Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
He drove deep and came with my name against my breast.
Afterward, I lay on top of him listening to his heart batter beneath my ear. His hands rested on my back without trapping me.
When he softened, I tied off the condom. Desire had been easier than the quiet after it. I wrapped the sheet around myself and sat against the headboard.
Callum remained across the bed, naked and visibly fighting the urge to pull me close.
“You can hold me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Do not make me defend every yes.”
He came beside me. I rested against his chest.
“I need recent test results before we stop using condoms. I have mine.”
“I was tested after separation and had no other partners. I will send the result.”
“My contraception appointment is next month. We decide together after that, but my body gets the final decision.”
“Yes.”
The practical conversation did not cool desire. It made my body more entirely mine within it.
“Do you want me to move?” I asked.
“No.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
“Yes.”
I lifted my head. “Until morning?”
“Until whenever you choose to leave.”
The answer annoyed me. “You can just say morning.”
Hope flickered in his eyes. “Stay until morning.”
“All right.”
We cleaned up. Callum offered me a new toothbrush still in its package and immediately explained that he had bought a multipack, not prepared it for me. I laughed naked in his bathroom until I had to lean against the sink.
In bed, he waited for me to choose a side. I took the one near the wall, which had always been his.
“This feels illegal,” he said.
“Report it.”
He turned off the lamp.
In darkness, desire settled and the harder feelings returned. I touched his chest.
“I am here because I want you,” I said. “You don't have to need me, lose everything, or perform repentance for that to be true.”
“I understand.”
“And tomorrow I may be frightened.”
“So may I.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It is all I have.”
I put my face against his shoulder.
It was enough for the night.
I woke at four with Callum's arm across my waist. For one disoriented second, we were in the old apartment. Then the bakery mixer began and memory returned.
Under the bathroom light, I saw beard burn on my thighs and marks fading at my hip, all welcomed, all evidence of a choice my morning mind had to meet. Panic climbed anyway.
Callum remained in bed when I returned.
“I might leave.”
Pain crossed his face. “All right.”
“You can say you don't want that.”
“I don't want you to leave. I also won't make it difficult.”
I dressed. At the door, he asked whether I wanted a car.
“No.”
“Will you tell me when you are home?”
I almost called it tracking. It was also a person asking.
“Yes.”
I went downstairs, walked one block, and stopped. Leaving had been available. Knowing that changed what I wanted.
I returned.
Callum opened the door wearing trousers wrong-side out. Hope hit his face so hard I looked away.
“Do not say anything.”
He stepped aside.
I took off my coat and went back to bed.
In the morning, we made eggs badly and ate bread. At nine, I left after kissing him once. I texted from my own apartment.
His reply said: Thank you. I will wait for you to choose the next contact.
I chose it two days later.
The message said: Dinner Friday. Public restaurant. I choose it. Sex possible, not promised.
Callum replied: Yes to dinner. Understood about sex.
Friday's restaurant was noisy and badly lit. We sat near the kitchen and argued about whether the soup contained fennel. A couple at the next table recognized us but took no photograph.
After dinner, I asked Callum to walk me home. At my door, I said, “I want you inside.”
“For tea?”
“For sex.”
His eyes darkened. “Yes.”
This time the intimacy belonged to my rooms. I showed him where to place his coat and which cabinet held glasses. In the bedroom, I undressed him slowly, learning the leaner lines of his body.
He asked before going down on me. I said yes and held his face between my thighs while he licked me to orgasm. Then I pushed him onto my bed, put a condom on him, and rode him without asking the apartment to become ours.
Afterward, Callum offered to leave.
“Do you want to?”
“No.”
“Then stay. The right side is mine.”
He took the left.
In the morning, he made coffee in my kitchen and failed to find the filters. He asked instead of opening every cabinet. I showed him.
We ate toast at the small table. Nothing about the scene promised permanent residence. That was what allowed it to feel tender.
When he left, the rooms remained mine. His scent lingered on the pillow, a presence rather than a claim.
We repeated the dinner three weeks later and failed differently. Callum arrived distracted after a call from Beatrice. He said nothing was wrong, then spent an hour answering questions with half his attention.
“Go deal with her,” I said.
“I am here.”
“Your body is.”
He flinched at the phrase I once used about myself in the archive.
“She received a letter from Nathaniel,” he admitted. “He blames her for cooperating.”
“Why didn't you tell me?”
“I did not want the evening to become family crisis.”
“So you made me feel it without naming it.”
We did not have sex. Callum went home. I lay awake wondering whether refusing intimacy had become punishment.
Lena asked whether I wanted sex that night.
“Not after the argument.”
“Then it was not punishment. It was no.”
Callum and I spoke two days later.
“I was angry you did not sleep with me,” he said. “I knew I had no right to be and was angry anyway.”
“I was afraid I withheld sex to prove control.”
“Did you want it?”
“No.”
“Then I am glad you didn't.”
“Do not make yourself noble.”
“I am still angry.”
We laughed, then discussed Beatrice's letter. Callum planned one supported visit with her and no contact with Nathaniel outside counsel.
The failed night taught us more than the successful one. Desire could leave the room without taking the relationship with it.
After that conversation, I suggested joint counseling. Our private calls had begun carrying more history than either of us could hold fairly, even though we were not ready to reunite.
Callum agreed to a clinician selected from three names screened by both individual therapists, with no prior relationship to either spouse.
Dr. Elaine Mercer met us in a room containing two identical chairs and a sofa neither of us chose. Her first question was not whether we wanted to save the marriage.
“What decision are you asking this room to help you make?”
Callum looked at me. I hated him for yielding the answer and would have hated him more for taking it.
“Whether we can build a marriage that does not require me to become useful whenever his family is in crisis,” I said.
“And you?” Dr. Mercer asked him.
“Whether I can be her husband without treating access to her as proof I am doing well.”