Chapter 35
Rowan
Natalia asked me to stay, so I did. Honestly, I would do anything she asks of me.
She snores, occasionally. Sometimes she drools, but I only see it if I wake up before her. Regardless, I don’t tell her I know because if she wakes up before me, she’ll wipe all of the evidence away.
Right now, she’s snoring softly—the sound more like heavy breaths from her parted and pouty lips—and there’s the tiniest bit of drool at the corner of her mouth. Her cheek is squished against my bare chest and this is the way to wake up.
Smiling to myself, I grab a tissue from the box on the night stand and wipe the corner of her mouth.
I look at Natalia sometimes and wonder how happy my mother would be for me. She wanted us to move on, which I haven’t entirely done because I don’t think anyone who loses their mother ever does, but I’ve found reasons to go on. I think that’s better.
Natalia makes me want to go on.
After so much grief and a lifetime of pain, I have Natalia.
She is the thing good you never see coming.
She is the good thing people tell you to remain patient for when all you can see ahead is darkness and death.
She is the good thing that comes to show you life is better than you think it might be after all.
The soft alarm goes off on her home pod, the sound starting low before it increasingly grows louder. I ask it to stop, out loud, and sigh. I pull my sweetheart into my chest and she stirs.
“Nat,” I whisper and kiss her cheekbone. “Sweetheart, baby, wake up.”
“Hmm?” she moans softly and her fingers reach into my hair, her lids still closed. “Rowan?”
“Hey, sweetheart,” I rasp.
“Hmm.” A small smile encases her closed lips. “I think I need more kisses to wake up.”
I huff a laugh. “Yeah?”
“Mhhm,” she hums, smiling and curling into me.
I kiss her neckline, my stubbled jaw tickling her. She laughs loudly, her body contorting as she turns away from me. “Rowan.” She laughs, panting. “Rowan!”
I kiss her pulse before I pull back, my arms winding around her until her back is flush against my chest. I lean to kiss the tattoo behind her right ear.
“Merry Christmas,” I whisper.
“Hmm.” Natalia pulls my hand to her chest, wrapping my arm tighter around her.
And I wish there was a way to make this last forever—how close to her it makes me feel. The way she comes undone, and the way she undoes me in every way.
I. Love. Her.
She turns in my arms to kiss me. She moans again softly, adjusting her head on my arms to shut her eyes. She sighs before she quietly says, “I like this.”
I quirk a brow, my hand roaming up and down her spine. “Sleep?”
She chuckles, her sleepy, puffy eyes opening ever so slightly. “Well, yes, but this,” she whispers, pulling at my bottom lip with her pointer finger. “It’s a quiet morning—a really good morning, and I like it. It’s peaceful.”
“It is,” I say.
“A part of it feels strange,” Natalia says quietly, her eyes opening fully.
“Good, but strange. Like I have to get used to it but I don’t want to because once I do, it won’t feel as good as it does now.
And I want to be peaceful, Rowan.” She brings her eyes back to mine. “I want to be peaceful with you.”
“I promise I’ll protect your peace,” I whisper. “I’ll protect it from everything and everyone. I’ll always protect you, Natalia. Let me.”
“I know,” she rasps. “I am letting you.”
I trace her jawline with my finger and kiss the apple of her cheek where a cluster of freckles sit. “I got you something.”
“Why?” Natalia asks, slowly and suspiciously.
“Because it’s Christmas.”
“A day late but—”
I laugh. “Would you let me—”
“You already gave me a gift.”
“Sex doesn’t count.”
Natalia’s cheeks flush. “Fine, it doesn’t.”
I brush my lips over her forehead and turn enough for my long arm to reach over and grab the box I brought in last night.
When I woke up in the middle of the night, I grabbed her keys and ran out to my car to grab it, and when I got back, Natalia was still snoring—all four limbs took up the entire space of the bed.
With the gift on my lap, I sit up and bring Natalia with me. Holding the blanket to her chest, her eyes sparkle with impatience and eagerness as she waits.
“Okay,” I say and set the gift-wrapped box on her lap. I press a soft kiss to the apple of her cheek, and pull back to see a smile. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.”
She grins. “I love it.”
“You haven’t opened it yet.”
“I don’t need to,” I say. “It’s my favorite thing.”
“You don’t know what it is.” I chuckle.
“It’s still my favorite thing.”
Squealing to herself, she tears the paper to shreds and yanks apart the box. My heart stops as she pulls the gift out.
“Rowan…” Her eyes well with tears as she examines the lavender apron with her name in the top right corner and a black cat embroidered in its center.
Beneath that, The Black Cat is embroidered in smaller, black letters.
She runs her thumbs back and forth over the design.
“This is…This is just so…pretty. I’m going to use it all the time. I love it.”
“You do?” I scratch the nape of my neck. “I know you have a ton of aprons, but this one—”
“No buts,” she says. “This is my favorite apron ever, Rowan.” Natalia leaps over, straddling me, and my hands grip her waist. She hugs the apron tight. “Bury me in it.”
“You love it?” I ask again, just to be sure.
“I’m not a materialistic person, but this is the thing I’d save in a fire first, I think. After Binx.”
I chuckle breathily. “So, it’s a good gift?”
“It’s perfect,” she says again, hugging her apron.
Then the apron and bed sheet around her body falls as her arms wrap around my neck. With the force of her throwing herself at me, I fall onto my back. She falls over me, throwing the trash and apron aside, and her curls act as a curtain like this.
Her lips press into mine, soft and tender and breathy. “I love it so much.”
“I love you.”
“Hmm.” She brushes her smile over mine, the tip of her nose bumping against mine too. “I have something for you too.”
“You know I don’t need a gift,” I say, my arms tightening around her. “I just need to be with you.”
“I know, I know, quality time—whatever,” she teases. “But it’s Christmas.”
“I didn’t want anything.”
“Shut up,” she grumbles. Naked, she slides off my lap and tiptoes around her bedroom. My eyes follow her, seeing the way the top of her tongue sticks out the side of her mouth in thought.
Natalia, reaching up on her toes, plucks a wrapped, rectangular box—somewhat flat—similar to my packaging. I reach for my briefs and shirt while she makes her way back to me. I pull on my underwear and once she sits beside me again, I wrap my shirt around her.
Grinning, she sets the gift on my lap then pushes her arms through the sleeves, buttoning only a middle button.
“Okay, so…” She exhales heavily. “If you hate it, too bad.”
I chuckle and carefully peel the tape off the paper.
“You can rip the paper, Rowan.”
“What if I want to save it?” I say, smiling at my sweetheart. “It’s our first Christmas.”
She snort-laughs. “What? Our first Christmas?”
“Yeah, obviously.”
“Corny,” she mutters, her lips tipped in a small smile. “Oh my god, open it, already.”
I laugh as I rip the rest, careful to leave a corner intact for myself to save later. I set that perfect piece aside on her nightstand and she helps me tear apart the rest like a child on Christmas morning.
“Fucking finally.” She sighs, throwing the candy cane paper to the floor. “Open it already.”
“Okay, okay.” I lift the top of the gift box and unfold the red and green gift paper to unveil the gift. “Oh my god.” I laugh as I pull out the delicate white chefs hat. “Hunger Slayer?”
Natalia laughs. “I thought… I kind of thought we’d be buying each other gag gifts? Well, maybe not gag gifts but ironic gifts? You hate it.”
I open up my new chef’s hat and pull it on the top of my head. “I love it.”
“You look so hot.”
“I’m the Hunger Slayer, sweetheart.” I wink, and she giggles, cheeks turning pink.
“You should only ever wear that for me,” she says. “Here—when you cook for me.”
“When I cook for you?”
“Mhhm.” She nods. “Naked.”
I guffaw. “Will you be baking naked in your apron?”
“No,” she says. “You cook, I watch. It’s modern.”
“Seems unfair,” I tease, kissing down the length of her neck and nipping at the skin.
She moans softly, fingers sifting through my tousled hair, sending the chef’s hat elsewhere. I kiss a path across her clavicle and shoulder.
She moans breathily. “I think it’s plenty fair.”
“Hmm,” I hum. “Come here.”
“Not yet.” She smiles against my lips. “I have one more.”
“You do?”
She nods as she backs away and moves off the edge of the bed. Whatever she grabs rattles in the packaging. As she returns, sitting on her heels, she smiles with her teeth in her lip, the box behind her back.
“I hope you like this one,” Natalia whispers, so shyly it’s nothing but cute. “You never brought it over so… I thought I could just buy it and it’ll be yours to leave here and play with me.”
My brows furrow and she whips it out from behind her, setting it on my lap.
My eyes fall to the cool box and my heart just explodes. This girl. This girl is mine and forever mine. Only mine.
“Beetlejuice Monopoly.” I grin at the box, holding it in my hands. It’s one of the most precious things in this world I’ve ever been gifted. “Oh… oh my fucking—” I laugh and shake the box with Beetlejuice on it. “I fucking love it, sweetheart.”
I set it aside carefully and find her smiling at me.
Smiling—because she’s smiling so much today—she crawls onto my lap, straddling my thighs, and wraps her arm around my neck. I hold myself up with a hand behind me, and my other arm wraps around her body, my hand gripping her opposite ass cheek.
“I’m here.”
“Are you happy, sweetheart?”
Even though her smile falters, like the question threw her off, it returns quickly. “Today, I am.”
“And every other day?”
“I try to be,” she murmurs. “But the days I spend with you are all happy. No exceptions.”
“None?”
“None.”
I have to kiss her for it, I always have to kiss her. Can’t ever not kiss her, probably not until after I’m dead. She sighs into my mouth, relief pouring out of her as her fingers twist in my hair.
My heart swells the way it always does around her. The organ sputters and trips and beats, all of it in her name.
I pull back just enough to leave us panting against each other’s mouths and I nudge my nose against hers to say, Hi.
She bumps my nose. Hi back.
“Nae sarang,” I whisper. “Saranghae.”
Natalia blinks, her head pulling back to look into my eyes. Her lips part in surprise and her extraordinary eyes gloss over as she breathes. “What?”
“Nae sarang,” I say again, “Saranghae.”
“You…” Her eyes line with water. “Saranghae, Rowan.”
She won’t say it in English, but I’ll take it. It means the same thing, doesn’t matter what language it’s said in.
“I love you,” I say, and the water spills from the corners of her eyes.
“I’m glad.” Natalia reaches behind me and pulls my chef’s hat back on. “Now, breakfast time. Butt naked.”