Chapter 32 Epilogue #3
"I love you," I say, because I can say it now whenever I want, because the years taught us both what those words cost and what they're worth, because he's buried inside me looking at me like he has nowhere else to be.
"Once more," he begs, all rasp.
"Earn it," I tell him, and roll my hips.
He sits up in a crunch of abs and tattoos, wraps both arms around me, and thrusts up while I sink down, the collision of it knocking the breath out of me that I swallow against his neck so the hallway stays kind.
"I love you," I say again, obedient and not, grinning, and he chuckles against my temple and keeps that pace until a second orgasm builds low and wide and warm as Sunday biscuits.
When it hits, I shake apart as quietly as I can, mindful of the cracked door and the two small sleepers down the hall, squeezing around his cock in pulses that pull a raw sound out of his chest. He follows me over with his face pressed to my breastbone, spilling deep inside me, holding me through it like he's afraid I'll float off the bed, murmuring my name like it's the only word left in the language that still works.
We stay tangled afterward, sticky and smiling, his heart going steady beneath my cheek while the monitor stays blessedly boring.
He brushes my wrecked hair off his face and kisses the tip of my nose like an idiot in love, which he is.
Eventually I peel myself up, find one of his discarded T-shirts that smells like hay and detergent, and clean us both up, practical and tender, because I've done this dance enough times to know the aftercare is part of the sex and part of the marriage too.
I drop the T-shirt on the floor and crawl back into the warm wreck of him.
He pulls the soft blanket over both of us anyway, retrieved during the cleanup from the kitchen floor, ridiculous indoors and perfect anyway.
His hand finds mine under the fabric and plays with my ring the way he has every quiet night for three years.
"Five more minutes," I murmur. "Then the porch. Then the truck. Then you can tell me about the fake swarm again like I haven't heard it a hundred times."
"You love the fake swarm story," he says.
"I love you telling it," I say. "Different thing entirely."
He kisses my hair. The monitor stays boring, and the kids stay down. Somewhere outside an owl asks a question nobody answers, and I let myself have the small forever of his heartbeat under my ear before we put pants on and reclaim the night air.
Later, we walk as far as the old truck beside the porch, the baby monitor clipped to Taz's pocket. We can see the hives from here.
It's the same truck Taz drove the day we met. He keeps threatening to replace it; the engine makes concerning sounds now, and the passenger door doesn't always latch, but I won't let him.
"Remember?" I say, leaning against the hood.
"The swarm?" he asks.
"You looked so scared," I tell him.
"I was terrified," he says. "There were bees everywhere. You came out of nowhere in your veil and just—scooped them into a box like it was nothing."
"I was trying to decide whether anybody that handsome should be allowed near heavy machinery," I tell him. "You looked ready to abandon the truck to them."
"I'd have signed over the title if one of them had brought a pen," he says.
He laughs, that real laugh I spent a year learning to hear again. The stars are impossibly bright out here, away from city lights. The bees are settled in their hives, forty colonies strong now, busy through the summer.
"I don't need an excuse anymore," Taz says.
"For what?" I ask.
"To come find you." He pulls me against him, chin resting on my head. "That second time, I made up a reason. The fake swarm, June's call. I just wanted to see you again."
"Taz," I say. "You spent a whole week working up the nerve to cross June's yard and ask about bees you were terrified of. June had practically started choosing napkins."
"She loaned me the honey money and then offered relationship advice," he says.
I poke him in the ribs. "You needed both."
"Best money I ever borrowed," he says.
I go quiet against his chest, and he notices. "What are you thinking about?" he asks.
"Everything," I say. "Nothing. How much I love you."
"One more time," he murmurs, "for the hives."
"I love you," I tell him.
He closes his eyes like he's listening to music. "I could stay here all night hearing that."
"You'll have to settle for once," I tell him. "Beau has reserved the rest of your night, and he's a terrible tipper."
I turn, cup his face in my hands. "I love you, Tazio Williams. Our kids, this farm, the life we've built: I wouldn't trade any of it. You learned to handle a swarm for me, and you still flinch when one gets too close. How am I supposed to resist that? And another thing—"
He kisses me before I can finish.
The night is cool but not cold. The bees are humming in their sleep, that low vibration that's always meant home. And the man beside me, the one who drove up in this truck fourteen years ago with a fake excuse to see me again, holds me beside the old truck and the new hives.