22. Juliette #3
“I love you,” he says, moving. “I loved you when I was too stupid to know the word.”
“Zachary-”
“I loved you the whole six years I starved us both.” His hips roll and the angle changes and I make a sound that is not language. “Fuck. There. I felt that. I love you now, with your hair smelling like a fire that almost took you, and I am never going to be quiet about it again.”
“Don’t stop.” It’s a sob and an order. “This feels - oh god, this feels way too good, I can’t-”
“I’m not planning to.” His forehead drops to mine. One of his hands slides between us, finds the swollen, aching place above where he’s buried, and starts circling in time with the next thrust. “Let it happen. I’ve been waiting so fucking long to feel you come on me. Don’t hold it. Not this time.”
I break somewhere in the middle of that.
The tears arrive without asking and so does everything else, both at once - the clench that starts deep and wrecks outward, my body locking down around him so tight he groans like I’ve hurt him, the wet sound of him still moving through it because he promised slow and he is keeping it even now.
I come crying. Actually crying. His name and salt and six years leaving my body in the same long exhale, my nails in his shoulders, my mouth open against his cheek.
“That’s it. Fuck. Jules. That’s it. I’ve always-” His rhythm stutters. “I can’t - I’m going to-”
“Do it.” I hold him there, hold him in, hold him together. “I want to feel it. I want all of it.”
He follows me over with his face buried in my neck and his arms wrapped so tight they’re a splint, holding me together at the exact moment I stop needing to be held together.
I feel him pulse. Feel the heat of it. Feel the wrecked, helpless sound he makes against my skin like it was torn out of him.
For a long time we don’t move. His heartbeat slams against my cheek, then slows. He’s still inside me. I can feel the mess of us every time either of us breathes. The fire in the wood stove - the good fire, the domesticated one - pops once and settles.
“That’s the thing I was afraid of,” I whisper.
“Which thing?”
“That it would feel like this.” My voice is ruined. Honest. “That it never stopped being able to feel like this. That I could have had this the whole time and I was too much of a coward to say the words.”
He pulls the quilt over us and doesn’t answer, which is an answer. His mouth finds my temple. Stays there.
Later, still tangled together on the couch, still sticky, still not quite willing to be two separate people again, he presses a bookmark into my hand.
His terrible handwriting. Four words.
You were awake. I meant it anyway.
“When did you write this?”
“Last night. After I left.”
“You planned this.”
“I hoped.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I’ve been hoping since the moment you came to the island.”
“That’s a lot of hoping.”
“I’m a hopeful person.” He traces the line of my jaw. “When it comes to you.”
I pick the bookmark back up and read it out loud, slowly, in the voice he used to read mine.
“You were awake. I meant it anyway.”
“That’s not how I sound.”
“That’s exactly how you sound. Gravelly. Overly sincere. Like a man narrating a documentary about his own feelings.”
“I do not-” He stops. Considers. “The documentary thing might be fair.”
I look at the bookmark. At his cramped, uneven letters. At the evidence of a man who learned my language and is finally speaking it back.
“The Christmas Stroll is in three days,” I say.
“I know.”
“Your mother thinks she’s going to announce your engagement to Nicole in front of the whole island.”
“She’s going to be disappointed.”
“What are you planning?”
He does the thing he’s started doing when I push - takes my hand, turns it over, and traces one slow line across my palm like he’s reading a route on a map only he can see. It is deeply unfair as a negotiating tactic and we both know it.
He pulls me closer, his lips brushing my temple. “Let me worry about that.”
“I don’t let other people worry about things for me.”
“I know. It’s one of your more infuriating qualities.” He kisses the top of my head. “But this time, trust me. Just for three days. And then I’ll show you.”
His heartbeat under my ear has finally slowed to something civilian. Outside, a truck passes on the hill road; the quilt smells like woodsmoke and both of us.
“Tell me one thing,” I murmur. “About the plan.”
“One thing.” He considers, his fingers moving in my hair. “It’s the first thing I’ve ever planned that my mother would call a scene.”
“That’s not information.”
“It’s a preview.” I can hear the smile in his chest. “Sleep, Juliette. Three days.”
“Show me what?”
“What it looks like when I finally choose you out loud.”
The words land in my chest and settle there, warm and heavy.
“That’s very romantic.”
“I’m feeling romantic.”
“It’s also very vague.”
“Intentionally so.” He grins. “I want to see your face when it happens.”
I should push. Should demand details, plans, specifics.
Instead, I curl into him and let myself trust.
Just for three days.