29. Charly
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Charly
I come up out of sleep slow, to the feeling of his mouth moving over me. A kiss pressed to my hairline. Then my temple. Then the corner of my jaw, my shoulder, the inside of my wrist where he’s got my hand tucked up against his chest.
“Love you,” he says into my skin, quiet, not even checking if I’m awake to hear it. Another kiss, my cheekbone this time. “Love you. Love you.”
I keep my eyes shut and let him, because waking up like this, wrapped around him with his whole sleepy heart spilling out against my face, is not a thing I’m in any rush to interrupt.
“You’re awake,” he says, low and rough with sleep, his hand sliding slow up and down my back. “Don’t even try it. I can feel you smiling.”
“I’m asleep. This is a dream. You’re not even here.” I keep my eyes shut and don’t move a muscle.
“Oh, a dream. Okay.” His chest shakes under my cheek, laughing. “Then I guess dream-me can do whatever he wants. Morning, wife.”
“Mm. Say it again.” I press in closer, eyes still shut, not bothering to hide the smile anymore. “The wife thing. I’m not sick of it yet.”
“Yeah?” His grin presses into the top of my head. “Wife. My wife. I read the certificate front to back on the drive over, you know. Made it real official in my head.”
“You did not.”
“I absolutely did. Mrs. Carrington. It’s got a ring to it.” He tips my chin up with one finger so I have to look at him. “I’m going to say it constantly. Fair warning. In the grocery store. At customs. To strangers who didn’t ask.”
“Good.” I prop my chin on his chest and look up at him. “It’s my favorite thing you’ve ever called me. Don’t tell anyone I said that, I have a reputation.”
“Your secret’s safe.” He catches my hand and presses a kiss to my knuckles. “Wife.”
“There he goes again.” But I’m beaming up at him like a complete idiot, and I don’t even try to stop it, and he kisses the smile right off my face.
He doesn’t stop there. He rolls me onto my back and takes his time working his way to my mouth, slow, like we’ve got all day, which, for once, we actually do.
It’s not like the first times, all that fear and grief tangled up in it.
There’s none of that left. He kisses me slow and sure, his hand sliding up under the hem of the shirt of his I stole to sleep in, his palm hot against my ribs.
I arch into him without a single thought about whether I’m enough, whether he’ll stay, whether the floor’s about to drop out.
“I’ve got you,” he says against my throat, his teeth grazing the skin there. He says it even though I’m not scared, even though we both know it now. He just likes saying it. “All day. Nowhere to be.”
“We have a flight.”
“We have hours.” His mouth moves down, trailing wet kisses over my breasts, his tongue working me through the thin cotton until I’m straining against it. “We’ve got all the time in the world. Let me have you.”
He tugs the shirt over my head and tosses it somewhere. He doesn’t rush a second of it. He moves lower, his hands sliding down my hips to push my underwear away, and when he settles between my thighs I let out a breath that shakes on the way out, my fingers already tangling in his hair.
“Look at you,” he says against the inside of my thigh, voice gone low and rough. “Prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. You know that?”
“You can’t just say things like that.” My voice isn’t doing what I want it to.
“I mean it.” He presses a kiss higher up. “Every part of you. I’m not in a rush, so get comfortable.”
Then his mouth is on me, his tongue finding my clit, slow at first and then faster, and his fingers slide inside me and curl, and I moan, my hips coming off the mattress.
“That’s it,” he says against me, the words buzzing through me. “Let me hear you. I’ve got you.”
I pull him up, needing him against me. I reach down and wrap my hand around him, feeling the heat and the hard throb of him, and guide him toward my mouth, taking him in.
I swirl my tongue around the head, tasting the salt of him, then slide down the length of him.
He lets out a low groan, his hips twitching.
“God, baby.” His hand fists gently in my hair. “Just like that. You’re going to wreck me.”
I look up at him, and the raw want on his face tells me he’s just as gone as I am.
When he finally moves over me, he doesn’t just enter, he sinks into me, filling every empty space. I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him deeper, our chests pressed together with every thrust.
“You feel so good,” he says against my ear, wrecked. “Every time. Every single time.”
He says my name like it’s the only word he’s got left. We move together in a rhythm that feels like breathing, a steady, driving heat building in the pit of my stomach.
He rolls us onto our sides, his chest against my back, his arm draped over me to hold me close as he slides back in from behind. The angle’s different, deeper, hitting a spot that makes me gasp and grab at the sheets.
“There she is,” he says into my shoulder, his hand sliding around to find my clit again, rubbing in time with the slide of him. “That’s my girl. Let go for me. I’ve got you.”
The tension snaps. The first wave crashes over me, everything clamping tight around him, and he lets out a choked sound and his pace goes frantic, his fingers working me harder until he stiffens and groans into my neck and goes shaking against me.
After, we’re a wreck of tangled sheets and I’m draped half across him, both of us catching our breath, his fingers drawing lazy lines down my spine.
“Okay,” I say into his collarbone. “That was a really good argument for missing the flight.”
“I’m full of good ideas.” He kisses my hair. “Mrs. Carrington.”
“I love you.” I say it into his skin, easy, no bracing for it anymore. “So much it’s embarrassing.”
Room service shows up and we eat in bed like animals, and my phone won’t stop buzzing because everybody and their mother is sending photos from last night.
“Oh my God, look at this one.” I turn the screen toward him. “Your cousin. The one who did the worm.”
“He told me he’d been practicing. For weeks.” Clarence steals a piece of my toast. “He pulled a muscle. Told me at the bar after, completely serious, asking did I have ibuprofen on me.”
“He did not.”
“Hand to God. Worth it, he said. No regrets.” He scrolls to the next one and snorts. “Okay, there. That’s my favorite. Your aunt crying into the cake table.”
“She cried the entire night. Through everything. The dancing, the toasts, somebody’s car alarm going off in the lot.”
“She cried at the car alarm?”
“She said it was ‘a lot of emotion all at once.’” I flick through the rest, blurry dance floor shots, somebody’s kid asleep under a table, my dad caught mid-laugh with his tie around his head. “Look at my dad. Who let him near the open bar.”
“That was me, actually. I told the bartender to just keep his glass full and his stories flowing.” He grins. “Best call I made all night. Besides the obvious.”
“Real smooth, getting my dad hammered at our wedding.”
“He had the best night of his life, thank you very much.” He plucks the phone out of my hand and drops it face-down on the nightstand. “Okay, that’s enough wedding for one morning. I’ve got you in a bed and a flight that’s hours away. I know my priorities.”
“You just want to keep saying wife.”
“I really do. Can you blame me?” He says it grinning, but it goes a little soft at the end, because not one person in any of those photos knows we already did this once before. That one’s still just ours.
We’re supposed to be packing. I’m folding things into my suitcase and Clarence is being absolutely no help, sprawled across the bed watching me with his chin propped on his hand.
I’ve been meaning to tell him about the clinic for weeks.
I almost did a hundred times. Last night I’d actually decided I’d do it on the trip, somewhere with wine and sunshine, where it wouldn’t feel so heavy.
So when I grab my toiletry bag and the little orange bottles spill out onto the dresser, the folder, the appointment card with next month’s date, I don’t scramble to hide them.
He sits up. “Hey. What’s all that?”
“Okay. So.” I take a breath, because apparently it’s happening now, on a hotel room floor, surrounded by half-packed underwear. “I was going to tell you in Italy. I had a whole plan, it involved a nice dinner.”
“Tell me what?”
“It’s a fertility clinic.” I make myself hold his eyes. “I’ve been going for a few months. Bloodwork, monitoring, the supplements. I’ve got a follow-up when we’re back.”
He goes quiet, and my heart’s pounding, because I can’t read his face at all.
“A few months,” he says. “And you were carrying that around by yourself the whole time?”
“I know how it looks. I know I should’ve told you sooner, and I hate that you found out from a spilled bag instead of from me.” The words come fast. “But I wasn’t trying to keep it from you forever. I was trying to figure out how to say it without it turning into this huge thing.”
“Then why not just say it? You really thought I’d be upset?”
“No, that’s the thing. You’d have been really sweet about it, and somehow that’s worse.
” I press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“Because then we’re both in it. You checking in, asking how it went, hoping every month.
And I didn’t want it to turn into this thing I had to pull off for you.
I wanted one piece of it that was just mine. ”
“Hey. Charly, look at me.”
“Let me get it all out, or I’ll lose my nerve.
” I drop my hands. “I didn’t start this to hand you a baby and earn my spot.
I started it because I want to try, for me.
And I sat on it because my whole life, love came with a bill attached.
Be good enough, be useful enough, give them a reason to keep you.
I couldn’t stand the thought of lying next to you every month, watching you hope, feeling like my body was the only thing keeping me here. ”