28. Danica
— ? —
Danica
The drive home was quiet.
Not an uncomfortable quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when everything important has already been said, and words would just get in the way. Stefan’s hand was warm on my thigh, his thumb tracing slow circles through the fabric of my gala dress.
Our home. I’d said it without thinking, but the words felt right. Like something that had been broken was finally clicking back into place.
He pulled into the driveway at eleven-thirty. The house loomed in front of us, all those windows I used to love, all that space I used to feel lost in. I’d walked out of this house five weeks ago with a suitcase and a broken heart, convinced I’d never come back.
And now here I was.
Stefan came around to open my door, offered his hand like a gentleman. I took it and let him lead me up the front steps.
He unlocked the door. Pushed it open. Stepped aside so I could go first.
I walked inside.
And stopped.
My slippers were still by the stairs. The fuzzy ones with the worn heels, the ones I’d kicked off on my way to pack my suitcase. They were sitting exactly where I’d left them, slightly askew, waiting for feet that hadn’t been here in weeks.
I walked further in.
My coffee mug was still by the sink. The one that said “World’s Okayest Event Planner” that Evie had given me as a joke. It was sitting on the counter, clean and dry, like someone had washed it and put it back and waited for me to use it again.
I went upstairs. Stefan followed, silent, letting me explore.
The bedroom. Our bedroom. The bed was made, but my pillow was still on my side. My robe was still hanging on the back of the bathroom door. The book I’d been reading was still on my nightstand, bookmark in place.
Nothing had been moved.
I opened my closet. All my clothes were still there. Dresses and blouses and jeans, arranged exactly as I’d left them.
Then I opened his closet.
And there, hanging in the back, protected by a garment bag that had been left unzipped just enough to see inside, was a white dress shirt.
Two orange handprints. One on the collar, from where I’d steadied his jaw. One on the chest, from where I’d grabbed him when he kissed me. The shirt he’d been wearing the night we met, the one I’d ruined with my careless hands, the one he’d told me to leave.
“You didn’t move anything,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
Stefan was in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching me.
“I figured you’d need your stuff when you came back.”
“If.”
“When.” His voice was certain. “I never said if, Dani. It was always when.”
I touched the shirt. The orange had faded a little, but the handprint on the collar was still perfect. Every finger.
“You kept the shirt.”
“I kept everything.” He pushed off the doorframe, walked toward me slowly.
“Every coffee mug. Every slipper. Every pillow that still smelled like you.” He stopped in front of me, close enough to touch but not touching.
“I kept everything, Dani. Because getting rid of it would have meant accepting you weren’t coming back. And I couldn’t do that.”
I looked up at him. This man. This ridiculous, infuriating, devoted man who had waited for me with a tiger on his face and kept my handprints in his closet and never, not once, stopped believing I would come home.
I kissed him.
He made a sound against my mouth, surprise and relief and hunger all tangled together, and then his arms were around me and he was lifting me off my feet.
“Upstairs?” he asked against my lips.
“We’re already upstairs.”
“Fair point.”
He carried me to the bed. Our bed. The one I’d slept in alone for so many nights before I left, counting ceiling tiles and wondering where everything went wrong.
He laid me down gently, reverently, like I was something precious that might break if he wasn’t careful.
“Dani.” His voice was rough. “Are you sure? Because if you need more time, if this is too fast…”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
He shut up. For a while.
He found the zipper at the back of my dress and took it down slowly, one inch at a time, his mouth following it.
Between my shoulder blades. The small of my back.
The dress went to the floor and I stood there in our bedroom in nothing, and he looked at me like the closet had looked.
Like everything was still exactly where he’d left it.
“My turn,” I said.
I undid his tie. His shirt, button by button, while he stood very still and let me. When I got it open I put my hand flat on his chest, right where the paint had been on the other shirt, and pressed.
“Here,” I said. “This is where I ruined you.”
“You keep saying ruined.”
“You keep letting me.”
I pushed him back onto the bed, our bed, and climbed over him, and then he rolled us because he was done being still, and I let him.
Face to face. Plain and slow and nothing clever about it, the one thing we hadn’t done in weeks of doing everything else.
His weight on me. My knees at his hips. His forehead to mine while he pushed inside, and neither of us breathing until he was all the way there.
“I love you,” he said.
I didn’t answer. Not yet. I wanted to see what he’d do with the silence.
He moved. Slow, deep, unhurried, like he had nothing to prove and all night to do it, and every time he pulled back and pressed in again he said it.
“I love you.”
Stroke.
“I love you.”
Stroke.
Not asking. Not a speech. A metronome. Like he’d say it a thousand times whether I ever answered or not, and every one of them landed somewhere I’d been keeping locked for months.
I lasted eleven.
“I love you,” I said, and it came out cracked, and he stopped moving entirely.
“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
He closed his eyes. Opened them. Started again, and now every time he said it I answered, and it got less slow, his hand under my thigh pulling me tighter around him, my nails in his back, the two of us trading it back and forth until the words stopped being words and were just the sound we made.
“Where are you?” he asked, right at the edge, his voice gone to pieces. “Dani. Tell me where you are.”
“Home.”
That was what did it. I came saying it, home, home, his name, and he followed a breath later with I love you in my mouth like he was giving it back to me to keep.
A call and response. A vow we were making with our bodies and our words.
Afterward, we lay tangled in the sheets, his arm around me, my head on his chest. I could hear his heartbeat slowing, feel his breathing even out.
“I should get water,” I murmured.
“Don’t move.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“I’ll get you water. Just… stay. For one more minute.”
I stayed.
Eventually, though, biology won. I slipped out of bed and grabbed the nearest thing I could find to cover myself with, his tuxedo jacket from the gala, discarded in the heat of things and now draped over the footboard.
I shrugged it on, and something hard knocked against my hip.
I reached into the pocket.
And pulled out a ring.
My ring. The one I’d left on his nightstand the night I walked out. Three carats, custom designed, the symbol of everything we’d built and broken.
“Stefan?”
He sat up, saw what I was holding.
“I’ve been carrying that in my pocket,” he said quietly. “Every day since you left.”
“Every day?”
“Every single day. In case…” He swallowed. “In case you came back. In case I needed to give it to you. In case I had the chance to ask you to stay.”
My eyes filled with tears.
“I couldn’t leave it in a drawer,” he continued. “I needed it close. I needed to feel the weight of it. To remind myself what I was fighting for.”
I looked at the ring. It felt heavier than I remembered.
“I won’t take it,” I said.
His face fell. “Dani…”
“Not like this.” I held it out to him. “Ask me properly.”
Understanding dawned in his eyes. He took the ring, climbed out of bed, and dropped to one knee on the bedroom floor.
Naked. Hair disheveled. Eyes bright with hope.
It should have been ridiculous. Instead, it was perfect.
“Danica Salvatore,” he said, his voice shaking. “Will you stay married to me?”
I laughed. I was crying and laughing at the same time, tears streaming down my face while my whole body shook with joy.
“Yes.” I pulled him up to his feet. “Yes, you idiot. Yes.”
He slid the ring onto my finger. It fit perfectly, the way it always had.
“But I have conditions,” I added.
He pulled back slightly, looking at me. “Conditions?”
“Lots of them. And they’re non-negotiable.”
Something shifted in his expression. Not worry. Relief. Like he’d been waiting for this. Like he wanted boundaries, wanted rules, wanted something concrete to hold onto.
“Name them,” he said. “And I mean it.”
I smiled. “Tomorrow. Right now, I just want to stay in this bed with my husband.”
“That,” he said, pulling me back down onto the mattress, “can definitely be arranged.”