Chapter 26 Mara — Day 78 #2
That's what he does first. Not the buttons of my shirt.
My braid. He turns me gently by the shoulders and takes the tie off the end and unweaves it with his fingers, section by section, all the way to the crown.
When it's loose he brings it forward over my shoulder and lets it fall down my chest, and he turns me back to face him, and he says, low, “There you are.”
I feel something in my sternum let go that I didn't know had been held.
I unclasp my father's watch and set it on the nightstand. He waits while I do it. When I turn back, he undoes my shirt. His hands are steady. He kisses the hollow of my throat when he gets there. He kisses the flat plane below my collarbone. He kisses the space between my breasts. He looks up.
“Yes,” I say, before he asks. “Yes. Yes.”
He smiles against my skin.
We take our time. When he reaches for the nightstand, I put the condom in his hand myself and wait until the choice is visible between us. Then I draw him back.
That's the shape of it: no rush, no argument, no missing question.
He undresses me the way he mended Rafe's saddle—patient, aware of every seam.
I undress him. I put my hand over the place on his ribs where a bruise faded a month ago and my mouth on the pulse under his jaw.
He makes a sound against my hair I've never heard before—low, a little broken, grateful.
We get to the bed. He lays me back on the quilt. He follows me down. His body is warm and heavy and known, and I open for him the way a person opens a door in her own house, without thinking, because it's her house.
“Bastien.”
“I've got you.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, Mara Vale.”
He goes slow. He goes so slow it undoes me in a way that isn't like any of the other times.
He watches my face. He says my name when he moves.
I say his — both of them, because he asked me to earlier, and because he laughs, quietly, when I do.
I feel the whole seventy-eight days in my chest, and the four years of the ranch before it, and the winter my father died, and the summer my mother left, and every unclaimed edge of me, and I feel him gather all of it up in the two hands that carried me up the stairs, and I feel him hold it still.
I hear my own breath. I hear his. I feel the small tremor go through him, and I know I put it there. I know the sound low in his throat is my name.
I say his name again. I say it against his shoulder.
He answers by pressing his forehead to mine and staying there while it moves through both of us—quiet, warm, with no lie or wall between us.
Afterwards, we don't talk for a while.
He's on his side, and I'm on mine, and his arm is heavy across my hip, and his hand is spread open on my belly like he's making sure I'm here.
The light in the room has gone from gold to honey to slow amber.
Somewhere outside, a cow's complaining about something inconsequential.
I hear Rafe answering her in the tone he uses for animals, which is nothing like the tone he uses for people, and I love that boy for one whole second before I remember not to admit to it.
His hand traces along my hip. Not on purpose. Just his hand knowing where I am now. I've spent a lot of my life not being touched. I forgot what it does to a person to be touched like that — without asking for anything, without needing anything, just because he wants to know I'm still here.
I get up eventually, because I want water, and because I want him to see me get up.
I take his shirt off the bedpost.
I put it on. It hangs to the top of my thighs.
The sleeves cover my hands. I hold them up in front of me like a child in her father's coat, and when I look at him he's propped on one elbow in my bed, watching me with an expression that's going to get me into a great deal of trouble in the years I intend to spend with him.
“Don't,” I say.
“Don't what.”
“Don't look at me like that. I have to walk to the sink.”
“Walk to the sink, Mara Vale.”
“Bastien.”
“I'm looking at you like this on purpose.”
I go and get water. I bring back two glasses. He sits up against the headboard and drinks his, and then he sets it on the nightstand next to the watch, and he holds up the quilt with two fingers so I can climb back under.
I climb back under.
I fit myself along his side. My head on his chest, one leg over his. His arm comes around me. He kisses the top of my head.
“You're staying,” I say. Not a question, just so it's said.
“I'm staying.”
“Not for a week. Not for the summer.”
“I'm staying,” he says. “Here. On this ranch. With you. I'll go north when my mother needs me or the legal work requires it, and I'll come home. This is home.”
“Home,” I say.
“If you'll have me.”
“I'll have you.”
We're quiet a long minute.
“Bastien.”
“Yes.”
“I'm not going to be easy about it.”
“I know.”
“I'm going to make you talk. About Julien. About the company. About all of it.”
“I know.”
“And I'm going to be here in the morning, and the morning after that, and every morning after that, until you tell me otherwise.”
“You're the only person,” he says, quiet, into my hair, “who ever asked me to talk about him.”
I don't say anything to that. There's nothing to say to that. I put my hand flat on his chest where his heart is, and I keep it there, and I feel it beat under my palm, slow and steady and here.
The room gets a little darker. The bars of light slide up the wall and go pink.
I hear Opal, all the way down in the kitchen, murmur something that might be a hymn and might be her humming to the bread on the board.
I hear the screen door go once, and then again.
Rafe and Orin heading to the bunkhouse. Somewhere, way down the county road, another truck goes by and it isn't his, because his is at my gate, because he's here.
His breathing has gone slow.
“Bastien.”
“Mm.”
“Don't fall asleep yet. I'm not done looking at you.”
“I'm not asleep. I'm just — resting my eyes.”
“Liar.”
“Mm.”
I lift my head enough to look at him. His hair's dark against my pillow. His eyes are closed. His mouth is soft. The place at the corner of his jaw where I set my mouth on the stairs has a small pink mark on it, and I've decided I'm not going to be sorry about that in the morning.
I set my chin back on his chest.
“Okay,” I say. “Rest them.”
His arm tightens.
I close my own eyes.
Outside, the sun goes the rest of the way down over the west field.
The windmill catches and creaks and lets go.
Roman gets his evening hay. Somewhere, a hawk finishes its last long circle and cuts for the ridge.
On the porch, my coffee has gone cold in a chipped cup beside an empty chair, and on the kitchen table there are two full mugs untouched, and there's a hat on a chair, and there's bread on a board, and there's an enameled pot on the stove, and there's nobody in that kitchen to fuss about any of it, because the woman of this house and the man who chose to walk the last hundred yards to her have gone upstairs.
The story is over.
The life is beginning.
He's here. I'm here. In the morning, we start.