12. Ivy #2
My instinct tells me to push him away and demand a signature by shoving the counter papers in his face, yet I choose to close the gap between us and press my mouth to his.
The kiss carries grief rather than hunger, mourning the years we wasted, the marriage we destroyed, and the people we used to be before turning into this wreckage. His hands come up to frame my face, and a mutual trembling passes between us so completely that I can’t tell who is shaking.
“This doesn’t fix anything,” I whisper against his lips. “I still haven’t decided.”
“Of course.”
“Then why are you still here?”
“Because you haven’t told me to leave.”
The truth of his statement fills the quiet space between us. He’s entirely correct that I haven’t changed things, and I have no idea if I possess the strength to do so now.
We end up in my bedroom for the second time, but this is slower, sadder. Two people who’ve finally said everything and don’t know what comes next.
“This is weakness,” I whisper as he backs me toward the bed. “I’m so tired of being weak for you.”
“You’re not weak.” His hands frame my face, thumbs brushing away tears I didn’t know were still falling. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. You built a life from nothing. You raised our daughter alone. You survived me.”
“Kurt…”
He lowers me onto the mattress like I’m something sacred. His mouth finds my throat, my collarbone, the hollow between my breasts where my heart is pounding so hard he must be able to feel it against his lips.
“I love you.” The words land against my skin like a brand. “I’ve loved you since the day I met you, and I was too stupid to show it, and I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’ll say it until you believe it.” His hands work the hem of my shirt up, slow, reverent. “I love you. I love who you were before I broke us. I love who you became after.”
My back arches as his mouth traces the stretch marks across my stomach. He lingers there, pressing kisses to each silver line like they’re sacred text.
“I love these,” he murmurs. “I love that your body made room for her. I hate that I wasn’t here to watch it happen.”
“You weren’t.”
“I know. I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for it.”
His fingers find the waistband of my pants, and I lift my hips to help him, past the point of pretending I don’t want this. He pulls the fabric down slowly, his mouth following the path he reveals, and I fist my hands in the sheets because if I touch him I’ll shatter.
“Tell me to stop.” His breath is hot against my inner thigh. “Tell me this is weakness and you don’t want it, and I’ll stop.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’d be lying.”
He rewards my honesty with his mouth, and I bite down on my own hand to keep from crying out. The pleasure is sharp, almost painful, and my body responds to him like no time has passed at all. Like the time apart was just a pause, not an ending.
“I love you,” he says again, the words vibrating against my most sensitive flesh. “I love the way you taste. I love the sounds you make. I love that you’re letting me do this even though you have every reason to push me away.”
“Kurt, please…”
“Please what?”
“Please stop talking and just…”
He does.
His tongue moves with devastating precision, remembering exactly what I need, and my hips roll against his face. One hand grips my thigh to hold me open. The other slides up my body to palm my breast, thumb circling my nipple until I’m gasping.
“Come for me.” His voice is wrecked. “Let me feel you fall apart.”
I do. The orgasm crashes through me like a wave, and I hear myself cry out his name, and I don’t care who hears. He works me through it, gentle now, easing me down from the peak until I’m boneless and trembling.
Then he’s crawling up my body, settling between my thighs, and I can feel how much he wants me pressing against my entrance.
“Tell me you want this.”
“I want this.”
“Tell me it’s not just weakness.”
“It’s not weakness.” I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer. “It’s the stupidest, bravest thing I’ve ever done.”
He slides into me slowly, inch by inch, his forehead pressed against mine, every flicker of emotion shows clearly on his face, exposing a mix of reverence, desperation, and the exact love I spent two years trying to forget.
“God, Ivy.” His voice breaks. “I love how this feels.”
“You forgot how this felt.”
“Never again.” He starts to move, long slow strokes that hit every nerve ending I have. “I’ll never forget again. I’ll never stop showing you. I’ll spend every day for the rest of my life proving that I see you.”
The grief doesn’t leave. It threads through every thrust, every kiss, every whispered promise. This isn’t just sex. This connection serves as an act of mourning and healing, bringing together two people who are trying to rebuild from the very ashes of what they burned.
“I love you,” he says again as the pleasure builds. “I love you. I love you.”
“Shut up.”
“Make me.”
I kiss him hard enough to bruise, and he swallows my moans as his pace increases. Harder now, more desperate. His hand slides between us to find my clit, and I shatter again, clenching around him so tight he groans into my mouth.
He follows moments later, my name on his lips, his whole body shuddering with release.
We lie there after, tangled together, breathing hard. The rain still pounds against the windows. The monitor shows Maddie still sleeping.
And for just a moment, I let myself pretend this could work.
***
I get up thirty minutes later and get dressed.
I reach for the divorce paper. The exit strategy. The proof that I don’t need him, that I can end this whenever I want, that I’m not trapped anymore.
“Ask me to leave.”
He’s pulled on his pants, nothing else, and his face is unreadable in the dim light.
“What?”
“For the last time. Say it and mean it. Ask me to leave, and I’ll drive away tonight. We can’t keep doing this to ourselves, Ivy.”
My hand stays on the papers.
“But if you can’t say it,” he continues, “then maybe that means something. Maybe it means there’s still something here worth fighting for.”
I stare at him across my dark kitchen. At this man who cost me a decade of my life. Who’s letting his company bleed money just to be here. Who sat through my entire ledger without a single excuse.
I pick up the papers.
He doesn’t move. And I tear them in half.
The sound is loud in the quiet kitchen, louder than it should be. I tear them again, and again, until the pages are confetti on my counter and there’s nothing left to sign.
“That doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I say. “It doesn’t mean we’re okay.”
“What does that mean?”
“It just means I’m done hiding behind an exit strategy because I keep running to it.”
He crosses the kitchen in three steps and pulls me into his arms, and I let him hold me while the rain pounds against the windows and Maddie sleeps upstairs and the shredded remains of my armor scatter.