32. Luisa
— ? —
Luisa
The drive back from the clinic was quiet.
Poppy slept in her car seat, her fever finally broken, her cheeks pink instead of flushed, her breathing deep and easy. Wade drove with one hand on the wheel and one hand in mine, his thumb tracing absent patterns across my knuckles like he needed the contact to convince himself we were all okay.
Dawn was breaking over Bellhaven, soft gold light spilling across the harbor, polishing the water to glass. The town was still asleep, streets empty except for a few early-morning fishermen heading toward their boats.
“She scared me,” I said quietly.
“Me too.”
“I’ve never seen her fever that high.”
“She’s strong.” He squeezed my hand. “Like her mother.”
We pulled into my driveway. The house looked different in the early light, softer, warmer, more like home than it had any right to be.
Wade carried Poppy inside while I held doors open, and together we tucked her into her bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, watched her burrow into her pillows like a small animal seeking comfort.
“I’ll check on her in an hour,” Wade said. “Make sure the fever stays down.”
“You don’t need to-”
“I want to.”
We lingered a moment, looking down at our daughter. She was so small. So precious. The terror of the last few hours still lingered in my chest, that primal fear of losing her mixing with a second feeling, one that felt a lot like gratitude.
He’d come. The moment I called, he’d come. No hesitation, no questions, just I’m on my way.
“Wade.”
“Mm?”
“Can we talk?”
He looked over at me, his face tired, dark circles under his eyes, stubble along his jaw, shirt wrinkled from hours in a clinic chair, but his gaze was alert. Attentive. Ready for whatever I needed.
“Of course.”
We went to the living room. The new couch was there, the one he’d sent without a note, without expectation, just because he knew I needed one. I sank onto it, felt how comfortable it was, how solid.
He sat beside me. Close, but not touching.
“I need to say something,” I started.
“Take your time.”
I stared at my hands. Tried to organize the chaos of thoughts and feelings that had been swirling through me for weeks.
“I want this,” I said finally. “I want you. I want… us.”
He didn’t move or speak. Just waited.
“But I’m terrified.” The words came out rough, scraped raw by exhaustion and emotion. “I’m so scared of getting hurt again that I keep pushing you away every time we get close. And I don’t want to do that anymore.”
“Luisa-”
“Let me finish.” I looked up at him. “I need you to understand what you’re signing up for. I’m not the girl you married. I’m not the girl who believed in fairy tales and happily ever afters. I’m someone who’s been broken, and I’m still figuring out how the pieces fit back together.”
“I know.”
“And I might get scared again. I might pull away when things feel too good. I might need you to be patient with me in ways that aren’t fair to ask.”
“I know that too.”
“So if you want this, if you really want to try, you need to understand that it won’t be easy. That I come with damage and baggage and a four-year-old who will absolutely judge you if you mess up French toast.”
His mouth twitched. “Noted.”
“Wade, I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He reached out, took my hands in his.
“Luisa, I have spent the last four years trying to become someone worthy of you. I have done therapy and self-reflection and read a stack of books on communication in relationships. I have practiced vulnerability until it no longer makes me want to vomit. I have done all of this because I knew. I knew, that one day I would have this conversation with you, and I wanted to be ready.”
My eyes were burning.
“I don’t expect easy,” he continued. “I expect hard. I expect setbacks and fights and moments when you doubt everything. And I will be here for all of it. Every wall you build, I will wait outside it. Every time you pull away, I will stay close, patient and unhurried, right where you can see me. Until you’re ready to let me back in. ”
“Why?” The word came out broken. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I love you.” He said it simply, like it was obvious.
Like it was the easiest truth in the world.
“I have loved you since you threw me on a Nantucket street when I was twenty-five years old and too arrogant to know what hit me. I loved you when we got married and when we fell apart and every single day of the four years we spent apart. I will love you when we’re eighty and can’t remember where we put our reading glasses.
I will love you beyond that, if there’s a beyond.
You are the only woman I have ever wanted, and you are the only woman I will ever want. ”
The tears spilled over.
“I love you too,” I whispered.
His breath went ragged. For a moment he just stared at me, like he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
“Say it again.”
“I love you.” I was crying now, tears streaming down my face, and I didn’t care. “I love you, you ridiculous, stubborn, impossibly patient man. I love you, and I’m tired of being afraid of it.”
He kissed me.
Not like before, not desperate or heated or hungry. This kiss was soft. Reverent. The kind of kiss you give someone when you finally have all the time in the world.
“I’ve wanted to hear that for four years,” he murmured against my mouth.
“I’ve wanted to say it.”
“Then say it again.”
“I love you.”
He smiled into the kiss. “Again.”
“I love you.” I was laughing now, laughing and crying at the same time, my hands finding his face, his hair, his shoulders. “I love you, I love you, I love you-”
He pulled me onto his lap.
I went willingly, straddling him, my dress riding up around my thighs. His hands found my hips, steadied me, held me like he’d waited years for permission. The kiss deepened, still soft, still unhurried, but building. Building toward what had been building for twelve years.
“I need you,” I whispered.
“You have me.”
“No.” I pulled back enough to look at him. “I need to feel you. Close. Inside me. I need to know you’re real.”
His eyes darkened. “Are you sure? You haven’t slept-”
“I don’t care about sleep. I care about this.”
For a long moment, he just looked at me. Searching my face for doubt, for hesitation, for any sign that I wasn’t ready. Whatever he found there must have satisfied him, because his hands tightened on my hips.
“Bedroom,” he said. “I want you in a bed. Properly.”
We stood together, his hand in mine, and walked down the hallway past Poppy’s room, pausing briefly to check on her, still sleeping soundly, and into my bedroom.
The early morning light filtered through the curtains, turning everything soft and gold. My bed was unmade, pillows scattered, the sheets still rumpled from my restless night. It looked like exactly what it was: a space that had been lonely for too long.
Wade closed the door behind us. Quietly, carefully. Then he turned to look at me.
“Come here.”
I went.
He kissed me again, deeper this time, his hands sliding up my back to find the zipper of my dress. He lowered it slowly, so slowly, the fabric parting to reveal skin inch by inch. When the dress finally fell away, pooling at my feet, he pulled back to look at me.
“God,” he breathed. “Look at you.”
“You’re overdressed.”
“Then help me fix that.”
I reached for his shirt. Unbuttoned it slowly, deliberately, taking my time the way he’d taken his. Each button revealed more of him, the broad planes of his chest, the trail of dark hair leading down, the old familiar landscape of his body that I’d mapped so many times before.
The shirt fell away.
And there, hanging against his chest on a thin gold chain, was my wedding ring.
“Wade.” My voice cracked. “You still-”
“Every day.” He lifted the chain over his head, set it carefully on the nightstand. “Kept you close to my heart. Literally.”
I was crying again. Damn it.
“Come here,” he said, and pulled me down onto the bed.
We landed in a tangle of limbs, laughing, the laughter turning to sighs as our bodies found each other.
And then the laughing stopped. Four years of careful distance, the pillow walls, the closed doors, the hands I’d kept rigidly to myself, came apart all at once, and I was suddenly, humiliatingly frantic.
My hands were everywhere. I couldn’t get him close enough, couldn’t get him fast enough, couldn’t stop the greedy, graceless pulling at his shoulders and his back and whatever was still between us.
I had wanted this so long the wanting had curdled into a kind of grief, and now it was here, under my hands, and I couldn’t go slow if my life depended on it.
He rolled me beneath him, his weight settling over me, his mouth finding my neck, the swell of my breast.
“We have to be quiet,” I managed. “Poppy-”
“I remember.”
His mouth closed over my nipple and I bit back a moan.
“That’s cheating,” I gasped.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He moved lower, trailing kisses down my stomach, his hands hooking into the waistband of my underwear. I lifted my hips to help him slide them off, and then I was bare beneath him, exposed and wanting, my whole body aching for his touch.
“Fuck,” he murmured again. “I forgot what you do to me.”
He kissed my hip. My inner thigh. The crease where my leg met my body. Everywhere but where I needed him, deliberate and maddening.
“Wade-”
“Shh. I’ve waited four years. Let me take my time.”
His mouth found me.
I shoved a pillow over my face to muffle the sound I made, half moan, half sob, pleasure sharp enough to cut. His tongue moved against me slow and worshipful, like he was relearning me, remapping territory he’d once known by heart.
“You taste the same,” he said against my skin. “I’d almost forgotten. But my body remembered.”
He slid a finger inside me and I arched off the bed.
“Easy.” His free hand pressed against my stomach, holding me down. “I’ve got you.”
He added another finger. Curled them just right. Found the spot he’d always known and stroked it with devastating precision.