CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AUbrEE
The morning light caught Tristen's face in a way that made my chest ache with something I hadn't felt in over a year.
He was standing at the kitchen counter, making Everly's breakfast with the focused concentration he brought to everything these days. Mashing bananas. Warming oatmeal. Testing the temperature against his wrist like he'd been doing it forever instead of learning it from scratch six months ago.
I leaned against the doorframe and watched him, my coffee growing cold in my hands.
He'd lost the haunted look that had lived in his eyes for so long.
The dark circles had faded. The tension that used to pull his shoulders up toward his ears had finally released, leaving behind a man who moved through our home like he belonged there again.
Not like a guest trying not to take up too much space.
Not like a penitent serving out his sentence in the guest room down the hall.
Just Tristen. My husband. The father of my daughter.
The man who had broken my heart and then spent a year proving he could be trusted to hold it again.
"You're staring," he said without turning around.
"Maybe I like the view."
He glanced over his shoulder at me, and the smile that spread across his face made my stomach flip like I was seventeen again.
That smile had always undone me. Even during the worst of everything, even when I couldn't stand to be in the same room with him, some traitorous part of my heart had still responded to that smile.
"Everly's almost ready for breakfast," he said. "You want to grab her from the high chair?"
"In a minute."
I set my coffee down on the counter and crossed the kitchen toward him. He turned fully to face me, his brow furrowing slightly with concern.
"Everything okay?"
"Everything's fine." I stopped in front of him, close enough to feel the heat radiating off his body. Close enough to smell his soap and the coffee on his breath. "I just wanted to tell you something."
"Okay." His voice was careful, the way it always was when he wasn't sure if I was about to pull away or let him in. A year of rebuilding hadn't erased that caution entirely. Maybe it never would.
"I woke up this morning and I wasn't scared."
He tilted his head, not quite understanding. "Scared of what?"
"Of you. Of us." I reached up and pressed my palm against his chest, feeling his heart kick into a faster rhythm beneath my touch.
"For months, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Waiting for you to slip back into old patterns.
Waiting for some secret to surface that would prove I was stupid to give you another chance. "
His jaw tightened, and I watched him swallow hard. "Aubree..."
"Let me finish." I smoothed my hand across his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin through his t-shirt.
"I kept waiting. And waiting. And every day, you showed up exactly the way you promised you would.
No secrets. No decisions made without me.
No protecting me from information I have every right to know. "
"I told you I would change."
"You did. But I didn't believe you." The admission hurt to say out loud, but it was true.
I hadn't believed him. I'd hoped, in the fragile way you hope for something you're terrified won't happen.
But believing was different. Believing required trust, and trust had been the first casualty of everything that went wrong. "I believe you now."
Something cracked open in his expression. His eyes went bright with moisture he didn't try to hide, and his hand came up to cover mine where it rested against his heart.
"I thought I might never hear you say that."
"I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to say it.
" I stepped closer, eliminating the last few inches of distance between us.
My body pressed against his, soft curves meeting hard planes in a configuration that used to be as familiar as breathing.
"But you earned it, Tristen. Not with grand gestures or pretty words.
You earned it by being different, every single day, when it would have been so much easier to fall back into old habits. "
"Easier isn't worth anything if it costs me you."
My throat tightened at the rawness in his voice. This was the man I'd married. The one who looked at me like I was the center of his entire universe. The one who had gotten lost somewhere along the way and then fought like hell to find his way back.
"I want to try again," I said. "Really try. Not just sleeping in the same bed and raising Everly together. I want our marriage back. All of it."
"I want that too." His voice was rough with emotion. "More than I've ever wanted anything."
"But I need something from you first."
"Anything."
"No more secrets." I held his gaze, letting him see how serious I was. "I don't care if you think the truth will hurt me. I don't care if you think you're protecting me by keeping something to yourself. I need to know that you will never, ever keep me in the dark again. About anything."
"I promise."
"I mean it, Tristen. This is my line. The one thing I cannot survive twice. If you ever decide that your judgment about what I can handle is more important than my right to know the truth, we're done. No second chances. No more rebuilding."
His hand tightened over mine. "I understand."
"Do you?"
"Yes." He brought his other hand up to cup my face, his thumb tracing along my cheekbone with a tenderness that made my eyes sting.
"I understand that I spent years telling myself I was protecting you when really I was just avoiding difficult conversations.
I understand that secrets are poison, even when they come from a place of love.
I understand that you are my partner, not someone who needs to be managed or shielded. "
"And?"
"And I will tell you everything. Always. Even when it's hard. Even when I think it might hurt you." He leaned his forehead against mine, his breath warm on my lips. "Especially then."
I believed him. Not because the words were pretty, but because I'd watched him live those words for the past year.
He'd told me about difficult business decisions before they were finalized.
He'd shared concerns about Everly's development when he could have easily kept them to himself.
He'd admitted to bad days and dark thoughts instead of hiding behind the impenetrable wall he used to construct.
He had become the partner I'd always needed him to be.
And I was finally ready to let him in again.
"I'm going to kiss you now," I said.
His breath caught. "Yeah?"
"Unless you have objections."
"No objections." His voice was barely a whisper. "No objections at all."
I closed the distance between us and pressed my lips to his.
The first touch was soft, tentative, like we were learning each other all over again.
His mouth was warm and familiar, tasting like coffee and the mint toothpaste he'd used this morning.
I felt his whole body shudder when I deepened the kiss, felt his hands slide from my face to my waist, pulling me closer with a desperation he'd clearly been holding back for months.
God, I had missed this.
I had missed the way he kissed me like I was oxygen and he was suffocating.
I had missed the way his fingers dug into my hips, pressing hard enough to leave marks.
I had missed the small sounds he made in the back of his throat when I ran my tongue along his lower lip, the way his breath hitched when I pressed my body fully against his.
"Aubree." My name came out like a prayer, reverent and aching. "Fuck, I missed you."
"I'm right here."
"I know. I know you are." He pulled back just enough to look at me, his pupils blown wide and his chest heaving. "I just need a second to make sure this is real."
"It's real." I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him back down to me. "Now stop talking and kiss me again."
He didn't need to be told twice.
The second kiss was harder, hungrier, all the months of careful distance burning away in seconds.
His hands slid under the hem of my shirt, his palms hot against my bare skin, and I arched into his touch like a flower turning toward the sun.
Every nerve ending in my body was firing at once, a cacophony of sensation that drowned out everything except the feeling of being wanted by this man.
"The baby," I gasped when he started kissing down my neck. "Everly's in the other room."
"I know." He pulled back, visibly struggling to get himself under control. His lips were swollen from kissing, his hair mussed where I'd been running my fingers through it. He looked wrecked in the best possible way. "We should probably feed our daughter before we traumatize her."
I laughed, the sound bubbling up from somewhere deep in my chest. It felt good to laugh with him again. It felt good to want him again, without fear or reservation or the constant voice in my head warning me to protect myself.
"Tonight?" I said.
"Tonight." The promise in his voice made heat pool low in my belly. "After Everly's asleep. I'm going to spend hours reminding you how much I love you."
"Hours, huh? Ambitious."
"I have a lot of time to make up for."
He kissed me one more time, soft and sweet, before stepping back to finish Everly's breakfast. I watched him move around the kitchen with a new lightness in my chest, a feeling like the weight I'd been carrying for over a year had finally lifted.
We weren't perfect. We would never be perfect. The scars from what we'd been through would always be there, faded but present, a reminder of how close we'd come to losing everything.
But we were choosing each other again. And this time, we knew exactly what we were choosing.
Not the fantasy of an effortless love story.
Not the naive belief that marriage would always be easy.
We were choosing the hard work of rebuilding.
The daily commitment to honesty, even when honesty was uncomfortable.
The promise to put each other first, always, no matter what.
It wasn't the marriage I'd imagined on our wedding day.
It was better.
Because this marriage had been tested by fire and survived. This marriage had been torn apart and stitched back together with hands that finally understood how fragile and valuable it really was.
Everly let out an impatient wail from her high chair, apparently done waiting for breakfast. Tristen scooped up her bowl and headed toward the dining room, pausing to drop a kiss on my forehead as he passed.
"Coming?" he asked.
"Right behind you."
I grabbed my coffee and followed my husband to feed our daughter, feeling for the first time in longer than I could remember like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
Later that night, after Everly had been bathed and fed and sung to sleep, Tristen found me in the master bedroom.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed, suddenly nervous in a way I hadn't expected. We'd made love thousands of times during our marriage. But this felt different. This felt like a beginning, not a return.
He crossed the room and knelt in front of me, taking my hands in his.
"We don't have to do anything tonight," he said. "If you're not ready, we can wait."
"I'm ready." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "I've been ready. I was just scared."
"And now?"
"Now I'm not scared anymore." I reached up and touched his face, tracing the lines around his eyes that hadn't been there a year ago. "I trust you, Tristen. I trust us."
He turned his head and pressed a kiss to my palm, then to my wrist, then to the sensitive skin on the inside of my forearm. Each touch sent sparks shooting through my nervous system, building toward something I'd been denying myself for far too long.
"I love you," he said against my skin. "I need you to know that I have never, for a single second, stopped loving you. Even when you couldn't stand to look at me. Even when I didn't deserve to breathe the same air as you."
"I love you too." The words came out rough with emotion. "I tried so hard not to. I tried to convince myself I could fall out of love with you and move on. But I couldn't."
"Thank god for that."
He rose up on his knees and kissed me, his hands sliding into my hair to tilt my head back. I opened for him immediately, letting him deepen the kiss until I couldn't think about anything except the taste of him, the feel of him, the overwhelming relief of finally coming home.
We undressed each other slowly, reverently, learning each other's bodies all over again. He traced every curve and line with his fingertips, then with his mouth, whispering words against my skin that made my eyes fill with tears.
When he finally pushed inside me, I gasped at the sensation of being filled so completely. Not just physically, but emotionally. The connection between us felt almost tangible, a thread that had been frayed and damaged but never fully severed.
"I've got you," he breathed against my temple. "I've got you, and I'm never letting go again."
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, feeling his heartbeat against my own chest.
"Promise me," I whispered.
"I promise." He began to move, slow and deep, hitting places inside me that made stars burst behind my eyes. "I promise, Aubree. You come first. Always. From now until I stop breathing."
I believed him.
And as we moved together in the darkness, rebuilding something that had been shattered and finding it stronger than before, I finally let go of the last of my fear.
Our marriage wasn't perfect.
But it was ours.
And we would never take it for granted again.