Back in the apartment, Carter had the pasta maker’s assembly instructions spread across his lap like a map and he was narrating his confusion with the delighted bewilderment of a man who found his own limitations amusing.
“Step three,” he read, holding the diagram at an angle that suggested the problem was with the paper and not with his understanding, “attach the—what is that, a crank? A handle? It looks like a medical instrument. Did someone send us a pasta maker or a device for extracting stubborn molars?”
Savannah smiled. She was watching him from her cross-legged position on the floor, her chopsticks resting on the lid of the takeout container. This was the thing about Carter: he could take any evening on an apartment floor and turn it into something that felt like a gift.
For a moment, the apartment was exactly what it was supposed to be.
The cardboard boxes, the half-eaten Thai food, the lamplight pooling in the corners of the room—all of it arranged itself into a composition that felt deliberate and right, as if someone had designed this specific evening for the two of them and had gotten every detail correct.
This was marriage. This man with the upside-down instructions and the hole in his t-shirt collar.
This was what she had said yes to on the dock, and she did not regret it, would never regret it, would defend it against any version of herself that might try to doubt it.
Then Carter said, offhand, without looking up from the diagram, “Lily loves making pasta. She can show you how.”
He meant it as a throwaway—a small, fond joke about two women he loved, a casual observation, nothing more. He was already moving on before the words finished landing, his finger tracing a line on the instruction sheet, his brow furrowed in mock concentration.
Savannah’s smile stayed in place. She had spent thirty years learning to keep expressions on her face long after the feeling behind them had changed, and the skill served her now as it had always served her: it created the appearance of continuity where there was none.
She picked up her wine glass. She turned the stem between her fingers once, twice, feeling the cool resistance of the glass against her skin.
She was needed to say something. The question she had never asked, because she was worried about the answer.
It formed itself fully in her mind, clear and direct and free of accusation: What was Lily to you before I came along?
Not Were you in love with her? Not Did you sleep with her?
Just, help me understand the shape of the thing so I can stop worrying about it.
She watched Carter set the pasta maker box aside.
He stretched out on the floor with loose-limbed ease, his head coming to rest near her knee, his eyes half-closed in the contentment of a evening well spent.
He made a small, satisfied sound—not quite a sigh, something softer—and closed his eyes completely, his hand finding her ankle and resting there, warm and certain.
She swallowed the question. She did not want to be the woman who took this—this ease, this warmth, this unguarded moment on their apartment floor—and turned it into something that required definitions, explanations, the careful navigation of past territories.
She did not want to be the woman who heard a throwaway comment about Lily and made it into a wound.
She had chosen Carter knowing he came with a history, with people who had loved him long before she arrived, and she would not punish him for the fact of his own life.
She set her wine glass down on the floor beside her. She ran her hand once through his hair, her fingers moving through the short, thick strands. Carter made a contented sound without opening his eyes, a low hum of pleasure that traveled from his throat into the palm of her hand.
The lamplight flickered across the ceiling, casting shifting shadows over the blank expanse of white above them.
Savannah’s breath hitched as Carter’s fingers traced the curve of her hip, his touch igniting a fire beneath her skin.
The gold ribbon from the kraft-paper box lay discarded on the floor, catching the dim light in fleeting glimmers, forgotten in the heat of the moment.
She didn’t ask about the handwriting. She didn’t ask about Lily.
The questions dissolved in the warmth of his mouth on hers, his lips insistent, demanding.
Carter’s hands slid beneath her shirt, his palms rough against the softness of her stomach, and she arched into him with a gasp.
His name escaped her lips in a whisper, a plea, as his fingers deftly unbuttoned her jeans, peeling them down her legs with slow, deliberate precision.
She kicked them aside, her pulse racing as his gaze raked over her, dark with hunger.
“Carter,” she breathed, her voice trembling, but he silenced her with another kiss, deeper this time, his tongue sweeping against hers as his hands cupped her breasts through the thin fabric of her bra.
She moaned into his mouth, her body aching for more, for the weight of him, the heat of him.
He unhooked her bra with a practiced flick of his fingers, letting it fall away, and she shivered as the cool air met her skin, her nipples hardening under his gaze.
He pushed her back onto the floor, the hardwood cool against her bare skin, and she spread her legs for him without hesitation, her body already wet, already ready.
Carter knelt between her thighs, his fingers teasing her, sliding through her folds with maddening slowness before plunging inside her.
She cried out, her back arching off the floor, her fingers tangling in his hair as he lowered his mouth to her, his tongue swirling over her clit in slow, deliberate circles.
The pleasure was overwhelming, a tidal wave building inside her, and she rocked against his face, her hips moving in frantic rhythm.
“God, Savannah,” he groaned against her, his voice rough with need. “You taste so fucking good.”
She whimpered, her body trembling as he worked her with his mouth, his fingers curling inside her, hitting
the spot that made her see nothing but white, blank and all-consuming, as if her nerves were being rewritten in real time.
Her breath came in short, desperate little gasps, her body drawn so tight she thought the tension might snap her in half.
She barely registered the noises she made, animal and involuntary, echoing off the apartment’s bare walls, rising above the clatter of the city outside.
When he pulled his mouth from her, her hips chased after the loss, seeking him again, her hands fisting the hem of his t-shirt and dragging him up her body.
He smiled down at her, his lips wet and glistening, hair wilder than usual, eyes gone dark with hunger.
She could see herself in them: not the careful, curated version, but the raw, need-stripped animal she became in his hands.
It terrified her, sometimes, how much she could want.
How much she could need. But Carter seemed to welcome it—he craved it, fed on it.
He kissed her again, the taste of herself on his tongue, his hand slipping beneath her knee and anchoring her leg high around his waist. He was hard against her, straining at the front of his jeans, and the sensation made her dizzy.
There was nothing slow or gentle in the way he took her.
He yanked his zipper down with one hand, freeing himself, and guided his cock to her entrance, pushing in with a single, relentless stroke that made her whole body jolt.
She cried out, nails digging into his shoulder, and Carter buried his face in her neck, teeth grazing the line of her jaw.
He rocked into her deep and fast, her body opening to him, taking everything.
“Fuck,” he whispered, the word hot against her ear. “You feel so good. I could die right here.”
She wanted to answer—wanted to tell him yes, wanted to say that she felt it too, that she was his, that she would let him do anything—but her mind could only make fragments.
He filled her, stretched her, made her forget her own name.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him even closer, until she could feel his heartbeat hammering against her chest, could smell the particular, inimitable combination of soap and sweat and Carter that had become her favorite scent in the world.
He fucked her hard and fast, the thud of his hips against hers a counterpoint to the frantic pulse in her throat.
She could feel the edge coming, that pressure that built until it was almost unbearable, and she was afraid of it, a little.
Afraid of how completely she surrendered, every single time.
But Carter’s hand was between them again, his thumb finding her clit, rubbing quick tight circles, and her body answered before her mind could argue.
She shattered beneath him, her vision tunneling down to a pinprick of light as she came, a full-body detonation that left her shaking and speechless.
Carter went with her, his body tensing, a low animal growl escaping him as he spilled inside her.
She felt him pulse, felt his warmth mingling with hers, and she clung to him, riding the aftershocks.
For a long moment, they stayed like that, tangled together on the kitchen floor, chests heaving, skin slick with sweat and the remains of their dinner.
The outside world receded. There was only the slow return of breath, the sticky-hot press of their bodies, the faint hum of a city that had no idea what they’d just done.
At last, Carter rolled onto his back, tugging Savannah with him so she sprawled half across his chest. His hand found the back of her neck, cradling her there, his thumb making lazy circles where her hair met her skin.
He grinned at her, sleepy and satisfied, and she grinned back, unable to help herself.
“Jesus,” he said. “We’re going to need a new rug.”
She laughed, the sound as raw and happy as she’d ever heard from herself. “We don’t even have a rug yet.”
“Exactly my point,” Carter said, nuzzling the top of her head. “We’ll just have to keep christening the floors until we do.”
She listened to his heartbeat, steady and strong beneath her ear, and allowed herself to believe, for the space of a few minutes, that this was it—that this right here was enough. That her questions could wait, that the world outside their bodies could be held at bay by sheer force of want.
But when the warmth faded, when their skin stopped singing and the sweat dried, the old thoughts seeped in around the edges, the way water found every tiny crack in old woodwork.
Later, after they had showered together and ordered ice cream from the place around the corner, she lay in bed with Carter’s arm draped across her waist and studied the ceiling, counting the faint cracks that spidered out from the light fixture.
“Are you happy?” Carter asked, the words drifting up in the dark, so gentle she wondered if she had imagined them.
“With you?” She turned to face him in the dark, reached out to touch his cheek, to be certain he was really there. “More than I knew was possible.”
He pulled her close, tucked his chin over the top of her head, and she let herself be held, breathing him in, matching their heartbeats.
In the morning, he made pancakes—burned, lopsided, but made with enthusiasm—and they ate them off paper plates because they hadn’t unpacked the dishes yet. The windows rattled in the wind, and Savannah watched Carter move around the kitchen, humming off-key, hair still wet from the shower.
She rinsed her plate in the sink and felt the diamond on her left hand catch in the sunlight, a small, hard point of brilliance. She turned the ring with her thumb, the gesture familiar now, and thought about what it meant to say yes, to keep saying yes, every single day, even when it wasn’t easy.
That afternoon, she found the gold ribbon on the floor in the shadow of a cardboard box. She picked it up, twirled it around her finger, and tucked it into the drawer of her bedside
When he came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist, she let herself lean back into him, just enough.
“Hey,” he said, voice muffled against her shoulder. “You okay?”
She nodded, because it was mostly true. Because it was what you did.
“I’m perfect.” She leaned her head against his chest. She let herself memorize the moment—the weight of his arms, the warmth of his breath, the sound of her own heart, beating steady.
“Yes,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “Yes, you are.”