Epilogue #3
The new angle makes her gasp and clap a hand over her own mouth. I fuck her deep and steady, forehead to hers, whispering every filthy affectionate thing I’ve learned she likes into the small space between our mouths:
“Love this pussy. Love coming home to it. Love that after too much garlic and bedtime stories I still get to bury myself in you and feel you shake. Love the way you look when you’re trying to be quiet. Love you. Love fucking you. Love being yours.”
“Love you too - harder - just a little…”
I give her harder. The headboard taps the wall once; we both freeze, listening; the hallway stays quiet; we dissolve into silent laughter and then I’m moving again, slower but deeper, grinding against her clit on every downstroke until she’s shaking her head against the pillow like she can’t take it and absolutely can.
“One more,” I murmur. “Give me one more. I know you’ve got it.”
“You’re - insatiable…”
“For you. Always for you.” I shift her knee higher and the new depth makes her eyes fly open. “There. Feel that? That’s how deep you take me. That’s how well we fit. Six years and a separation and a second wedding and you still take me like you were made for it.”
“I was,” she gasps. “I fucking was… don’t stop…”
She comes again, smaller, sweeter, eyes squeezed shut and hand still over her mouth, and I follow her over with my face buried in her neck and her name a broken whisper against her skin, spilling deep while her legs stay locked around me like she has no intention of letting go.
We stay locked together afterward, sweaty and smiling and stupidly content. I press lazy kisses along her collarbone.
She runs her fingers through my hair. My cock softens inside her eventually and I slip free with a shared, rueful sound; she makes a face at the mess and I reach for the tissues on the nightstand like the well-trained husband I have, against all odds, become.
Somewhere down the hall a floorboard creaks and we both freeze - then relax when it stays quiet.
“False alarm,” she whispers.
“Thank god. I am not explaining this to Luca.”
“You’d find a way. You’re very diplomatic now. Bread disputes. Garlic philosophy.”
“Don’t.”
She laughs, soft and warm, and the sound settles into my chest like a second heartbeat. I clean us up, toss the tissues, and pull the sheet over our cooling bodies. She tucks herself against my side with the easy claim of a woman who knows this bed is hers as much as mine.
I trace idle patterns on her bare shoulder and listen to her breathing settle. The warm blue walls. The photos of the children. The half-finished bracelet on the dresser. All of it ours. All of it earned.
“Worth the extra garlic?” I ask the dark.
“The garlic was a crime. This was the apology.” She kisses my shoulder. “Accepted.”
“I’ll burn it again tomorrow.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“Then I’ll find another excuse to look at you like you’re on fire.”
“You don’t need an excuse.” Her voice is already going soft with sleep. “You never did. You just needed to stay in the room long enough to use it.”
I hold her tighter. “I’m staying.”
“I know.”
Later, tangled together in the dark, I listen to her breathing slow and even as she drifts toward sleep. The window is cracked, and I can hear the distant sound of Naples at night - traffic, voices, the hum of a city that never quite goes quiet.
I think about the man I used to be. The one who let work consume everything. The one who didn’t see his wife fading away in front of him. The one who almost lost all of this because he couldn’t be bothered to pay attention.
I’m not that man anymore.
“What are you thinking about?” Ariah’s voice is sleepy, muffled against my shoulder.
“You. Us. How lucky I am.”
“That’s very romantic.”
“I’m a romantic now. I thought we established this.”
“Mmm.” She burrows closer. “You are. It’s annoying.”
“You love it.”
“I love you.” She says it easily, naturally, the way she says everything now - without fear, without hesitation, without waiting to see if the words will be received. “Even when you drown everything in garlic.”
“Especially when I drown everything in garlic.”
“That’s pushing it.”
“You married me anyway.”
“Twice.”
“Twice.” I press a kiss to her hair. “And I’d do it again. Every time. Forever.”
“That’s a lot of weddings.”
“I’d figure out the logistics.”
“You’d have to. I’m not planning another one.”
“Deal.”
She’s asleep within minutes, her body warm and familiar against mine. I stay awake a little longer, watching the shadows shift on the ceiling, thinking about everything it took to get here.
A merger that was supposed to be business.
A marriage that almost fell apart.
A woman who walked away and came back and gave me a second chance I didn’t deserve.
A family that feels more real, more mine, than anything I’ve ever had.
The name on the door is hers again. The children know their father. The house belongs to both of us equally.
And the arrangement. The cold, practical arrangement that started everything - has become the realest thing in my life.
I fall asleep with my wife in my arms and my children down the hall and my future laid out before me like a gift I finally learned to appreciate.
This is the life I would choose again.
Every single time.