Bonus - Grant
If this is how I die, I can’t say I’ve got much to complain about.
Laurel is singing in the kitchen when I come downstairs, quiet enough that I almost miss it.
She stopped doing loud first thing in the morning after spending years hearing rest your voice and interpreting it as unless you have shit to do.
Turns out one surgery was what it took to convince my wife that vocal cords aren’t a renewable resource; that, and Jenna threatening complete silence the next time Laurel decided medical advice was merely an opening position in negotiations.
Progress is progress. I’m still bringing this shit up the next time Jenna gives me that look like Laurel came out of the womb ignoring medical advice because I personally whispered it into her ear.
Rain skims the lake beyond the windows, turning the water silver and leaving the screened porch dark, and Laurel is at the counter in one of my old T-shirts with her back to me, bare legs under the hem, hair pinned up with that tortoiseshell clip she loses every damn week.
And every damn week I end up on trial for it. Where did you put my clip, Grant? Why would I want your fucking clip, Laurel? I’ve never once received a satisfactory answer to this.
The coffee machine lets out one last hiss. She reaches for her mug, and her ring catches a stripe of gray morning light.
I stop at the bottom of the stairs and listen for a second.
Yeah, still do that.
I’ll come downstairs and find her barefoot in my kitchen, or half asleep on the couch with a book facedown on her chest, or bitching at the television because some twenty-two-year-old country singer has committed what Laurel considers a felony against a bridge, and for a second my brain still forgets this is my actual fucking life.
That she came back. That after everything I did, everything it cost us, every reason I gave her to keep walking and never once turn around, Laurel Bellamy looked at me and said yes again.
“If you’re planning to stand there being creepy until breakfast,” she says without turning around, “you could at least make yourself useful and get the butter.”
Caught.
I head for the refrigerator. Her voice has changed since the surgery, lower than the one I fell in love with, more texture sitting in the middle now.
She hated that at first. Mourned the old sound like it had been another person she’d lost. These days she knows what everybody else figured out months ago: different didn’t make it worse.
If anything, the damn thing has more character now, which I keep telling her and she keeps accusing me of being legally obligated to say.
I set the butter beside her.
She cuts her eyes at me. “You’re staring again.”
“I’m married to you. I can’t help it.”
“You know that isn’t a legal defense for staring?”
“I’m not asking the court. I’m asking my wife.”
The corner of her mouth gives.
God, I love that mouth.
I move in behind her, hands finding her waist, but I leave her the inch. I always leave her the inch now; room to lean into me or tell me to get the hell off her, because it turns out loving a woman doesn’t grant a man eminent domain over every decision she makes.
Cost me a marriage, twelve million dollars, several attorneys and a humiliating amount of therapy to grasp that concept, but I’m a big believer in education.
Laurel leans back into me and, fuck, that still gets me. One tiny movement and I’m standing here stupidly happy like she’s handed me something instead of putting her back against my chest.
I fold my arms around her and kiss the side of her head, breathing in coffee, shampoo and whatever expensive shit she smeared on her face last night that she swears is why she still looks twenty while I’m over here aging like a Civil War general.
Rain taps against the windows, steady where my heartbeat isn’t. She fits against me the way she always has, but nothing about holding her feels automatic anymore. I know exactly what it costs to lose this.
“Want eggs?”
Laurel takes a slow sip of coffee. “Not if you’re making them.”
I snort against her hair. “Jesus Christ. One bad breakfast eleven years ago and I’m banned for life.”
“You burned scrambled eggs, Grant. I still don’t understand how.”
“They were slightly overdone.”
“They were brown.”
“Fine.” I turn her in my arms and kiss her temple. “I’ll make toast and stay in my lane.”
“Smart man.”
“Keep talking shit and I’ll hide your clip for real.”
Her laugh breaks loose as she shoves at my chest. “I fucking knew it.”
I laugh with her, but Christ, the sound gets me. Her head tips back, eyes crinkling, one hand still planted against my chest, and for a second all I can do is stand there and take it in.
There was a stretch of my life when I thought I’d never hear Laurel laugh at me again. For a long time, I thought I’d lost the right to mornings like this.
Now I get them, and I know better than to treat a single one like it was guaranteed.
∞∞∞
Our second wedding looks nothing like the first. Mother, Warren, Caroline and Thomas’s family are the entire guest list because Laurel says if we’re actually marrying each other again after spending a small fortune getting divorced, we’ve earned the right to keep the humiliation private.
She wears blue this time, a dark shade that does unfair things to her eyes, and I wear the same watch I wore the first time.
Laurel had given it back to me after we reconciled, dropped it into my palm and said she was tired of finding pieces of my jewelry in boxes meant to hold her own shit.
I’d laughed when she said it; hours later, I’d stood alone in the bathroom staring at the damn thing on my wrist with tears burning my eyes, because for months I’d thought I would never see it again.
I sure as hell hadn’t pictured Laurel being the one to put it back in my hand.
We don’t promise forever this time. Laurel refuses, and I’d be lying if I said the word no doesn’t still fuck with me a little when it comes out of her mouth.
Forever used to matter to me. I liked the certainty of it, liked pretending love could be locked down with the right vows and a signature, like loving her gave me any say over how the story ended.
Laurel takes my hand before I can make her refusal mean more than it does.
“Forever wasn’t the part we were bad at, Grant,” she says. “We meant it the first time too.”
She’s right. Naturally.
So we promise things that actually require some work.
Honesty, even when the truth is inconvenient as hell. Choice, even when one of us hates the choice being made. No deciding what the other person can handle. No sitting on information because we’ve already promoted ourselves to judge, jury and patron saint of knowing what’s best.
I promise never to confuse loving her with getting to control the outcome again. Laurel promises not to make herself smaller just to keep a marriage from falling apart.
When I tell her she has every right to leave me if I ever betray her again, she gives me a flat look.
“Jesus, Grant. Very romantic.”
“Romance has historically been one of my more expensive skill deficiencies.”
She laughs right there in front of the officiant, and I swear to God, hearing it while she’s holding my hand again might be the closest I ever get to believing in miracles.
Mother starts crying before Laurel even finishes her vows. Caroline makes it another thirty seconds. Warren claims he has allergies, despite the fact we are standing indoors in December and nobody has seen so much as a fucking houseplant.
Laurel laughs again, softer this time, fingers tightening around mine, and I’ve to stare at our joined hands for a second because fourteen years ago I thought the miracle was getting her to marry me once.
Turns out the miracle is standing here after she learned exactly what I was capable of, after I gave her every reason to build a life with my name nowhere near it, and hearing her choose me with both eyes open.
Beckett Vale doesn’t come. Obviously. He sends Laurel a short note afterward, and she hands it to me without hesitation because secrets have no fucking business living here anymore.
I hope the life you chose gives you peace.
Five words. No hidden plea, no bullshit noble goodbye, no attempt to wedge himself into the day. I dislike him slightly less for it.
Laurel tells me I’m not required to like Beckett, only to stop treating every man who has ever wanted her like an emerging military threat. I do. Mostly.
Vale eventually marries a woman from New York whose family owns hotels or newspapers or possibly both.
A photograph from the wedding crosses my screen months later, and I spend far longer looking at it than any emotionally stable husband should.
Not because I give a shit who Beckett married.
I’m simply enjoying the indisputable fact that his wife is less beautiful than mine.
Laurel catches me staring at my phone. “You know this means you’ve emotionally matured to about fourteen, right?”
“Fourteen and happily married.”
She rolls her eyes, but her hand finds mine anyway.
And maybe forever was never the promise worth making.
Maybe this is.
Her hand reaching for mine when she doesn’t have to. Mine closing around it without ever mistaking the privilege for ownership again.
∞∞∞
“Daddy!”
The small voice comes from upstairs, followed by several heavy little thumps that suggest our daughter has once again confused a staircase with a competitive sport.
Laurel doesn’t move from where she’s folded against me on the sofa; she only closes her eyes and exhales into my shirt. “Your daughter is awake, and judging by the structural damage currently occurring above us, she has chosen violence.”
I grin into her hair. “Interesting how she becomes mine the second she starts making noise.”
“She is always yours when she’s making noise. She got that from you.”
“She got my charisma.”
“She got my eyes, my patience and my ability to behave in public.”
“Your patience is debatable, and behaving in public is overrated.”