Chapter 15
The thing about cuddling is that Addison has never done it.
The desire to fit herself against her husband and leech off his warmth, or to find safety in his embrace, simply never occurred to her.
The idea itself had always seemed indulgent.
They didn’t have that kind of relationship, despite her wishing it could have evolved in that direction.
She had seen it happen before with the other couples in the community.
In time, they grew to love each other, even becoming affectionate, and she assumed the same would be true for her.
How wrong she was.
Once it became clear that her marriage was a practical relationship and nothing more, her desire for something deeper faded quickly.
It was nothing but a waste of mental resources to dwell on what she couldn’t have.
She didn’t crave this type of closeness or long for it.
Never felt like she was missing out. Not when being left alone felt like a positive instead of a negative.
It is surprising how quickly her view of such things can change in the right circumstances. How quickly deprivation can turn into hunger once someone offers safety and security without expecting something in return.
She is jolted from sleep beside Wyatt in the early hours of the morning.
The hazy memory of drifting off beside him last night begins to overtake the scrambled images from leftover nightmares.
They still burn her retinas like a brand, holding on tightly to every horror she manifested under closed lids.
The rotters, the abandonment by her husband, the pain from the other day that left her with an awful sense of emptiness, wrapped in guilt.
The only thing she wants is to wake Wyatt and ask him to hold her again.
To find comfort in his touch, the way she did last night, when it was the only thing that could soothe her.
She doesn’t dare ask. Didn’t even mean to fall asleep here instead of going back to her room with Emma, but here she lies in the predawn glow streaming through the windows, wishing for the kind of relationship with him that she had long since given up on.
It’s nothing but the trauma of her situation, she tells herself, rolling onto her back and inhaling deeply. A temporary weakness. A reaction to loss. To entertain such foolishness will only break her heart later if she lets it.
“Are you alright?” His rough voice cuts through the effort of her shuddered breathing, thick with exhaustion.
“Just a nightmare, that’s all.”
The urge to scoot closer to him almost overtakes her.
She looks up at the ceiling again instead and picks the rational option of keeping her hands to herself.
Hell, she should leave now and forget they got this close to begin with.
Pretend she never crawled into his bed and let him hold her while she cried.
Pretend she doesn’t remember how steady his arms felt around her.
But she doesn’t do that. Instead, she waits, heart pounding, to see if he might kick her out, ignore her, or do some secret third thing that’s selfish to want.
“Come on, then.”
When she glances at him, his arm has lifted as if to encourage her closer, the invitation casual but clear. “You don’t have to. I’ll be okay.”
The fact that neither of them has made a move to leave this bed is proof enough that they both know she’s spouting lies.
“I’m not getting any sleep before the sun comes up with you shaking like that. The whole bed is shivering enough to feel like a damn earthquake.”
There’s a gruffness to his tone that doesn’t quite fit with the gesture.
It would be enough to make her retreat both emotionally and physically if she didn’t already get a glimpse into the soft heart under all that prickly armour.
He’s trying for her, and she won’t reject the effort.
His lifted arm may as well be a cure for the virus, for how badly she wants to accept, and so she decides to be selfish this once.
He is tense when she moves close to tuck herself against him, as if they didn’t do the same thing the night before.
As if he’s afraid of doing it wrong. Maybe this is a mistake, she worries, but then his arm curls around her like a heavy, grounding weight, careful but firm, and his heart thumps under her ear, betraying how nervous he is.
That alone eases the tightness in her chest. Her eyes slip closed, and she inhales the scent of him, letting herself nestle along his side until they’ve melted together and his strength starts to ease her tremors.
This is where she wants to be. Maybe she had been missing out after all.
“I didn’t realize I was shaking. It’s getting colder overnight.”
“You’re like one of those icebergs up in Alaska,” he mumbles, hissing when she pushes her bare feet against his warm ones, but he never moves away, so she tucks them closer to steal his warmth. “You shoulda said something.”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I was awake.”
“Because of my nightmares? Was I too loud?”
“No. Because of my own.”
The admission hangs between them, though he doesn’t elaborate on what haunted his dreams. As much as she wants to ask, she fears pushing too quickly.
He is talking to her, offering pieces of himself, and that’s progress enough on its own.
“Will you tell me about Alaska? Why did you go there? I wonder if it’s as beautiful as Sedona? How many bears did you see?”
“So that’s a no when it comes to going back to sleep?”
His half-chuckle of disgruntled amusement has her biting her lip to keep from asking ten more questions on the spot.
It is always so difficult to avoid quizzing him, like she has access to a human encyclopedia.
Her curiosity has always been so strong, and her answers so few and far between.
Information was rationed in her old life.
It’s hard to break the habit of wanting to know everything all at once.
“I went there because they needed a charter pilot. The pay was good, and it was as far from home as I could get. ‘No one comes all the way out here if they’re not running from something.’ That’s what Gwen always said.”
“Where the two of you…close?”
There’s an implication in her question, though it remains non-judgmental. He hasn’t spoken much about what happened up there aside from his misplaced guilt at not being able to save her. Addison is desperate to fill in some of the blanks in an effort to understand him better.
“Not like that. She was engaged. We were friends. She was the only one I’d had in a while.
I kept to myself after the divorce, but she was kind to me.
Always made me coffee when I dropped off supplies, and we’d get to talking.
She was waiting for her fiancé to join her so they could get married up there.
” He snorts out a good-natured laugh. “Crazy, right? Who gets married at twenty below? But she was so damn excited, and then the world ended and…anyway, what’s done is done. ”
He is quiet for a long moment, while she counts the strokes of his thumb as they wave absently over her upper arm. The repetition is soothing, almost hypnotic, and she wonders if he even realizes he’s doing it.
“I lost count of how many bears I’ve seen. It wasn’t more beautiful than Sedona, I’ve seen both. It was a different kind of beauty. Haunting in a way, especially when the northern lights lit up the sky. Have you heard of those?”
“Yes, they were in our textbooks. I bet seeing them in person was magical.”
“Yeah. Magical.” He exhales slowly. “It’s weird, isn’t it? That even with everything falling apart, things like the northern lights still exist as if nothing has changed. The sun keeps coming up, the animals keep multiplying, the seasons still change.”
“The world doesn’t need us to keep turning.”
“That’s dangerously rational for someone convinced we must repopulate it.” His response lacks the usual bite that might accompany such a statement. There’s subtle affection in it that she wonders if she heard correctly.
“Remember when I told you my faith was being tested?”
“Mhmm.”
“That started long before the virus hit. I just didn’t have many options then.”
As a child, she was full of unshakable belief in their mission because it had been drilled into her from day one.
Then, as she got older, it had been difficult not to wonder if all their rules and predictions had as much basis in reality as she had been told.
It is one thing to want to break free of the mold, to give herself and her daughter a chance at a safer life, and another thing entirely to leave everything and everyone she knew behind.
The world is vast and unkind to those who walk it alone.
That’s what the elders would say, and there had been no question that anyone who left the fold would be alone.
And so she stayed until the pandemic forced her hand.
“Do you feel like you’ve got options now?” he half whispers, the exhaustion in his voice clear, the question careful, as if he’s afraid of the answer.
“I do, actually. The last thing I should be feeling in these circumstances is freedom. But there is no one else to plan my life out anymore. No one to tell me who to marry, what role to play, who to love.” Her voice nearly catches on the last word as it slips out without much thought.
“It is all up to me now. I hope I make the right choices.”
“You will. You always try to do the right thing. This world still needs people like that.”
He speaks as if he hasn’t done right by her and her daughter since they met.
As if he hadn’t shown up every time it mattered.
His breathing turns shallow, and the gentle touch moving feather-light across her upper arm stills, telling her he’s fallen asleep, so she keeps quiet and shuts her eyes, wishing daylight would take a little longer to break through the horizon this morning and allow her another few minutes in his arms, to pretend this closeness is something she can keep.
* * *
It’s not until later that morning that she thinks about kissing him. Not right away. It isn’t the first thought she has the moment she opens her eyes. It can’t be when Emma is nearly vibrating at the bedside, trying to jostle her awake.
“Did you sleep enough? It’s almost noon. Wyatt said to let you rest, but it won’t be morning soon, and we have a surprise for you that works best in the morning.”
Addison sits up, swinging her legs over the edge and noting that the other side, where Wyatt slept, is empty. The sheets are cool now, the memory of being in his arms already fading. “A surprise? What is it?”
Emma shakes her head. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you. Come on, come on! You have to close your eyes, and I’ll lead you into the kitchen.”
Whatever is going on, it’s quite elaborate. She won’t spoil her daughter’s happiness by refusing to play along. It doesn’t matter that she can’t seem to find a spark of it within herself just yet.
The scent of something sweet lures her down the hall as she dutifully allows herself to be dragged toward it. Warm spice and unmistakably thick buttercream. The clanking of plates and forks has her curious, and the smell straight out of a bakery has her mouth watering.
“Okay, you can open them!” Emma exclaims.
What Addison finds in front of her is the last thing she expected.
Wyatt, with specks of flour in his hair and his sleeves rolled up, is slicing thick cinnamon rolls onto their respective plates with a tentative grin on his face.
Steam curls lazily into the air from the old gas stove, warming the space another ten degrees.
“The two of you baked these together?”
“We did!” Emma exclaims, wiping at the flour on her shirt. “I kinda made a mess, and the first batch burned, but this one is perfect. Do you like it, Momma?”
She pulls her daughter into a hug that turns into a squeeze, breathing her in like an anchor. “I do, baby, thank you. Now take your seat and dig in. We have to share them.”
Her eyes don’t leave Wyatt the entire time, not even when he breaks their contact to look away, perhaps embarrassed by the way her gaze has begun to shine as she steps closer to him. “How did you learn to bake these?”
He nods toward the open cookbook on the counter, pages smudged with flour. “The library has everything. The icing is from a can, and I might have pocketed some cinnamon a while ago. Just in case.”
Just in case he found the right moment to make one of her most coveted dreams come to life.
That spark of happiness she thought she couldn’t harness anymore blazes like fire in her chest, warming it with her affection for him, and in a split-second choice, before fear can stop her, she leans up on her toes and presses her lips to his cheek in a soft kiss that lingers longer than it should.
She would rather aim for his lips, feeling her skin flush hot at the realization, right around the same time she pulls back to find his own neck turning pink.
“Thank you, Wyatt.”
They share a loaded look between charged air that crackles like fireworks, both of them standing too close and not close enough, before she forces herself away to sit at the table.
Kissing him should be the last thing on her mind, and yet here she is, heart racing, fantasizing about how he might taste or how he might feel.
If he would be sweet to her, or if that dangerous streak she saw in him the day they met would show itself again.
It’s a daydream that she indulges in while allowing herself a different pleasure, filled with gooey sugar and thick cinnamon.
“You were right. It’s so much better than a gas station honey bun,” she says around a sweet mouthful.
Her favorite domestic moment from her favorite movie has come true right before her eyes, courtesy of the man who she once thought herself trapped with.
Funny how things change, she thinks, sneaking a glance his way as he ducks his head with a shy smile, pretending very hard not to watch her enjoy something he made just for her.