Chapter 44 #2
Dinner stretches past hunger. Our plates get pushed toward the middle of the table, the wine mostly abandoned after the first glass, and somewhere in the lull I start telling him about Grant outside the courthouse.
Not every word; some parts belong to the marriage that ended yesterday and can stay buried with it.
Beckett gets the box and everything inside it.
He gets the apology too, the first one Grant managed without trying to negotiate his way around what he’d done, and what I finally said about all the choices he kept taking from me.
Beckett listens without comparing himself to Grant or trying to collect points off another man’s failures.
Even when I tell him Grant admitted he thought I’d get over Magnolia Rain, the only reaction I get is the hand curled around my ankle, where my foot rests across his thigh, tightening once beneath the table.
“I almost hugged him goodbye.” The slow stroke of his thumb stops. “You can say you hate that.”
“I do. I would’ve hated watching you do it too.”
“Jesus. You don’t even pretend to soften the answer.”
“I’m jealous, Laurel.” His thumb starts moving over my ankle again. “But I can hate the idea and still know it wasn’t mine to stop.”
“You wouldn’t have been angry?”
“At you? No.” He takes a second with the rest. “Jealous as hell, yes. Probably pissed about it on the drive home. But you loved him for fourteen years. If hugging him was what you needed to close that part of your life, my feelings wouldn’t suddenly make the choice mine.”
God, how did I get this lucky?
Beckett reaches for the water pitcher and refills my glass like he hasn’t just walked straight into the argument I spent half my marriage trying to articulate.
A man can hate one of my choices without confiscating it. He can be jealous without turning jealousy into jurisdiction. He can hurt and still leave me ownership of myself.
I stare at the fresh water in my glass. “You know you’re really fucking up the national average.”
“For men?”
“Spectacularly.”
“I’ve always been ambitious.”
I laugh, the sting behind my eyes coming with it, and maybe that little crack in me is why the next sentence leaves my mouth without a second thought. “I don’t want to date other people.”
Beckett freezes with his wineglass halfway off the table. A petty little thrill runs through me. Good to know I can still short-circuit him.
He lowers the glass like one wrong move might scare the sentence away. “Okay.”
“Okay? You’ve spent months hating the theoretical existence of every man I might date, and I finally tell you I don’t want anyone else, then you give me okay like I just confirmed a dentist appointment.”
A grin wins whatever fight he was having with it. “I’ve a lot more than okay. I’m trying to let you finish before I start celebrating and scare the shit out of you.”
“I’m not that skittish.” I’m smiling too much to make the argument convincing anyway. “Fine. Since you’re being so gracious about it, I don’t want you dating anyone else either.”
“I don’t want anyone else.”
“I know.” My voice softens. “But that’s not why I’m saying it.”
I pull my foot from his lap and scoot my chair closer, closing some of the space between us before holding out my hand. Beckett turns his palm up and waits. He doesn’t take mine, doesn’t finish the gesture for me, so I lace our fingers together myself.
“You’ve been exclusive this whole time without treating it like a deposit I eventually had to repay. I don’t want us to become official just because you waited around long enough and I ran out of reasons to be scared. I want to know I chose this when I was clearheaded and free to choose anything.”
His fingers close around mine. “Are you?”
“Yes.” The word feels so good I don’t bother sanding down what comes next. “I want you. I want this. Properly. Slow when I need slow, messy when I’m still messy, but real. I’m not promising you forever twenty-four hours after a judge ended my marriage.”
“I’d be concerned if you did.”
I snort. “Rude.”
“True.” His thumb feathers my knuckles. “I don’t need forever tonight, Laurel.
I’m not waiting for some polished version of you with every loose end tied up and every scar turned into a lesson.
If you want me, I’m here. If you want exclusivity, you have it.
If something scares you, tell me. If you change your mind about something, tell me that too.
I don’t want to wear you down until staying with me becomes easier than saying no. I want you choosing me.”
I drop my attention to our joined hands, since meeting his eyes after a sentence like that feels medically inadvisable. “Could you develop one or two emotional deficiencies? Just for balance?”
“I’ve plenty of defects. They’ll introduce themselves.”
“Good. I was starting to worry.”
“Give me time.”
“Oh, I plan to.”
The label issue arrives once exclusive has had a minute to settle between us.
Girlfriend and boyfriend make us sound sixteen, partner sounds like we’re filing taxes together, and Beckett gets halfway through woman I’m seeing before I veto it on principle.
“Absolutely not. You sound like you’re keeping me vague for a podcast interview. ”
He considers the problem with our fingers still threaded together. “My woman?”
A hot spike races down my spine. “Possessive.”
“Only if you want it to be.”
I let him sit with that for a beat, heat turning lazy circles low in my stomach. “I could get used to being your woman.”
His fingers wind tighter around mine. “Good. I was getting attached to the idea.”
“Don’t get carried away. I have amendments.
” I trace one finger along his, recounting the rules we’ve already made without wasting breath on all of them again.
“You tell me when something hurts instead of deciding I have too much going on to hear it. If you’re jealous, tell me.
If you’re pissed at me, I want to know that too.
If I scare you, confuse you, make you question where you stand with me—don’t swallow it so you can keep being the patient one.
” His hand stills around mine, but I’m not finished.
“I don’t want you spending this whole relationship making room for me and forgetting you’re allowed to take up some yourself.
I want to know where your heart is, Beckett, even when what’s in it is inconvenient or ugly or not what you think I want to hear.
You’ve been very good at letting me choose you.
Let me choose you when you’re difficult too. ”
I rub my thumb over his knuckles, my voice softer when I ask, “So if I’m your woman, do you want to be my man?”
“Yes.”
My smile takes over my whole damn face. “In every way?”
“In every way.” His hand closes around mine. “And the same goes for you. I tell you where I am, you tell me where you are. Neither of us decides what the other person can handle. We ask. We answer. We fuck it up sometimes and say so when we do.”
“Reasonable.”
“I can make it worse if you’d prefer.”
“No, I think I’ve suffered enough.” I bring our joined hands to my lips. “Then I guess I’ve got myself a man, Vale.”
A breath of laughter escapes him. “Looks like you do.”
The patio lights have gone dark, leaving gold from the kitchen windows spread across the stone and the yard beyond swallowed by October. Above us, the sky is black and clear, stars scattered from one end of it to the other.
Real ones.
For a second the patio falls away, and I’m back in my spare room beneath cheap blue constellations, Beckett above me with his glasses crooked and his mouth close, my whole body wanting what I still wasn’t ready to take.
He kissed my forehead instead. Took the boundary exactly as I gave it and never made me pay for drawing one.
Yesterday ended the wait.
My ring finger is bare. The divorce is final. Beckett is my man because I chose him, and I’m his woman because I chose that too.
And my name is Laurel fucking Bellamy.