Chapter 18 #3
“I sat in the driveway the other day,” I say. “Outside Lucy’s. Hands on the wheel. Engine off. Just sitting there like a woman who had forgotten how cars work.”
A breath almost leaves him as a laugh, but he holds it.
“And I thought, God, I love him.” My eyes burn again. “So help me, I’ll always love him.”
Logan goes utterly still.
It's not dramatic. There's no sharp music, no thunder, no perfect line of moonlight through the window, Just my husband taking one hard breath like it hurts him to live through the sound of my love.
“Char.”
“I’m tired,” I say.
He looks like the word frightens him.
“I’m tired of pretending you’re not the one I want to wake up next to. I’m tired of pretending my life will be complete without you in it. It can be good. I know that now. I built good without you. I had friends. Work. The Conservatory. I had a version of myself I’m proud of.”
His face tightens, but he nods.
“And still,” I say, “every morning there was this empty place where your voice should have been. Every time something funny happened, I had to stop myself from telling you. Every time I saw something beautiful, part of me wanted to look over and make sure you saw it too.”
He closes his eyes for one second.
“I don’t want to come back because I’m scared,” I say.
“I don’t want to come back because you saved me, or because you suffered enough, or because the footage makes the story cleaner.
I want to come back because I love you, and because I believe you love me, and because I think we can build something honest from what’s left. ”
He looks at me then. There's nothing guarded in his face. Nothing strong enough to hide behind.
“Charlotte,” he breathes.
“I’m not saying it will be easy.”
“I don’t need easy.”
“I’m not forgetting.”
“I’d never ask you to.”
“I might get angry at strange times.”
“I can take that.”
“I might cry in grocery stores if someone moves the peanut butter.”
His mouth trembles. “Civilizations have fallen for less.”
The laugh that breaks out of me is small and real. It changes the room. Not enough to erase what happened. Nothing will ever erase it. But enough to let air in.
Logan takes another step. This time, I meet him.
We stop close enough that the front of his shirt brushes my sweater. His hands lift, then hover in the air beside my arms. Shaking. My big, strong, impossible husband is standing in his own kitchen, afraid to touch me.
The sight breaks something soft in me.
I take his hand and place it on my cheek. His palm cups my face like I'm something precious he is terrified to mishandle. His thumb moves once beneath my eye, catching a tear.
“Tell me to stop if I get this wrong,” he says.
I rise onto my toes.
He doesn’t come down right away. “Char.”
“Kiss me.”
His whole body tightens.
“Are you sure?”
“No,” I say honestly. “Not about everything. But about this, yes.”
His hand trembles against my face. “I need you to be able to say no.”
“I can.”
“To anything.”
“Alright.”
“And I’ll stop.”
“Understood.”
His eyes search mine for another breath.
Then he bends and kisses me.
It's not the kiss I imagined in all the angry, lonely, humiliating nights after I left. It's not a conquering kiss. Not a desperate one that tries to solve months of pain with pressure and heat. It's careful.
His mouth touches mine like an apology he knows better than to speak right now. Soft at first. Almost unbearable in its restraint. I feel the hesitation in him.
So I take the next step. I slide my hands up his chest and grip his shirt.
He makes a sound low in his throat and goes still, waiting.
I kiss him harder.
That's when he breaks.
His arms come around me, strong and shaking, and the first full press of his body against mine sends a sob through me before I can stop it. He pulls back immediately.
“No, no,” I say, holding on. “Don’t stop.”
“Baby.”
“I’m okay.” I press my forehead to his chest. “I’m not sad because I don’t want this.”
His hand spreads over my back. “Then why?”
“Because I missed you.”
His breath leaves him in a broken rush.
I feel his mouth at my hair. “I missed you every second.”
I turn my face up again, and this kiss has more heat.
It has memory. His mouth knows mine. My body knows the exact angle of his jaw under my hand, the scrape of stubble beneath my fingers, the way his breath changes when I nip at his lower lip.
He shudders like I've put my hands somewhere far more dangerous than his face.
“Charlotte,” he says against my mouth.
I answer by tugging at his shirt.
He catches my wrists gently. “Slow.”
“I don’t want slow.”
“I do.”
The words stop me.
His eyes are dark, his breathing unsteady. But the look on his face isn't denial. It's devotion with discipline wrapped around it.
“I've wanted you for months,” he says. “I've wanted you every wrong way and every right way. I'm not rushing the first time you let me touch you again.”
My knees weaken.
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” he says, voice rough. “Oh.”
I swallow. “Okay.”
His hands slide down to mine. He lifts my fingers to his mouth and kisses the knuckles one by one.
“Can I take you upstairs?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
His eyes close briefly. “Say it again.”
“Yes, Logan.”
He bends and slides one arm beneath my knees, the other around my back.
I gasp, then clutch his shoulders as he lifts me.
He carries me slowly.
The house is quiet around us, familiar in a way that nearly hurts. The framed photo in the upstairs hall. The narrow table where I used to leave earrings. The linen closet with the door that never stays shut. The faint clean smell of detergent and him.
Our bedroom door is open. He stops at the threshold.
I know why.
He is asking without asking.
I touch his jaw. “Take me in.”
He does.
The room is dim. The bed's made too neatly. The lamp on his side is on, throwing warm light over the gray quilt. My side of the bed is untouched. The book I left on the nightstand months ago is still there, bookmark halfway through, as if some part of him refused to let the room admit I was gone.
He sets me on the edge of the mattress and kneels in front of me.
Logan Delaney, two-time Super Bowl quarterback, a man whose hands have held trophies, contracts, and a thousand cheering rooms in their grip, kneels on the bedroom floor and looks up at me like this is the only place he has ever wanted to be.
His thumbs move over the fabric of my jeans. He leans forward, pressing his mouth to my knee through the denim.
“Tell me what you want,” he says.
“You.”
His eyes lift.
“All of you,” I say.
He reaches for the hem of my sweater. “Can I?”
I nod.
He lifts it slowly, giving me time to change my mind with every inch. Cool air brushes my skin. His eyes move over me, as if he's committing it all to memory.
He's seen my body in sickness, grief, and sleepy morning light. He's seen me during my period, when my cheeks are flushed from wine, when I'm exhausted from hope and disappointment. And he's loved it in every condition.
Now he looks at me as if even the missing months are part of what he wants to memorize.
“You’re beautiful,” he says.
The words almost make me look away.
His hand comes up, fingers light beneath my chin. “Stay with me.”
“I’m trying.”
He kisses my ribs. My stomach. The center of my chest above my bra. Each touch is slow enough to make me ache, tender enough to make it worse. When he reaches behind me, his fingers pause at the clasp of my bra.
“Yes,” I say before he asks.
The bra falls away.
His breath catches.
There's no cleverness in the room now. No shield. Nothing but the lamp, the quilt, my husband’s mouth on my skin, and the terrible sweet relief of being wanted by the man I never stopped wanting.
He takes his time. His mouth moves over me like we have all of it. Like there's no clock counting down. He kisses the place above my heart until my fingers curl in his hair. He relearns the sounds I make now and answers them with low, rough praise that sinks into places I had boarded shut.
“That’s it,” he murmurs when I arch into him. “Let me have you, Char. Let me take care of you.”
The words shouldn’t undo me the way they do.
Maybe because he's been taking care of me for months from a distance, and now distance is no longer between us.
Maybe because I'm tired of being brave alone.
He opens my jeans and looks up again. The question is there.
“Don't stop now,” I whisper. There's a tease there, but the laugh doesn't come from either of us.
He undresses me like he's unwrapping a present. Shoes. Socks. Denim. Each piece set aside like disorder might break the spell. When I'm bare before him, he doesn't move for a second.
I start to cross my arms.
He catches my hands.
“No,” he says softly. “Please don’t hide from me.”
The please is what does it.
I let my hands fall.
His eyes move over me, and my body warms under the look. Not because I feel perfect. I don’t. I feel human. Soft in places I once judged, marked by the last few months in ways only I may notice, trembling from exposure that isn't only physical.
Logan presses his forehead to my stomach.
“I love you,” he says against my skin.
My fingers slide into his hair. “Say it again.”
His arms wrap around my hips.
“I love you,” he says again.
This time, it feels less like a declaration and more like breath.
Then his mouth lowers, kissing his way down, down, down until he spreads my legs and kisses my clit.
I stop thinking in clean sentences.
He worships me. There's no other word for it, though I would normally distrust a word that large.
He uses his mouth, hands, and all that careful attention until my body stops bracing for pain and starts reaching for pleasure.
He learns me patiently, though he already knows me.
He listens when my breath changes. He slows when I tense. He gives more when I whisper his name.
At the first hard wave of pleasure, I try to pull him up.
He pins my hips gently and looks up at me from between my thighs, eyes dark, mouth wet, voice rough enough to make me clench.
“Not yet.”
“Logan.”
“I said I was taking my time.”
“I may die.”
“You won’t.”