Chapter 17 The Marriage We Choose #2
“What do you want?”
Her gaze moved over my face.
“I want dinner first.”
We cooked together.
Nothing elaborate. Pasta, roasted vegetables, bread from the bakery. I chopped onions. Corinne corrected the thickness of the slices. I did not tell her they would cook the same.
They would not.
After dinner, we opened a bottle of wine and sat on the living-room floor because neither of us wanted the formality of opposite chairs.
The wedding photograph remained absent from the mantel.
I did not ask when it might return.
Corinne leaned against the sofa.
“Tell me something you have not said in therapy.”
The question carried risk.
“I still think about Maren sometimes.”
Pain moved across her face, but she did not retreat.
“What kind of thoughts?”
“Not fantasies. Memories. Shame. Wondering how I let the relationship become ordinary enough to maintain. Sometimes I remember a place before I remember what happened there.”
“Do you miss her?”
“I miss being the version of myself who never had to admit weakness. She supported that version.”
“That is not her.”
“No. It is what I used her for.”
Corinne took a drink.
“I think about her too.”
“What kind of thoughts?”
“Whether she compares herself to me. Whether she believes I won. Whether I want her to believe it.”
“You did not win.”
“I know.”
“I did not choose between you. I betrayed both situations until one exploded.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Do not make her equal to me.”
“I am not. I broke promises to you that I never made honestly to her.”
She accepted the correction.
“I want the thoughts to stop,” she said.
“I cannot promise they will.”
“No.”
She placed the glass on the table.
“I want you.”
Every part of me went still.
“Corinne.”
“I am not asking what it means tomorrow. I am telling you what I want tonight.”
I moved no closer.
“Are you choosing sex, or testing whether you can tolerate it?”
Her eyes filled with anger.
“Do not turn caution into a way of questioning my decisions.”
“You are right.”
She breathed through the anger.
Then she shifted toward me.
“I am choosing you. I may cry. I may stop. I may hate part of it and want another part. You listen when I tell you.”
“Yes.”
She touched my face.
The first contact in seven months.
My eyes closed before I could stop them.
Her palm rested against my jaw. Familiar pressure. Different permission.
“Look at me,” she said.
I did.
“You do not get to disappear into guilt while touching me.”
“I will not.”
She kissed me.
Soft at first.
Then with the hunger we had kept behind controlled rooms and separate doors.
I did not take more than she gave.
Her fingers entered my hair. My hands remained on the floor until she caught one and placed it at her waist.
“Touch me.”
I did.
Through the sweater, I felt the body I knew and had forfeited the right to assume. She moved closer, one knee between mine, mouth opening beneath mine.
The kiss turned rough.
She pulled back suddenly.
“Maren wore your hands here.”
The words struck where my palm rested.
I removed it at once.
Corinne caught my wrist.
“I did not tell you to stop.”
“What do you need?”
“The truth.”
“Yes. I touched her there.”
Her eyes closed.
I waited.
She guided my hand back to her waist.
“This is mine,” she said.
“Your body is yours.”
“Say it again.”
“Your body is yours. This choice is yours.”
Her shoulders lowered.
She kissed me again.
We reached the bedroom slowly.
At the doorway, she stopped.
The room had held the photographs of her cut. The bed had held the leather while I created its duplicate.
“I took pictures here,” I said.
“I know.”
“We can go somewhere else.”
“No. I will not surrender my bedroom to what you did.”
She entered first.
I followed.
We undressed without hurry. Every exposed inch carried history. The scar at her wrist. The small mark near her hip. The line of my shoulder she had once traced while half asleep.
I asked before each change.
Can I kiss you here?
Yes.
Can I take this off?
Yes.
Do you want the light on?
Yes.
She watched my face as closely as I watched hers.
When grief entered, she named it.
When desire returned, she named that too.
I used my mouth until her hands tightened in the sheets and my name broke from her with anger inside the pleasure.
Not Rook.
Mateo.
When she pulled me over her, I stopped.
“Tell me.”
“I want you inside me.”
I entered slowly.
Her eyes remained open.
The first movement held too much memory. Years of marriage. Months of absence. Other rooms I had contaminated.
She pressed one hand to my chest.
“Stay here.”
“I am here.”
“Not with what you did. With me.”
“With you.”
She moved beneath me.
The rhythm became ours because she chose each part of it. Not restoration. Not erasure. A new act inside a room she refused to abandon.
When she came, she held my gaze.
I followed only after she said my name again.
Afterward, I remained beside her without pulling her into an embrace she had not requested.
She turned toward me.
“You can hold me.”
I did.
Her head rested against my chest.
For several minutes, the room contained only breath.
Then she cried.
Quietly.
I held her without saying sorry, because apology would ask the moment to carry what it could not.
When the tears stopped, she said, “I do not forgive all of it tonight.”
“I know.”
“I may be angry tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“This does not mean you move back.”
“I know.”
She lifted her head.
“You can say something other than I know.”
I almost smiled.
“I will leave the bag in the guest room and make breakfast if you still want me here in the morning.”
“That is better.”
We slept in the same bed.
At dawn, I woke before her and stayed still.
No escape.
No second life waiting.
No phone turned face down.
Corinne’s hand rested over my heart.
The marriage we chose did not begin with a clean slate.
It began with every mark visible.
I would not ask her to call that beautiful.
Only true.