"It is when it's my stacks!"
An affectionate smile pulls across my mouth as I listen to them chatter, and they both throw me a nod as I pass to the fridge.
I nearly lost both of them, so being able to listen to them argue over a sport I have no interest in is something I will never take for granted ever again.
Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, I linger in the kitchen just long enough to watch the heated discussion dissolve into a wrestling match where both men play up their injuries, then I retreat and head upstairs to my bedroom.
What a long day.
Hell, it's been a long month.
Kicking the door closed with one foot, I unknot the tie around my throat and slide it from my shirt while walking across the room to my dresser.
The world is settling. Rose and her family are healing.
My friends are recovering.
The war is over.
Those bastard brothers are dead.
It's been one hell of a whirlwind and I am tired.
"Kon?" A soft knock of knuckles against the door draws me away from tiredly studying the neatly folded shirts in my dresser. I turn around just as Rose walks into the room with a small, nervous smile on her beautiful face. She's still dressed in black from the funeral, but there's more color in her cheeks underneath her red-rimmed eyes.
"Rose. You do not have to knock, you know."
Ever since she woke up, I've let her sleep alone out of respect for her trauma and her healing. Despite my feelings for her, there's no world in which I would overstep or use our marriage to force myself into her space.
"I know. It just felt…" Her hands come together at her waist. "Can I talk to you?"
"You do not have to request that of me either," I say softly. "I will always listen."
Rose gently rolls her eyes. "Can you stop being so nice for like, five seconds?"
"Does it bother you?"
Her shoulders lift. "No. It doesn't. Uhm…" She threads her fingers into one another and locks eyes with me. Despite the sadness lingering there, warmth rises up and it makes my heart ache once more with how I desperately desire to comfort her.
"It was a nice service that you put together. Thank you. Better than he deserved."
"He was your father." I walk toward her with my bottled water in hand. "He will be well cared for there."
"I know. Thank you. It was really sweet what you did. What you've done. Caring for me, despite everything. Caring for Beatie after what she did. Even for my mom. It's… alarming how nice you're being."
"Again, does it bother you?" I stop a few feet away, close enough that Rose has to lift her head to maintain eye contact.
"No. It does make everything feel a little like a dream but it's nice. I actually…" Rose puffs out her cheeks and walks away from me, so I sit down on the edge of the bed. When she wanders back, she seems to have worked up the courage to say whatever brought her here in the first place.
"Okay. Listen. When I woke up after being shot, you gave me this amazing speech about how you felt about me and how you trusted me and loved me and all these good things. And you know, it felt amazing to listen to. It really did. And you were so considerate. More than I deserve after I lied my way into your life. I wanted to tell you I felt the same but I was… I was scared. Scared that what I felt was fake or wrong, or just a product of this terrible situation we were all forced into."
She speaks in a rush and her grip on her fingers grows so tight that a couple of them lose their color.
"I was so sure you would kick us out after what Beatie did to Calvin. I know she's apologized and so have I, and Calvin seems fine with everything, but I still feel really guilty. My therapist says the guilt is misplaced and that… actions under duress don't carry the same weight as cruel actions made through free will. Which is really hard to unpack, because I know I was forced, but I still made those choices."
Rose begins pacing in front of me, and I bite down on the edge of my tongue, wrestling with the urge to speak.
"She also told me that what I feel for you isn't necessarily false either, because a lot of what we shared was real. All our time together, the dinners and the swimming and time at the gym and the sex. Sleeping together. Every time we talked and spent time together. All of that was still real. I told her that I was scared my feelings were a lie, so she gave me some things to work on. Little projects to help me unpack what was real about what I felt, and what I'd forced upon myself to make this work for the good of my family."
