Chapter 24 The Return
The Return
Julian
Boston Logan arrivals is a chaos of families reuniting and business travelers hauling luggage, and I've been standing near the international gates for forty-five minutes because her flight landed early and I couldn't wait in the car.
Three months of seeing her on a screen. And now she's somewhere past those doors, collecting her bags, walking toward me.
The doors slide open and people stream through, a constant flow of tired faces and rolling suitcases. I scan each one, heart pounding, until I see her.
Eliza looks exhausted and windburned, her cheeks red from the Canadian cold, her hands chapped from months of fieldwork.
She's wearing the thermal jacket I helped her pack and pulling the black suitcase with the wobbly wheel she refused to replace.
Her hair is longer than when she left, pulled back in a messy braid, and she's carrying a notebook under one arm, probably full of observations she couldn't wait to record.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Our eyes meet across the crowd. Her face breaks into a grin, and then she's walking faster, almost running, and I'm moving toward her, and then she's in my arms.
I hold her so tight I'm probably crushing her, but she doesn't complain, just wraps her arms around my neck and holds on. She smells like airplane and recycled air and something underneath that's purely Eliza, and I breathe her in like I've been drowning.
Her mouth brushes my shoulder. "Hi."
"Hi yourself."
"I missed you."
"I missed you too." I pull back just enough to look at her, to cup her wind-chapped face in my hands. "God, I missed you."
She kisses me, right there in the middle of arrivals, with people streaming around us and luggage carts narrowly missing our ankles. I don't care. Let them watch. Let the whole airport see me kissing my wife.
When we finally break apart, her eyes are bright with happy tears.
She grips my coat. "Take me home."
"Your rental?"
"My rental." She grins. "For now."
I take the duffel from her luggage trolley, and we wheel everything out to the car. The drive to Cape Avalon takes an hour, and we spend most of it with her hand on my knee, talking about the last few weeks of her trip, the data she collected, the storms that almost stranded them twice.
She turns toward me. "Nessa wants to collaborate on a paper. About the holdfast variations we documented. Claire thinks it could be significant."
"That's amazing."
"It might be nothing. But it might be something." She squeezes my knee. "Either way, I'm glad I went."
"So am I."
She looks over at me, surprised. "Really?"
"Really. You came back different. Stronger. More yourself than you've been in years." I keep my eyes on the road, but I reach over to take her hand. "I'm proud of you."
"Even though I abandoned you for kelp?"
"Even though you abandoned me for kelp."
At her rental, we carry her bags inside and dump them in the bedroom. The apartment is small and cold from being empty, but she turns on the heat and makes us both tea, and within an hour it feels like home again.
We end up on the couch, her legs across my lap, talking about everything and nothing. The trip, the foundation, the house listings we've been sending each other for weeks.
I reach for my tablet. "The one on Briar Lane is still available. I checked this morning."
"I saw. I've been refreshing the listing obsessively."
"There are a few others I bookmarked. We could look at them tomorrow, if you're not too tired."
She sets down her tea. "I don't want to keep the rental."
"What?"
"After we find a place. I don't want to keep the rental as a backup. I don't want an escape hatch." She meets my eyes. "I want to live with you. Really live with you, not just stay over sometimes. I've had three months to think about it, and I'm sure."
The words hit me somewhere deep. I've been hoping for this, planning for it, but hearing her say it out loud makes it real in a way it wasn't before.
"Are you sure?" My voice comes out rough. "Because we can take it slow. We can..."
"Julian." She climbs into my lap, straddling me, her hands on my shoulders. "I'm sure. I've been sure since November. I just wanted to wait until I could say it to your face."
I pull her close and kiss her, and this time there's nothing gentle about it. She matches my intensity, her fingers in my hair, her body pressed against mine, and I lose track of time entirely.
She's already straddling me. I can feel the heat of her through her clothes. Three months of screens and delayed goodnights and I finally have her weight in my lap again.
"Clothes off," I tell her. "Now."
She peels her shirt over her head. I get her bra unhooked and toss it.
Her nipples are tight from the cold apartment and from me, and I take one into my mouth while I shove her pants and underwear down her hips.
She lifts to help. Then she's naked in my lap and I'm still dressed, and the contrast makes something feral kick in my chest.
"Look at you." I palm her ass and pull her flush against the hard line of my cock through my jeans. "Back from the other side of the continent and already wet for me."
"I've been wet since the airport," she says. No shame. "Don't make me wait."
"Say it."
"Fuck me, Julian. I've been sure since November. Prove it."
"That's my girl."
I get my jeans open. She helps shove them down just far enough. My cock springs free, thick and flushed, and she stares—female gaze, hungry, unapologetic—then wraps her hand around me and guides me to her entrance.
"Eyes on me."
She locks on. Sinks down.
Inch by inch until I'm buried and we're both shaking. The rental couch creaks. I don't care.
"Fuck. Ride me. Show me what you came home for."
She does. Hands on my shoulders, thighs working, taking me deep on every drop. I watch my cock disappear into her cunt and swear. Grip her hips hard enough to bruise. Help her bounce.
"Good. Just like that. Look how well you take me after three months." My thumb finds her clit. "This is ours. This life. This cunt on my cock. Say you're staying."
"I'm staying—fuck—I'm staying—"
"Good girl."
I stand with her still wrapped around me—she's lighter than I remembered, or I'm just that desperate—and carry her the few steps to the narrow bed. We hit the mattress messy. She laughs once against my mouth, then gasps when I pin her wrists and drive back into her in one hard thrust.
The bed is small. Our knees hang off. I don't care. I fuck her into the thin mattress like I'm claiming the whole apartment, forehead against hers, praise filthy and constant.
"Take it. Take your husband's cock in this tiny bed. Tomorrow we look at houses. Tonight you come on me until you can't think."
"Julian—"
"I know, baby. You're doing so fucking good. Missed this mouth. Missed this cunt. Missed you choosing me out loud."
I hitch her leg higher on my hip and find the angle that makes her cry out. Rub her clit with two fingers. "Come for me. Right now. Be good."
She breaks, clenching hard, and I follow—driving deep, coming inside her with a groan that sounds like relief and ownership and three months of waiting finally ending. We stay locked together until our breathing slows.
Later, much later, we lie tangled together in her narrow bed, and I think about how far we've come.
From the empty anniversary dinner to the accident to the months of separation and slow rebuilding.
From the woman who wouldn't let me touch her in the hospital to the one curled against my chest, breathing softly in the dark.
She settles her cheek against my chest. "Tomorrow. House hunting."
"Tomorrow."
The next day
The first house is too formal, all sharp angles and cold surfaces. The second has no space for a study. The third is on Briar Lane.
It's a cottage, white with blue shutters, sitting on a small lot that slopes down toward the harbor. The realtor lets us in and immediately starts her pitch, but I'm not listening. I'm watching Eliza.
She moves through the rooms slowly, touching doorframes and window sills, pausing to look out each window. In the living room, she stands for a long moment, staring at the view of the water.
She opens another door. "There's a second bedroom. I could use it as a study. Keep the samples separate from the living space."
"The light is good."
"The light is excellent." She moves to the kitchen, opens cabinets, tests the faucet. "It needs work. The appliances are old."
"We could update them."
"We could." She turns to look at me. "Where would your books go?"
"I was thinking the living room. Built-in shelves along the back wall."
"That would work." A small smile. "What about the stuffed octopus?"
"The octopus gets a place of honor. Obviously."
She laughs, and the sound of it fills the empty rooms. "Obviously."
We walk through the rest of the house together, planning out loud. Her study here, my reading chair there, a small garden in the back where she could grow herbs. The bedroom faces east, which means morning light, which means she'll wake up before me and probably steal all the covers.
I can live with that. I can live with all of it.
In the kitchen, she stops and turns to face me.
She catches my eye. "I like this one."
"So do I."
"It's not perfect. The bathroom needs updating, and the yard is a mess."
"We can fix those things."
"I know." She takes my hand. "I want this one. I want to make an offer."
"Are you sure? We've only seen three houses."
"I'm sure." She squeezes my fingers. "This one feels right. It feels like somewhere we could build something."
The realtor is hovering in the doorway, trying to look casual. I ignore her.
"Then let's make an offer."
Eliza grins, and I pull her into my arms, and we stand there in the kitchen of our future home, holding each other while the realtor pretends to check her phone.
Eliza lifts her head from my shoulder. "Joint offer. Both our names."
"Both our names."
"And we agree what each of us can afford before we sign. No billionaire shenanigans."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
She pulls back and looks at me, her eyes bright. "We're really doing this."
"We're really doing this."
She kisses me, quick and happy, then turns to the realtor. "We'd like to make an offer."
The paperwork takes an hour. We sit at the kitchen table that doesn't belong to us yet and sign forms and discuss numbers and pretend to be serious adults making serious decisions. The whole time, Eliza's knee is pressed against mine under the table, and I can't stop smiling.
When it's done, we stand on the front porch and look out at the view. The harbor glitters in the winter light, boats bobbing in their slips, the water gray and cold and beautiful.
Eliza folds her copy of the offer. "Closing in February. If they accept."
"I hope they accept."
"You and me both."
"And if they don't, we keep looking. Together."
She leans against me, and I wrap my arm around her shoulders. "That's very confident of you."
"I've learned to be optimistic."
"Have you?"
"I have. It's a recent development." I kiss the top of her head. "I had a good teacher."