Chapter 6
chapter
six
Henry
I have to force my gaze off of her wearing nothing but that thin t-shirt. Her tight little nipples are pressed against the fabric, begging for my attention. I adjust my semi-hard dick and stand to go make sure the house is locked up.
“Bayou, bed,” I tell my dog. She happily pads over to her dog bed against the far wall of my room.
Our room. Mine and Gracie’s. I’m beginning to rethink asking Oliver to move out. If he was here, my wife would be in my bed every night. What sweet torture.
I come back into the bedroom and find Gracie standing in the same place I left her. Beside the bed, but not in the bed.
“Do you need something?” I ask.
“I’m okay,” she says. “This is okay. This is fine. It’s totally fine.”
“You've said 'fine' several times.”
“And I meant it every time.”
“I’m thinking maybe you’re not fine. Firefly, I can sleep on the floor. I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
She shakes her head. “We’ve slept in the same room before,” she says. “I mean, it’s been a while since we were kids and having a big sleepover in your parents’ living room. But still. We’re adults.” She puts a hand to her chest. “I am an adult.”
“Are you worried I’m going to take advantage because surely you know I‘d never touch you without permission.”
Her wide eyes look up at me and she shakes her head. “No, of course not. I trust you.”
“Are you worried you’re not going to be able to control yourself around all of this?” I motion to my body and wiggle my butt in what I know is a silly movement.
She laughs. “You’re ridiculous.” But she crawls into the bed. She starfishes herself, spreading all her limbs out and then moves them like she’s making a bed angel.
“What are you doing?”
“These sheets are amazing, and I love how they’re so cold.”
I chuckle, then climb in on my side. “Well, stay over there on your side. I don’t want your feet cooties.”
She gasps. “I do not have feet cooties.”
“You totally do.”
Her legs spread over to my side, her toes making contact with my calves.
“Woman, get your feet back on your side of the bed,” I say but there’s no heat in my words.
She giggles.
We’re being playful. How things used to be between us before I broke her heart and she pulled so far out of my life that I barely see her anymore.
God, I’ve missed her. I roll onto my side to face her and find her smiling at me. I want to kiss her. I want to lean over and take her mouth and tell her all of the things I’ve kept to myself these last several years.
Then she frowns. “I can’t believe we’re really married.”
“It doesn’t seem so unbelievable to me,” I admit. “I guess I kinda figured we’d always end up here.”
Her mouth opens, then closes. Then she simply rolls over and faces the other direction.
I sigh. “Goodnight, Gracie,” I say.
She doesn't answer right away, and I don't push.
I just lie there, listening to the quiet settle around us—the crickets outside, the slow turn of the ceiling fan, the particular kind of silence that only exists when someone you love is breathing three feet away from you and you are acutely, painfully aware of every inch of space between you.
She smells like my soap. My shampoo. My sheets.
I am going to lose my entire mind. Not to mention that my dick will likely fall off it’s so goddamn hard.
“Goodnight, Henry.” Soft. Barely there.
I reach over and turn off the lamp.
The room goes dark—not fully. Moonlight comes through the curtains in that pale blue-white way it does, laying a stripe across the quilt at the foot of the bed.
I stare up at the ceiling fan, making its slow rotations, and I think about how I told myself I could do this.
Share a bed with Gracie Howard—Gracie Howard, my wife—and just sleep.
I am an idiot.
I can feel the warmth radiating off her from across that foot of empty mattress like she's her own small sun.
I'm aware of the way the bed shifts with her breathing.
The way she goes still. The particular kind of still that means she's not sleeping, is nowhere near sleeping, and is probably staring at the ceiling with the same blank focus I am.
I don't reach for her.
I want to. God, I want to. I want to roll over and pull her into me and press my mouth to her hair and say I've been halfway in love with you since we were seventeen, and I was too much of a coward to do anything about it until I did the worst possible thing instead.
I want to say I'm sorry. For everything.
But I don't.
I just lie there.
And somewhere between deciding not to move and the slow exhale that follows, my hand drifts.
Not on purpose—or maybe it is, maybe my body has simply stopped pretending it has any sense of self-preservation.
My knuckles come to rest in the narrow strip of mattress between us.
Not reaching. Not asking for anything. Just there.
Neither of us speaks.
And then—
The smallest thing.
Her pinky finger brushes against mine. Once. A whisper of a touch so light I might have imagined it. Except I know I didn't. Because every nerve ending I have just short-circuited at once and I am not a man who imagines things like this.
I don't move.
I don't think I breathe.
I just let it happen. Let our fingers rest against each other in the dark, this smallest possible point of contact, this centimeter of skin that somehow holds the weight of twenty years.
How I used to chase her around holding frogs and trying to make her squeal.
And how she once fell asleep with her head on my shoulder when she was over for a movie night at my parents’.
And now she’s this woman who is currently wrecking me without even trying.