He holds my gaze for a moment like he’s making sure I mean it.
Then he goes to the sofa and pulls the throw blanket off it, comes back and wraps it around my shoulders himself, smoothing it down my arms with both hands, tucking it close around me with a care that makes my chest ache.
“Go back to bed, baby,” he murmurs. His lips press to my forehead, warm and unhurried, like he has all the time in the world even though he doesn’t. His hand cups my face for just a moment. “It’s gonna be a long night. Promise me you’ll get some sleep.”
I’ll be too worried about you,I think.
I wrap my arms around him instead of saying it.
He pulls me in without hesitation, strong and solid and warm, his chin dropping to the top of my head.
Then he lets go, with one last look back at me from the doorway before he’s gone.
The house feels immediately, enormously empty withouthim. At least I have Lucky snoozing here, happily snorting and yipping and twitching in her sleep.
I try to go back to sleep in my own bed.
I can’t.
I lie in the dark and listen to the wind and think about horses bolting in the pitch black, panicked and unpredictable and afraid. I think about Slade and his father and brothers out there in it, men moving through a hundred mile an hour windstorm in the middle of the night because there’s a job that needs to be done.
I grew up around men who paid other people to do the hard things.
These men are the ones that do the hard things.
The wind gusts hard enough to make the windows flex and I pull my duvet up and stare at the ceiling.
At some point in the night, I give up on trying to sleep. I get out of bed and walk back down the dark hallway, telling myself I’m just going to get a glass of water.
Except it’s not the kitchen that I’m heading towards.
It’s Slade’s bedroom.
His door is open. The sheets are still rumpled from where he was sleeping two hours ago. His nightstand has his book on it. It’s a sci-fi paperback, Isaac Asimov’sFoundation, this one with a cracked spine and dog-eared pages. Next to it is glass of water he didn’t finish. His watch.
For some reason the sight of all those little things makes my heart twist.
I cross the room before I’ve finished deciding to. I haven’t been in here since the furniture arrived and Slade insisted on moving everything into place himself instead of using my crew. I added all the art on the walls, the blanket draped over the armchair in the corner, the lamps, everything.
But there’s one accessory I didn’t add myself. It’s on his nightstand, and I approach it slowly, scarcely believing my eyes.
It’s a silver picture frame. Inside it is the photo from our wedding: the one where he’s kissing me at the altar.
He framed that photo.
He keeps it on his nightstand.
My heart squeezes again, painfully tight. The emotion that moves through me is so powerful that it makes my eyes blur and my hands tremble.
Carefully, I put the frame back on the nightstand.
Turning to his bed, I smooth my hand over the soft linen sheets, as if it was him I was touching.
Then I climb in.
His pillow smells like cedar soap and something underneath that’s just him, something that smells like home in a way that shouldn’t be possible after only a few months but is. I pull the duvet up and close my eyes and feel the tension in my chest ease by a fraction.
The wind gusts hard, but I don’t flinch. Wrapped in his sheets, surrounded by his scent, I feel comforted. He’s still out there. I’m still worried. But less alone in it. Like some part of him stayed behind.
