Chapter 23
CADE
I wake with Sienna against me.
Her back is tucked into my chest, my arm heavy across her waist, one of her hands resting over mine beneath the sheet. The bed is smaller than the one we shared in the city, and sometime during the night whatever space we started with disappeared.
Her hair is warm against my face. Gray morning light has begun to work its way around the edges of the curtains, and every slow breath she takes lifts my hand a little where it rests against her stomach.
I spent two years waking beside this woman and getting straight out of bed.
This morning I stay. There is nowhere in the world I need to be badly enough.
Her breathing changes a little after seven. Her fingers flex against my knuckles, and then she goes completely still.
I loosen my arm, giving her room to pull away.
She stays where she is.
For several seconds neither of us says anything. Then her hand closes over mine and squeezes once.
“Morning.”
Her voice is rough with sleep.
“Morning.”
She turns slowly until she’s facing me, her hair flattened on one side and caught beneath her cheek on the other. She looks at me for a long, quiet moment. I don’t ask what last night meant. Instead, I brush a strand of hair away from her temple.
“Do you want coffee?”
She blinks at me. “You’re making coffee?”
“That was the idea.”
Something almost like a smile touches the corner of her mouth.
“Milk, no sugar?”
Her expression changes.
“You were paying attention.”
“I’ve watched you make it often enough.”
She studies me for a second.
“Then yes. I’d like coffee.”
I push the sheet back and sit up, but before my feet hit the floor, her fingers close around my wrist. I look down. She looks at her own hand as though she hadn’t quite decided to reach for me.
“Give me a minute.”
I settle back against the headboard.
“Take it.”
She lies down again, not quite where she was before, but close enough that her shoulder rests against my side. We stay there until she is the one who moves.
My shirt is crumpled on the floor beside the bed. She picks it up and pulls it on while I find my pants, and I have to look toward the wall for a second because looking at her right now is dangerous enough to ruin me.
She catches the hitch in my movement. “Really, Cade?”
“Give me a second,” I mutter, rubbing the back of my neck.
“For what?”
“To remember how to breathe. You’re standing there in my shirt looking like that, and I’m hanging on by a thread.”
A faint flush rises along her collarbone, but she doesn’t look away.
In the kitchen, she leans against the counter while I deal with the coffee maker. I saw Nancy use it, which saves me from humiliating myself before breakfast. I fill the reservoir, measure enough for both of us, and start it.
Sienna watches the whole operation.
“I’m impressed.”
“I have other skills.”
“I’ve heard rumors.”
When the machine finishes, I reach into the cabinet for two mugs. I pour hers first, add a generous pour of milk, and hand it across the counter.
She takes a slow sip, her eyes lifting to mine over the ceramic rim. “You got it right.”
“I was reasonably confident.”
“Reasonably?”
“Ninety percent.”
“That’s not what reasonably means.”
“It is in acquisitions.”
She shakes her head, but this time the smile makes it all the way to her eyes.
I pour my own cup and turn toward the window. The water is pale under the overcast sky, silver where the light breaks through. The tide is out far enough to expose a jagged strip of dark rocks below the bluff, and a pair of gulls circle over the surf.
“I understand why you love it here,” I say, watching the water. “It’s beautiful.”
She doesn’t answer immediately. When I turn back, she’s watching me with an expression I can’t quite decipher, but I let the silence sit without trying to fill it.
We carry our mugs to the table tucked beside the glass. The envelope is somewhere behind me in the shadows of the living room, out of sight, but I can still feel its weight against the back of my neck.
Sienna turns her mug slowly between her palms. “You’re not going to ask me.”
“No.”
“You want to.”
“Desperately.”
That catches her off balance. “Then why aren’t you?”
“Because you told me last night you didn’t know what came next,” I tell her, keeping my voice steady. “I heard you.”
Something in the rigid line of her shoulders gives way. Not much, but enough.
“I’m not saying everything is fixed,” she says quietly.
“I don’t think it is.”
“I’m still angry.”
“You should be.”
Her mouth tightens, her thumb working the rim of her cup.
“I don’t know if I trust this yet. I don’t know if I trust me, either.
I spent so long making excuses for things that hurt because I wanted the marriage to work, and I’m not going to start doing that again just because you finally figured yourself out. ”
“You shouldn’t.”
“I mean it, Cade. I don’t want flowers. No grand gestures, and no deciding what I need because you think you’ve suddenly become an expert on me.”
“Understood.”
Her eyes rise to mine, guarded and sharp. “And if Ashley?—”
“She won’t get access to you through me again.”
The promise cuts through the air before she can finish the sentence.
Sienna goes entirely still, her breath hitching in her throat as the finality of it lands between us.
I don’t tell her about my conversation with Richard.
Not because I’m keeping secrets, but because I didn’t make that choice so I could carry it here and lay it at her feet like a bargaining chip.
She studies my face for a long beat, searching for hesitation, and finds none. “Okay,” she breathes.
She takes another drink and stares out at the gray line of the horizon.
“I want to see if we can fix it,” she says.
It takes both hands to set my mug down without spilling it.
“I’m not saying we’re going back to the way it was,” she adds, her gaze dropping to my hands on the table.
“I wouldn’t want that.”
“I’m not saying the papers don’t matter.”
“They do.”
“I’m saying...” She looks toward the water, silver against the dark rocks, then back at me. “I don’t want to file them yet.”
The quiet stretches. I sit there, unable to force air back into my lungs, feeling the entire world narrow down to the space between our chairs.
“Cade.”
“Yeah.”
“You look like you’re going to pass out.”
“I’m fine.”
One of her eyebrows lifts. “You’re terrible at that word.”
“Give me a minute. I’ll get there.”
Her mouth twitches. I look down at the grain of the tabletop because if she smiles at me right now, I might actually lose whatever composure I have left.
“So,” she says, leaning back slightly. “That’s all you have? I just told you I want to try, and you haven’t given me a speech.”
“I had one.”
“What happened to it?”
“I don’t know.”
A laugh breaks out of her—small, rough with morning, and entirely real. I sit there listening to the sound of it until it fades back into the sound of the ocean. Then she reaches across the small wooden table and lays her open hand over mine.
I turn my palm up beneath hers and lace our fingers together.
She lets me. There is no promise about next month, no guarantee about next year, and the signed papers are still resting in the other room. But her fingers are warm between mine, and for today, that is enough.