31. Imogen
Imogen
It’s been two weeks since Ashton told me he loved me in front of a board, my father, and his ex-wife, and now I’m standing outside his door with my hand up and no real plan past the knock.
This isn’t like me. I plan everything, twice.
I spent two weeks on Bex’s couch half-writing my dissertation and half-writing a speech for this exact moment, and I tore the speech up every single time.
So here I am with nothing. No speech, no plan, just me on his doormat at nine in the morning.
I knock twice, fast, before the sensible half of me can talk the rest of me back into the elevator.
The door opens, and there he is. No suit, dark T-shirt, hair shoved back like he’s spent the morning dragging his hands through it. He sees me and his whole face falls open, the careful set of it gone all at once.
“Imogen.”
“Hi.” Two weeks of rehearsal and I land on hi.
“You’re here.”
“I know where I am, thanks.” My mouth runs off without me, the thing it does when the rest of me is terrified. “You don’t have to keep saying it. I drove here on purpose. I’m aware of my own whereabouts.”
He smiles, and whatever he means to say he doesn’t get to, because a small body comes flying down the hall and slams into my legs hard enough to rock me back. Luke’s got both arms around my waist, his face in my stomach, the words tumbling out into my shirt.
“I knew it! I told Dad you might come back. Are you staying? Do you want breakfast? Dad’s making eggs and they’re only a little bit burnt this time, not like all the way burnt.”
I crouch to his level, because some things you say at eye height or not at all. “Hey, you. I missed your whole face.”
“I missed you way more. Like a hundred more.” He pulls back, deadly serious. “Will you stay for breakfast? You have to, it’s a rule. I made up the rule, but it still counts.”
I glance up at Ashton over the top of his kid’s head. He gives me one small nod, no push in it, a door held open for me to walk through or not.
“I’d love breakfast,” I tell Luke.
The kitchen’s the same cold marble where I once ate his chocolate cake straight off the stand like a raccoon who broke into somewhere fancy, except now there’s a man at the stove in an apron, scowling at a frying pan like it owes him money.
Ashton, who I’ve watched shut a whole room of grown men up without raising his voice, is jabbing at an egg with a spatula and very clearly losing.
“You cook now,” I say, sliding onto a stool.
“I’m learning to cook. Different thing, and you’re about to taste the difference.
” He slides a plate to Luke, then one to me, eggs that are, as promised, only a little bit burnt.
“Lola signed me up for a class. I’ve been twice.
First time, I set off the smoke alarm, and the teacher, Deb, told me I have, and I’m quoting her exactly, the knife skills of a hostage.
” The corner of his mouth tips up. “I’ve decided to take it as a challenge. ”
A laugh gets out of me before I can stop it, the first real one in two weeks. “I love Deb already. Deb gets a Christmas card.”
“Deb is terrifying, and I’d take a bullet for her without thinking twice.” He leans his hip against the counter with his own plate and watches me eat his burnt eggs like I just handed him a five-star review. I drop my eyes to the food before my face tells him everything at once.
“They’re good,” I tell him.
“They’re not.”
“They’re brave.”
Luke narrates the entire meal, a nature documentary nobody asked for, all about a fish that lives so deep in the ocean it’s never once seen the sun and grows its own little light off its face.
I let him run with it, because the giant kitchen doesn’t feel so giant with the three of us crammed in at one end of the counter.
Then someone comes to take him to his session, and he gets bundled into his coat one arm at a time, fighting it the whole way because coats are beneath him. At the door he turns and points at me like he’s serving a warrant. “Don’t leave before I get back. That’s a rule too.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The door clicks shut, and the place goes quiet around just the two of us, and whatever was easy a second ago drains right out of the room.
“He’s doing better,” I say, because it’s the safest thing here.
“He is.” Ashton sets his coffee down. “I stopped working. All of it. Stepped back from the company, the IPO, every bit of it.” He turns the mug a quarter turn on the counter, the only tell that this isn’t easy to say.
“Best thing I’ve ever done, and I should’ve done it a year ago.
He never needed a better specialist. He needed me in the room with him instead of on a phone in the next one.
I just couldn’t see it till I finally put the phone down and looked at him. ”
“That’s a big thing to say out loud.”
“I’ve been saying a lot of big things lately.
It’s becoming a habit, and I’m not sure I hate it.
” His eyes lift to mine. “You went quiet on me for two weeks. I made up a dozen reasons why, and I made myself sit on my hands and not chase down a single one of them. Hardest two weeks I’ve had in a long time. ”
“None of your reasons were right.”
“They never are. Tell me the real one.”
“I was finishing my degree, mostly.” I push a bit of egg around the plate to give my hands a job. “My defense is in March, and I’d let the whole thing fall apart while I was living in your house losing my mind. So I went and put my own life back together before I came anywhere near yours again.”
His shoulders ease. “So it wasn’t about me.”
“Don’t look so relieved. It was partly not about you.
” I make myself hold his eyes. “And it was partly all about you. I stayed away because the next time I walked back through that door, I wanted to be sure. Not running on adrenaline, not because you said the perfect thing in a boardroom with an audience watching. Just sure.”
He goes still. “And are you?”
“Are you what? Say the whole question. I’m not doing your work for you.”
“Are you sure?” His mouth twitches even now. “Don’t make me beg in my own kitchen.”
“I would pay actual money to watch you beg in your own kitchen.” I take a breath, and the joke falls out from under me.
“Yes. I’m sure. I love you, Ashton. I’ve loved you since you stood right there judging me for eating your cake straight off the stand, and I’ve spent months absolutely furious about it. I’m done being furious now.”
He crosses the kitchen before I’ve even finished the sentence.
Both his hands come up to my face, framing it, tilting it up to him, and he kisses me like he’s been holding his breath for two weeks and I’m the first air he’s been allowed.
It’s not the desperate collision of every other time.
It’s slow, his mouth moving over mine like he’s got all morning and fully intends to spend it, his thumbs stroking along my jaw, tipping my head exactly where he wants it.
I melt into it with both fists knotted in his shirt, and when his tongue slides against mine I feel the low pull of it everywhere at once, down my spine, between my legs, in the catch of my own breath against his mouth.
He swallows the small sound I make and steps in closer, until I’m backed against the counter with the cold marble at my spine and all that warm heavy heat of him at my front.
“Say it again,” he gets out against my lips.
“You’re insatiable.”
“Not that part. The other part.”
“I love you.” He shudders against me when I say it, his hands tightening on my jaw, his breath going ragged against my mouth, and heat pools low in my belly at the proof of it, that three words out of me can undo a man who used to hand out nothing but cold.
He hauls me up off my feet, my legs wrapping his waist on instinct, his hands filling with my ass to hold me against him, and I feel exactly how hard he already is through his jeans, pressed right where I want it.
He carries me down the hall without breaking the kiss, like I weigh nothing, and I grind down against him the whole way just to feel him groan into my mouth.
He lays me back on his bed and follows me down, braces over me, and just looks at me a second like I’m not quite real and he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he blinks. Then he gets to work.
He undresses me one piece at a time and makes a project out of every single one.
My shirt first, dragged up and off, his mouth chasing the bare skin the second it shows, hot and open against my stomach, my ribs, the soft underside of each breast. He draws a nipple between his lips and works it with his tongue, slow circles, then a hard suck that arches me clean off the mattress, my fingers fisting in his hair.
He switches to the other, sucks it, drags his teeth across it just hard enough to pull a broken sound out of me, and that sound goes straight down between my legs and leaves me soaked and aching before he’s even gotten my leggings off.
“You’re loud already,” he says against my skin, pleased with himself, his stubble rasping the curve of my breast. “We’ve barely started.”
“Then stop talking and do something about it.”
“Two weeks,” he says against my skin, peeling my leggings down my hips, my thighs, off. “I thought about doing this slow this time. Not rushing you against a wall.”
“That was a very good wall, for the record.”
“It was.” He drags my underwear off and settles between my thighs, just looking at me, wet and spread open for him, and the sound he makes is rough and pleased and goes straight through me. “This is better. I want to take my time with you.”