My breasts are literally in front of him, and my nipples are hard now. He stares, openly, part conflicted, but also hungry. At least that hasn’t changed.
“Yeah, it was a first for us both.”
“We werevirgins?” he asks, looking up at my face in shock. Sudsy water sluices down his cheeks.
This makes me laugh again and I tilt his head back to rinse. “No, no, I mean it was the first time either of us slept with a virtual stranger.”
“Must’ve been a good night if we ended up married.”
I nod, inhaling slowly. Ithadbeen a good night. So good that “good” is a comic understatement.
The obvious question follows: “How long were we together before we got married?”
I swallow, wondering how he’ll feel about my answer. “Just over two months.”
“I… Wow.”
Anxiety hardens to cement in my gut. Freshly unable to articulate to myself what Luca ever saw in me, I wonder if there’s a reality in which he might not make the same choice.
“How long have we been married?” he asks.
“Three years.”
“Were we happy?”
This question shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. “Yeah, we were. I mean… I worked a lot. But yeah. Who doesn’t, I guess.” The question sticks with me in the following silence, the rhythmic pulse of the shower playing behind it. I see myself at the office while he was home, working on the couch while Luca watched a movie, reading his texts asking when I’d be coming home. I see myself racing through traffic,late for our anniversary dinner, his body on the ground, crumpled and bleeding out.Ihad been happy—at least I thought I had. But then why did I have to carve out time to be with him? Why was work always first?
The obvious understanding lands: Luca hadn’t been happy. I knew it, I felt it, I put off facing it, because fuck, it hurts to stare directly at it.
Too bad, Emery.
Shaking water out of my eyes, I refocus on rinsing his hair and washing it again. “Your hair hasn’t been this long in years,” I murmur. “Not since we met.”
“Howdidwe meet?”
“At a wedding. Your friend was the groom and my cousin was the bride. I was supposed to go with this guy, but he bailed on the trip, and I couldn’t cancel my RSVP last-minute.”
“Were you two, like, together?”
I glance down at him. I know logically he can’t be jealous about this—we’re married, and he doesn’t even remember me—but that familiar edge is in his voice, the sexy protective one that makes my knees turn to jelly and hope flare in my chest.
“Not really,” I tell him. “We’d gone out a couple of times and he was nice enough for me to ask him if he’d want to go to a wedding in Vegas for a weekend.” I laugh. “Basically, I didn’t want to show up by myself. But then I did anyway.”
I reach for the conditioner and squeeze some into my palm, working it through his thick blond hair. “I made it through the ceremony and told myself I had to stay at the reception long enough to finish my drink, when I heard this laugh across the room.” I tilt my head, swiping a glob of conditioner from his temple, greedily gobbling up every chance to touch him. “Which is saying something, because it wasloud: a wedding reception in Vegas, and half the people there were actinglike they’d just gotten out on parole.” He laughs at this, and my stomach flips, just like it did the first time I heard it. I’ve never heard a laugh like his before or since. It’s the cadence of it, an infectious rhythm, big and round and joyful.
“I still don’t know what you were laughing about, but I glanced over just as you did and I just… didn’t want to leave anymore.”
“Did I come over to you?”
I look down to find him watching me. His dark lashes are clumped into little spikes, droplets of water running down his skin.
“You did. You asked me to dance.Somany people there were looking at you, but you were only looking at me.”
“I believe you.” Steam swirls all around us, and with the shower door closed, it feels a little like we’re locked in a bubble, just the two of us.
For a moment, I feel the way I always have with him: strong, desirable, powerful.
“So how did I convince you to keep me?” he asks, eyes flirting.
