Chapter 22 #2
It fell down around her shoulders when I lifted the shirt.
Honey-blonde, a little wavy where she'd slept on it, longer than I'd realized when it was up.
I put my hand in it and felt the weight of it on my palm, and held the back of her head and kissed her like a man who'd been waiting thirty-four years to be allowed to.
Her mouth was warm. She tasted like coffee and like Tessa. Her lips parted under mine, and her hand came up to my jaw and stayed there. She made a small sound into my mouth—not the sound, never the sound, a small one—and I felt it on my tongue, and my skin went hot all over.
I pulled back to look at her.
She had a smile I hadn't seen on her face before. Slow. Pleased. The smile of a woman who wasn't holding anything in.
I'd been seeing the controlled version of her face for six weeks. I hadn't known there was another version.
There was another version.
"Cole."
"Yeah."
"Slow."
I'd been planning to.
I went slow. I put her on the bed, and I went slow.
I kissed the place at her throat where her pulse was.
I kissed the line of her collarbone—she had a small cluster of freckles there I'd been wanting to map.
I kissed her shoulder. The hollow under her ear.
The faint freckle high on her cheekbone I'd noticed across the kitchen for weeks and not let myself look at.
Her skin was warm. Soft in the way a woman's skin is soft when she's lived with another body close to hers all her life and never been touched the way she deserved to be touched.
I tried to touch her that way now. Slow.
With my mouth. With my fingertips. With my whole hand, flat, at the small of her back where it fit.
"Don't stop."
"I'm not going to."
I kept going. I kissed her stomach—soft, warm, with the faint silver lines at her hip that I knew came from Noah and that I loved her for. I put my hand there and let it stay. The place where she'd carried her son. The place where her body had done a thing that mattered.
I kissed her hip. I kissed the inside of her wrist when she brought her hand to my face. I kissed her palm. I kissed every part of her I could reach with my mouth, and when my hand found the scar on her ribcage—I knew where it was now—I put my mouth there for one count, soft, and moved on.
She made a sound.
A small one. Half a breath. Her hand tightened in my hair.
It was not the sound.
It wasn't even close.
Nicholas had lied. Or he had told the truth about a Tessa who didn't live here anymore. Either way, the woman under my hands wasn't his. The sounds she made were hers and mine, and Nicholas could keep whatever he thought he remembered from a marriage that had ended.
I gave him nothing. I gave her everything.
I traced her ribs with my thumb. I traced the curve of her waist. I learned her hipbones the way I'd been wanting to learn them—slow, with my hands, the way I'd learned every other surface that mattered in my life.
She was looking up at me with her hair in a halo on the pillow and the gold light from the curtain on the side of her face.
There was a flush at her collarbone, spreading.
Her breath wasn't steady. Her eyes were green up close in a way they weren't from across a room—wet at the corners, not because she was sad, but because of what she was looking at.
Me.
I had spent thirty-four years not knowing a woman could look at me like that.
I had her.
"Cole."
"Tessa."
I'd been holding back for two minutes longer than I'd wanted to. She knew. She was the one who pulled me down.
I went where she pulled me.
I kept moving. I held her where she needed to be held. I watched her face because I wasn't going to take my eyes off her, because I had been waiting thirty-four years to be the man looking at her like this, and I wasn't going to miss any of it.
Her breath caught.
Then her breath stopped catching.
Her eyes shut. Her mouth opened. The flush at her collarbone spread up her throat.
Her hand on my back tightened, and then let go, and then tightened again.
A sound came out of her—small at first, then less small, then something I'd never heard before in my life and would hear in my head for a long time after this morning ended.
It wasn't the sound.
Nicholas had never heard the sound she made when a man held her right.
I held her right.
I felt her come apart under my hands, and I held her there, and I watched her, and I gave her every second I had in me to give.
"I've got you."
"I know."
"Tessa. I've got you."
"I know, Cole. I know."
I let myself go after she did. I kept my eyes on her face for as long as I could. The way she looked at me at the end—open, undone, mine—was a thing I was going to carry. I'd been carrying things for thirty-four years. This one I was going to be glad to carry.
The light from the curtain moved across the pillow.
Her hand was on my back. My mouth was at her temple.
The morning was a long, slow, gold thing, and Tessa was under me, and her body was telling mine that she was here, that she was staying, that whatever Nicholas had stood in a parking lot and tried to give me had been the gift of a man who had nothing left to give.
She was mine.
I was hers.
That was the only thing in the room.
Afterwards, she was on my chest. Her hair was across my collarbone. The blanket had come down to our waists. The light had moved off the pillow and onto the floor.
She was breathing slowly. Her hand was on my ribs, the thumb moving in small, absent passes, the way her hand moved when she was thinking about something that wasn't a problem.
I closed my eyes.
She was here. Her hair was on my chest. Her leg was over mine.
The lease at the front door had both our names on it.
The room down the hall in Ashford Street was painted in the color of her eyes.
Her son had been at school an hour ago and would be home at three and would put his shoes by the door because he lived here, in this apartment, with the man his mother had chosen.
She had chosen this.
She had chosen it at the bakery when she'd told me she didn't want me to leave.
She had chosen it the night after, in this bed, with her hand on my chest in the dark.
She'd been choosing it every morning since, in the way she reached for me when she woke up, in the way she kissed me at the door, in the way her hair had been down today because she didn't pin it up for me anymore.
Nicholas had stood in a parking lot and tried to make me forget that.
He had failed.
"Cole."
"Yeah."
"That was a good morning."
Her voice was soft. Half-sleepy.
"Yeah, it was."
She made a small sound against my chest—half a laugh, half a hum, the kind of sound a woman makes when she's settling in to sleep against the man she's chosen. Her hand stilled on my ribs.
I put my hand in her hair and held the back of her head, and let myself feel her breathing.
She was here.
She was mine.
That was enough.