Kate
The vile sound of an alarm clock clangs around inside my brain and pulls me from the best sleep I’ve had in weeks. I groan, cocooning my head under my pillow and simultaneously reaching out to smack Jackson on the arm, praying for quiet.
He takes so long to turn it off I’m contemplating getting up and smashing the stupid device. If only I weren’t so tired.
Still, the relentless bastard tries again, muttering my name a couple more times.
I drag the pillow from my head. Pieces of my hair stick to the still-tacky moisturizer on my face, and I paw at it with an exasperated grunt. Suddenly there’s the rough feel of Jackson’s callused fingers delicately plucking each individual strand from my cheek.
“Thank you,” I whisper, blinking to make out his face in the inky night. “Why are we awake?”
“Date night.”
The words don’t immediately compute.
Giving me a curious look, he adds context. “In the kitchen…with tea.”
I yawn. “You were serious about that?”
“Yes.”
His thumb scrapes along his jaw as he seems to consider whether this was a bad idea. It wasn’t a bad idea. It’s just that sharing a bed with him was working better than the sleeping pills, and I’m woefully overtired these days.
He’s trying to connect, and anyway, it was my comment about bonding over our insomnia that led him to this date suggestion, so woozy as I am, I let him take my hand. Pull me from the bed. Lead me down the dark hallway to the kitchen.
I find a spot in the middle of the kitchen island, sitting with my legs crisscrossed on the cool quartzite countertop, lit only by the small light above the stove.
The unrelenting yawns make my eyes wet. And the sight of him wearing only a pair of boxers, meticulously crafting two cups of chamomile tea, sends a wave of heat cresting and crashing in my core.
“Do you usually sit on the island?” He leans against the counter opposite me, waiting for the kettle to boil.
“I usually come strolling in after the tea has already been made and you’re sitting at the kitchen table.” I rest my elbows on my thighs. “Thought I’d try this new vantage point out.”
I wanted to sit but couldn’t stand the thought of the entire island—or more—between us.
My insides are giddy, and I feel like a damn teenager, nervous and excited and desperate to be close to him.
I watch the flexion of his back muscles when he turns to reach for two mugs, and the two perfectly round dimples in his lower back.
The slope of his Adonis belt dipping below the waistband.
I know what’s underneath, too, and that’s not helping the deep-seated want low in my belly.
“And how is it?”
“The view is ten out of ten, but I think that would be the case regardless of where I sat.” I gesture at him. “I basically have a male model in front of me.”
A splash of red colors his cheeks, highlighting the myriad freckles splashed across his face and down onto his kissable chest and shoulders.
“I love making you blush,” I admit.
“You certainly have a knack for it.”
“I have a lot of practice, and it got so much harder over the years. I’m sure if you scrolled far enough back in our text message history, you’d find some incredibly raunchy texts from me.” I smirk. “Maybe even some titty pictures.”
Jackson’s quick to avert his eyes then, and he’s so red he looks as though he might spontaneously combust. The kettle whistles in a saved by the bell type moment, and Jackson hurries to shut it off.
Water gurgles into each cup with his slow steady pour, and by the time he’s delivering my tea to me, his complexion is almost back to its normal shade.
I relish the mug’s radiant heat in my hands. Jackson takes a careful sip, then sets his own mug down and hops onto the counter next to me, awkwardly crossing his long legs so our knees bump. With a deep breath, his stomach tightens, defining the curves of his toned musculature.
“So, uh, what do I usually call you?” Jackson asks. “Like…a nickname. I was informed that I call Odessa ‘Princess’—though maybe she was pulling my leg.”
“You’ve always called her Princess,” I confirm. “It’s done wonders for her ego. Not that I’m sure she needs any help believing she’s the most important person on this entire ranch.”
“She has everybody wrapped around her finger, doesn’t she?”
I nod, taking a swig of tea that singes the tip of my tongue. “Guess that’s what happens when you’re the first baby in the family…and she was the only one for a long time. A lot of uncles and honorary uncles who have never been able to say no to her.”
“I think it has more to do with what type of person you are than you’re admitting to.” He gives me a look. “You had almost everyone in that hospital unable to say no to you. Hell, I can’t say no to you. Bully.”
“I told you, it’s love. Not bullying.”
“To-may-to, to-mah-to,” he says over the rim of his charcoal Wells Ranch Cattle Company mug. “So, if Odessa is princess, do I call you queen?”
“You’ve cycled through a lot of nicknames for me and somehow never landed on queen before now…and I’m going to hold a grudge about that for the foreseeable future.”
“Great. Hate to see how mean you’ll be now,” he says under his breath, flirtatiousness laced in every word.
“You called me Kit…it started as Kate—naturally—then Katie, Katie Kat, Kat, KitKat, then Kit.” My thumb taps a finger with each nickname. “I don’t know where you’d go from there, but I’m sure if I gave you a few years it would evolve again somehow.”
“Kitten?” he suggests.
I make a dry heaving noise. “Please, no. Do I look like a kitten?”
“Want my honest opinion?”
My fingers rap against his calf with a playful scolding, then stay there. He’s so warm, the hair on his leg the perfect combination of rough and smooth. I mindlessly loop small hearts on his shin with my thumb.
“Kit,” he whispers. Beckoning me closer or testing the way my nickname feels on his tongue, I can’t quite be sure, but it feels intimate.
And it sounds so much like the way he quietly moans my name into the crook of my neck, the weight of his body pressing on me from pelvis to breast, trying and failing to be quiet so the kids don’t hear.
My core clenches around nothing with a familiar ache.
In the quiet dark, Jackson’s hand finds its way to where I know the scar is still raised and bumpy on his scalp, making me wonder if it’s bothering him. “What do you miss most about before?”
“I miss…the little moments. These two a.m. tea dates, but then also the way I’d stroll into the kitchen in the morning, and you’d have a coffee poured for me.
I miss sitting together watching our kids do silly things like dance to old country songs in the kitchen or create mashed potato volcanoes on their plates.
I miss the quick hand squeezes or kisses or taps on the butt whenever we passed each other as we went about our day—sometimes without even saying anything because we were too busy to chat.
I know…or, I guess, I hope we’ll get back there one day. But I do miss it….”
“We’ll get back there.” He sets his tea down and his extra-warm palm rests on top of my hand. His eyes flick to my lips. “There is nothing I want more than to kiss and touch you every time the mood strikes.”
Then do it now, I want to scream. Do it. Just touch me and kiss me and haul me off to bed.
“You can…I mean, if you want to. No pressure though.”
But also…Please, I silently beg. Kiss me.
Yes, we’re married. Yes, when we were dating I kissed him first. But this is different. I have sixteen years of history on my side, and he’s known me for a couple months. I remember our firsts; I want his new memories to happen on his terms.
A veil of hesitation hangs between us in the thick air. That’s all I need to know this is another no. Or maybe, if I choose to remain hopeful, it’s a not right now. Silence is rejection in one form or another.
Pulling my hand from his leg like it’s red hot, I twist and slide from the counter in one smooth motion. When my bare feet hit the planked wood flooring, I lean against the kitchen island and will myself not to cry.
I want normal.
I miss normal.
I miss my husband the most when he’s standing right in front of me, entirely out of reach.
It feels so fucking selfish when I pleaded with higher powers for him to live. I wanted nothing more than to hear his voice and look into his eyes. And now it feels like maybe my prayers fell a little short.
Jackson gets off the counter and moves to stand in front of me.
I look up to find his eyes locked on mine, deep and dark and all-consuming, pupils staining the colors in his irises.
My breath catches as he steps in to bracket me between his thick arms, gripping the edge of the counter on either side of me.
He bends his head, so close to kissing me I can smell the chamomile lingering on his breath and feel the coarseness of his beard on my skin.
He draws his lips in, wetting them, before quietly asking, “Was I a good kisser before?”
My whisper matches his. “The best.”