Chapter 15 #2
“So I said give me ten minutes. Because I wanted ten more minutes of being him. Of being the man she thought I was, instead of the man you knew. That’s the truth, Scarlett.
I chose ten more minutes of feeling good about myself over my wife telling me she was sick.
” His voice finally broke. “And then I chose the couch. For the same reason. Because if I went down to our cabin, I’d have to be the real one again.
And you went into the water while I was hiding from being him. ”
He was crying. He didn’t wipe it away. He didn’t let go of her hands to do it.
“There’s no better version of it,” he said. “I’ve looked. For five months I’ve looked for a better version, one where I’m not that small. There isn’t one. That’s what happened.”
* * *
Scarlett sat on the end of the dock and looked at her husband.
It was the ugliest thing she had ever heard him say.
It was worse than the calls. It was worse than I don’t know how to talk at home.
It was so small, and so human, and so exactly, precisely true, that she felt it go into her chest and settle there, and she knew, the way she’d known in the closet, that there was nothing left behind it. No wall. No story. No Luke. Just him.
It was the first time in nine years she had been sure she was seeing all of him.
And she found that she loved him. All of him. Even that.
“Okay,” she said.
He looked up.
“Hold on,” Scarlett said. “I have to make a call.”
* * *
She called Cooper from the end of the dock with a towel around her shoulders and her husband kneeling on the boards beside her, holding her other hand.
Cooper picked up on the third ring. She could hear wind, and water, and a boat engine idling. He was out on the reef.
“Hey,” he said. “You sound like you’ve been swimming.”
“I have.” She took a breath. “Cooper. I’m not coming to Gull Cay.”
There was a pause. Not a long one.
“Okay,” Cooper said.
“Not to live,” she said. “Not—” She looked at Ryan, whose face had gone completely still.
“Not for you. I’m so sorry. You’re one of the best people I’ve ever known.
You pulled me out of the ocean. You’re the reason I’m alive.
And if things were different I think I’d have been very happy on that island.
” Her voice shook. “But I’m choosing my husband.
Not because I don’t have anywhere else to go.
I do. You gave me somewhere to go. That’s why I know it’s a choice. ”
The wind blew on the other end of the line.
“I figured,” Cooper said, and she could hear that he was smiling, a little sadly. “You never once talked about him like you were done.”
Scarlett laughed wetly.
“But the program,” she said. “I want to build it. From here. I’ll write it. I’ll hire the teachers. I’ll train them myself. I’ll come down every spring and every summer and stand in the water on that beach for as long as it takes. If you’ll still run the boats.”
“I’ll run the boats,” Cooper said. “Destiny’s going to be furious you’re not moving in.”
“I’ll tell her myself.”
“You’d better.” A pause. “The apartment’s still there, Scarlett. The boat’s still there. That doesn’t change.”
“I know,” she said. “Thank you. For everything. For all of it.”
She hung up.
* * *
Ryan hadn’t moved.
“You just turned down an island,” he said. His voice was barely there. “And a man who saved your life.”
“Yes.”
“For me.”
“Not for you,” Scarlett said. “I want you to understand this. Look at me.”
He looked at her.
“I’m not coming back because you wore me down.
I’m not coming back because I’m tired, or scared to be alone, or because the house is big and the apartment is small.
I had a whole life on that phone call. A good one.
I could have been happy.” She held his face in both her wet hands.
“I’m choosing you, Ryan. The real one. The one who’s small, and scared, and bad at swimming, and answered on the first ring. I’m choosing him.”
He made a sound like something tearing open.
Then she kissed him.
* * *
They didn’t make it to the bedroom right away.
They made it up the lawn, and across the patio, and into the kitchen, her in a wet racing suit and a towel and him in a ruined suit, both of them laughing and kissing, bumping into the kitchen island, the same island, and she felt him hesitate there, and she pulled him past it.
“Not like that,” she said against his mouth. “Not this time.”
“How?”
“Slow,” Scarlett said. “I want it slow.”
She took his hand and led him up the stairs. At the top step, out of habit, he stopped. She felt him stop. She turned around.
“There’s no line,” she said. “There’s no line anymore. Come here.”
* * *
She took him into the bathroom first.
He understood before she said anything. She saw it in his face. She reached past him and turned on the shower, the handheld one on its long silver hose, and she put it up in its bracket, pointing down, the way a real shower pointed.
The water came down hard and warm. Steam rose.
She peeled off her wet racing suit and let it drop on the tile. She stood in front of him naked in the steam, in the soft gray morning light from the bathroom window. She didn’t cover herself. She let him look.
He looked at her. Not the way he had in the kitchen, starving. Slowly. Like a man reading something he meant to memorize. His eyes went over her body, her shoulders and her breasts and her stomach and her hips, and back up to her face.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said. “I forgot. I forgot how to see it. I’m so sorry I forgot.”
“Take your clothes off,” Scarlett said softly.
He did. She helped him. The ruined jacket. The shirt, button by button, her fingers slow now, not tearing. His belt. His shoes and his soaked suit pants. And then he was naked too, standing in the steam, broad and lean and hard, and she put her palms flat on his chest and felt his heart going.
She stepped into the shower. She held out her hand.
He came in with her.
* * *
She stood under the water with him.
She put her face up into it. The water ran over her forehead and her closed eyes and her mouth. And her breath went short, just for a second, and her chest tightened, and the black started to come.
His arms came around her from behind.
His chest against her back. His hands flat on her stomach. His mouth against her ear, very low. “I’ve got you. I’m right here. It’s just water. It’s just us.”
The black went away.
She stood in the warm water in her husband’s arms and breathed, and breathed, and didn’t go under.
After a while she turned around. He took the soap.
He washed her, slowly, the way you’d wash something precious.
Her arms. Her shoulders. Her short dark hair, his fingers moving gently on her scalp, careful of the scar.
He kissed the scar. He ran the soap down her ribs and her hips and the backs of her thighs, and she leaned against the tile and let him, her eyes half closed, the heat building low in her body like a slow tide.
Then he turned her around again, gently. Her face to the tile. Her back to him.
She felt his hesitation. She felt the question in it.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s okay.”
He put his hand flat between her shoulder blades.
It was warm. It was steady. It was the place where the other hand had been, and it did not push. It just rested there, under the water, while his other arm came around her waist and held her against him.
Then he bent his head and kissed her there. Right between her shoulder blades. Slowly. Again and again. As if he could kiss the whole memory of that hand off her skin.
Scarlett put her forehead against the tile and cried, and it was the good kind.
* * *
They went to bed wet.
They didn’t bother with towels. He carried her, the way he used to carry her up the stairs in the old building, and laid her down on the bed in the morning light coming through the thin white curtains, and the sheets got soaked, and neither of them cared.
He didn’t rush. She wouldn’t have let him, and he didn’t try.
He kissed her mouth for a long time. Deep and slow, his weight on his forearms above her, her hands moving over his wet back.
Then her throat. Her collarbone. He took his time at her breasts, his mouth warm and patient, until she was arching under him and pulling at his hair and saying his name in a voice she hadn’t used in years.
He moved down her body inch by inch, kissing everything.
The inside of her wrist. Her ribs. Her hip bone. The soft skin low on her stomach.
When he settled between her thighs, she stopped breathing.
“Ryan—”
“Let me,” he said against her skin. “Please. Let me take care of you.”
She let him.
He went slowly. He went so slowly she thought she would lose her mind.
His mouth was soft and then not soft, and his hands held her hips down gently when she tried to move, and he learned her all over again, like it was the first time, like he had nine years of not paying attention to make up for and he intended to do it right now.
He listened to every sound she made. He did more of whatever made her gasp.
When she grabbed the sheets, he found her hand and laced his fingers through hers and held it.