24. Izzy #3
There’s a man in a gray overcoat standing in the open doors, and he doesn’t step out.
Silver hair. Wilson’s jaw, just thirty years older.
He looks at the string lights and the folding chairs and the two of us stopped in the middle of the roof, and he keeps one hand on the door so it won’t close, and he doesn’t come one step further.
Wilson goes completely still against me.
“That’s…”
“I know who it is.” I’ve seen the pictures. I’ve spent eight years not being invited to the house they were taken in. “Go.”
“Izzy…”
“Go, Wilson. He’s not getting out of that elevator. You’re going to have to walk over there.”
So he walks. About halfway across the roof he slows down like he might turn around, and then he keeps going.
I stand there under the lights and watch my husband stand in front of his father with the elevator doors trying to close on the both of them.
I can’t hear any of it and I don’t try to. Edward says something short. Wilson says something even shorter. Then Edward reaches into his coat and takes out an envelope, and Wilson looks at it for a long time before he takes it.
Then the doors close, and the elevator goes down, and Wilson just stands there with his back to me for a whole song.
When he finally comes back, he’s not crying. He mostly looks confused.
“He watched the interview.” He turns the envelope over in his hands.
It’s heavy paper with nothing written on it.
“Mom made him. He said he watched a man take the blame in front of an entire city to protect his wife, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done a goddamn thing for his.
” He almost smiles, but it doesn’t quite get there.
“He said he wasn’t sorry about the money. He said he was sorry about the chair.”
“What’s in the envelope?”
“The voicemail.” He laughs a little, this short surprised sound. “He had it typed up. The one he left me the morning we got married, the one I never listened to. He said I should have it in writing, since apparently I’m a man who writes things down now.”
He doesn’t open it. He puts it in the inside pocket of his jacket, right where he kept my rings for four months, and he takes my hand.
“Later,” he says. “Not tonight. Tonight I’ve got a wife.”
“Are you okay?”
“I honestly don’t know.” He looks over at the elevator doors. “He came up, though. He didn’t get out, but he came up. Eight years, Izzy. I’ll take the elevator.”
Then it’s just us and the string lights and the city glittering below.
“Wilson, wait.” I stop swaying and flatten both hands against his chest.
“Yeah? What is it?”
“I want to start trying.” The words come out steady even though my heart is pounding. “For a baby. I want to start trying tonight.”
His whole body goes still under my palms. “You’re sure?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for months.
I waited until I was sure I wanted it for myself, not because it was the next item on some list I made when I was twenty-two and didn’t know anything about anything.
” I trace the line of his jaw. “I know what the doctor said about the scarring. I know it might take a long time, or not happen at all. I want to try anyway. I want a family with you, Wilson. A real one. Ours.”
“Izzy, I…” His voice gives out.
“Tell me you want it too.” I grip his lapels. “Tell me I’m not insane for wanting this when we literally just spent a year relearning how to be married.”
“I want it.” He takes my face between his palms, eyes shining. “I want all of it. I want to watch you paint with a belly so big you have to lean back from the canvas. I want to argue about names for months and then let you pick whatever you want anyway. I want everything, Izzy. The whole thing.”
“Then take me home right now.” I grab his tie and start towing him toward the elevator. “We’re starting tonight.”
***
The penthouse is truly ours now.
The boxes have been unpacked for months, the rooms filled with furniture we chose together and canvases I painted and photographs on the walls that tell the story of eight years and one disaster and the long road back to each other.
We don’t rush getting to the bed. That’s new too.
He takes my dress off in the hallway, slowly, one shoulder and then the other, and he stops halfway to kiss the spot where the strap was.
His mouth is warm and I feel it all the way down to my toes.
I let him take his time because for once in our lives nobody’s in a hurry and nobody’s phone is buzzing and nobody has a flight to catch.
“You’re so fucking beautiful.” He says it against my collarbone, his lips brushing my skin with every word. “I don’t tell you that enough.”
“You tell me all the time.” I run my fingers through his hair while he works on the other strap.
“Not enough.” The dress pools at my feet and he just looks at me for a second, standing there in the hallway in nothing but my underwear, and the way he’s looking at me makes my stomach flip.
My shoes come off in the living room. His shirt actually survives for once, which has to be a first, and I take my time unbuttoning it while he watches me with dark eyes and his hands on my hips.
“You’re going too slow.” His voice is rough already.
“You’re going to wait.” I push the shirt off his shoulders and let it fall. “For once in your life, Wilson Carter, you’re going to be patient.”
We walk the rest of the way down the hall holding hands, half undressed in our own house, and I keep thinking about all the nights I walked this hallway by myself. All the nights I went to bed alone in a room that was too big and too quiet for one person.
He’s here now. He’s here and he’s not leaving and that still feels like a miracle sometimes.
He lays me down on our bed and then lies down next to me instead of climbing on top of me, and for a while we just look at each other in the lamplight.
His hand moves over my ribs and my hip and my stomach and stays there, warm and heavy, and I know exactly what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it too.
“Don’t.” I say it softly.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t make it a whole ceremony.” I hook my leg over his and pull him closer until I can feel him hard against my thigh. “It’s just us. Same as any other night.”
“It is not the same as any other night, Izzy.” But he’s smiling when he says it, and his hand slides lower, fingers tracing along the edge of my underwear, teasing.
“Wilson, I swear to God, if you don’t…”
He slips his hand inside and I stop talking. His fingers find me wet and ready and he makes this sound in the back of his throat, this low groan that I feel in my chest.
“Fuck, Izzy.” He strokes me slowly, so slowly, learning me all over again even though he already knows every inch of me by heart. “You’re so wet already.”
“I’ve been thinking about this all day.” I arch into his hand, trying to get more pressure, more friction, more anything. “All through the vows I kept thinking about getting you alone.”
“Yeah?” He circles my clit with his thumb and I gasp. “What were you thinking about?”
“This.” I grab his wrist to keep his hand where I want it. “Your hands on me. Your mouth on me. You inside me.”
He groans again and his fingers push inside me, curling up to find that spot that makes my whole body shake. I grab his shoulder and hold on while he works me open, slow and deliberate, his thumb still circling my clit in a rhythm that’s going to drive me insane.
“I want to taste you.” He pulls his hand away and I whimper at the loss. “Let me taste you, Izzy.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer. He slides down my body, pulling my underwear off as he goes, and then his mouth is on me and everything else goes quiet.