Chapter 28 Daisy #2
"I attempted to train the cat to deliver the ring. He was supposed to carry the box in his mouth. Instead, he sat on it for thirty minutes and then knocked it under the couch. Apparently this is his encore."
"The cat has a backup plan."
"The cat has several backup plans. We've reached an understanding." Adam bends down and scratches Chaucer behind the ears. The cat, traitor that he is, purrs loudly. "He's decided I'm acceptable. It took three months of treats and dedicated sitting."
"You bribed my cat."
"I earned my cat's respect through consistent positive reinforcement and patience." He straightens up, still smiling. "The treats were merely a facilitation tool."
Beside the reading corner, Nell raises her voice above the crowd ("If everyone could gather around, I'd like to say a few words about what this store means to me") and I know she wants her floor back.
"We should let her speak," I say reluctantly.
"We should." But Adam doesn't move. He's looking at me like he's memorizing this moment, storing it somewhere safe. "I love you, Daisy. I'm going to keep saying it until you're sick of hearing it."
"I'll never be sick of hearing it."
"Good. Because I have about five years of unsaid 'I love yous' to catch up on."
After the speeches and the ribbon-cutting and the champagne toasts (sparkling cider for me, which Nell sourced from three different stores to find one that didn't taste like "carbonated regret"), the party winds down.
Guests trickle out with promises to return for the grand opening next week, leaving behind empty plates and full hearts and a store that finally feels whole again.
Adam and I escape upstairs to my old apartment: Nell's apartment, technically, but I've been back at the penthouse, by choice, while the renovations happened, and she told me I could use it tonight.
"This is weird," I say, looking around at the space that used to be my refuge. The smoke damage has been repaired, the walls freshly painted, the furniture replaced with things that actually match. "It looks different."
"Nell redesigned it. Said you deserved better than hand-me-down furniture and a bathroom door that didn't close properly."
"The door closed. It just... needed encouragement."
"The door required a hip-check and three positive affirmations to latch." Adam pulls me toward the couch: new, soft, actually comfortable instead of "character-building" as Nell used to call the old one. "I watched you fight with that door for a solid ten minutes once."
"You watched me fight with the door?"
"I was in the kitchen. You were cursing at the door. It was very endearing."
I settle against his side, curling my legs up under me. The ring on my finger catches the lamplight: solid, real, a promise renewed.
"We should talk about the ceremony," Adam says. "Whatever you want. Small, big, courthouse, destination—"
"Small. Just family and friends. Maybe here, at the store."
"Nell would love that."
"Nell would cry about it and then deny crying and then threaten to murder anyone who mentions the crying." I smile. "So yes. Here. When the store has settled down and we have time to plan."
"You'd be beautiful in anything."
"That's sweet, but I'm also vain, and I want photographic evidence of this pregnancy that doesn't feature me looking like a distressed whale."
He laughs, pulling me closer. "Fine. Small ceremony, at the store. What about the honeymoon?"
"We're still technically on our first honeymoon. We never actually took one."
"Then we're overdue." His hand finds mine, thumb tracing circles on my palm. "Somewhere quiet. With room service and a beach and absolutely no cell phone reception for at least a week."
"You'd survive a week without email?"
"For you? I'd survive a month." He kisses my temple. "I'd survive anything, Daisy. I should have proven that a long time ago."
"Come here," Adam murmurs, and then we're kissing again, slower this time, with the urgency deepening into tenderness.
His hands are gentle on my back, my shoulders, my face.
The ring on my finger catches the lamplight every time I move: solid, real, a promise renewed in front of witnesses and a judgmental cat.
"Stay," I whisper against his lips. "Tonight."
"Always."
We make our way to the new bedroom, with its actual mattress and a door that closes properly.
I make him stand against the closet door just so I can look: ring on my hand, his glasses fogging, the outline of him hard in his trousers because a proposal in a bookstore apparently qualifies as foreplay.
"Staring is polite," he says.
"Staring is planning." I point at the bed. "You're going there. I'm going on top. Belly gets worshipped. Hips get praised. If you whisper, I'll make you shout."
I push him onto the edge of the bed before he can overthink the choreography.
He sits, glasses still on, looking like a literature professor about to get absolutely ruined.
I climb into his lap, dress bunched, pregnant belly a soft proud curve between us, and watch his face go reverent and filthy in the same breath.
"Hi, wife," he says.
"Hi, husband who finally asked correctly." I pluck his glasses off and set them on the nightstand beside my mother's paperback. "Now take me apart loud enough that Nell hears and pretends she doesn't."
"Nell is still downstairs with whiskey."
"Then give her something to ignore."
His laugh turns into a groan when I roll my hips.
We undress each other with celebratory impatience: his shirt, my dress, the soft maternity bralette he bought in three colors "for science.
" When I'm bare in his lap he goes still and maps me with both hands: breasts fuller than last month, belly warm under his palms, hips that have already started changing.
"Would you look," he whispers, awed and hard beneath me. "Wearing my ring again. About to sit on my cock like a woman who said yes in front of Ruth and a lasagna. Daisy, fuck, I love you. I love you. I'm going to say it until the neighbors file a noise complaint about vocabulary."
"Say it while you're inside me."
"Demanding. Perfect." He helps me rise; I fist him, stroke once, then sink down slow. The stretch pulls a loud moan out of me that I don't bother to quiet. His head tips back. "I love you. God, I love you. Take all of me. Just like that—"
I do. I seat myself fully and we both swear at full volume.
Then I ride him: unhurried at first, letting him feel every inch, letting him worship with hands on my belly and mouth on my breasts.
He sucks a nipple and praises me around it, a litany of I love you and look at your hips and so tight around me that turns the new bedroom into a chapel of filthy gratitude.
"Louder," I tease, bouncing harder. "I want the bookstore bricks to blush."
"Then blush, bricks." He thrusts up to meet me, careful of depth, shameless about sound.
The bedframe answers with a rhythmic knock against the wall.
"I love the way you take me. I love the sounds you make.
I love that you wrote your own vows in your head already.
Don't deny it. I can see the outline behind your eyes—"
"Stop profiling my… ah… brain during sex—"
"Never." His thumb presses circles into my clit. "I love you. Come on your husband. Come loud. Let the ring see what it signed up for."
He obeys the plan so thoroughly that he is a wreck of love-talk and muscle. I slow us on purpose, grinding in lazy circles until his vocabulary collapses into my name alone. Then I speed up. Then I slow again. Edging a CEO is an underappreciated community service.
"Daisy, please—"
"Please is a good start." I lean back, hands behind me on his knees, belly on display, and watch his pupils blow. "Say the litany. Full sentences."
"I love you." He thrusts up, obedient and desperate. "I love your mouth and your brain and the way you argue about footnotes. I love this belly. I love these hips. I love that you said yes before I finished the speech because you already knew the ending."
"Louder."
"I LOVE YOU." The bedframe knocks punctuation into the wall. "Come on. Let go for me. Let Nell's whiskey toast hear it."
I laugh, clenching hard enough that he nearly follows before I do. He presses his mouth to my shoulder and waits for me.
The first orgasm hits like a champagne cork, bright, spraying laughter through the moan.
I clutch his shoulders and shake apart while he works up into me from below, still murmuring love like it's the only language left.
Before I can collapse he flips us with absurd care, settling me on my back against the new pillows, sliding a cushion under my hips so my belly is supported, and kneels between my thighs looking wrecked and devoted.
"Okay?" he checks.
"If you stop I will revoke bookmark privileges."
"Violent." He pushes back in and starts a deeper rhythm, one hand braced by my head, the other stroking my belly in time with his thrusts.
"I love you. I love this. I love that we rebuilt a store and a marriage and somehow still fit on a mattress that doesn't sag.
Daisy, fuck, touch yourself for me. I want to watch. "