Page 73 of Coming Home

Ralph didn't answer. He wasn't wearing his half-focused gaze. He was looking at me.

His eyes were wide, intense, devouring every single feature of my face with a focus so heavy it made my breath hitch.

"Nothing is wrong," he said, his voice dropping into that deep tone that always made my stomach flip.

"Then why are you staring at me like that?"

"Because I want to memorize it properly this time. Without the fog."

"I told you, Ralph. I'm not going anywhere."

"I know," he murmured, standing up from the stool. He crossed the kitchen floor with that slow, powerful stride, never breaking eye contact. He stopped right in front of me, his hands reaching out to lock around my waist. With one smooth, effortless lift, he hoisted me up onto the marble counter.

My legs parted instinctively, and he stepped deep into the space between them, pressing his heavy chest against mine, his face level with mine.

"I can see you," he whispered, his breath warm against my skin. "Every beautiful, perfect detail, Emma. Your eyes. The exact shade of your mouth." His thumb came up, tenderly tracing the curve of my bottom lip until it trembled. Then, his hand slid slowly down my throat, his index finger coming to rest on the sensitive skin of my collarbone. "The tiny freckle right here. The one I found in the dark. I can see it now."

My eyes flooded with hot tears. "Ralph..."

"And the way your nose scrunches up when you're trying not to cry," he whispered, an emotional smile breaking across his face. "Just like right now."

"I'm not trying not to cry," I sobbed, wrapping my arms tightly around his neck. "I'm actively failing."

He leaned in and kissed me. It was slow, profoundly tender, and heavy with a reverence that took my breath away.

Without breaking the kiss, he slid his arms under my thighs and lifted me off the counter. I didn't even bother to protest the carrying; he had made it abundantly clear that my opinions on this matter were irrelevant.

My legs locked securely around his waist, my fingers burying themselves in the blond hair at the nape of his neck. He navigated the dark hallway without a single misstep, every turn already learned in the weeks he'd crossed it blind, and I felt how sure he was as he carried me, his body finding our bedroom door in the dark before I did.

He laid me down onto the mattress, the gold morning light spilling through the blinds, illuminating the room. But this time was different from any time before.

He didn't move in the shadows. He looked down at me, his eyes blazing with a vulnerability so raw and a love so agonizingly profound that I felt naked before I had even shed a single piece of clothing.

He undressed me with an almost religious slowness, his mouth following the path of his hands, pressing deep, worshipful kisses against every inch of skin he uncovered. He kissed my shoulder. He lingered on my collarbone, his lips pressing against the freckle he loved. His hands tracked the curve of my waist, sliding down to my hips, where the pale stretch marks from my weight fluctuations lived.

He leaned down and kissed them one by one, the exact way he had the very first time we made love—claiming them, honoring them, refusing to let me feel a single shred of shame for a body that had fought through a chronic illness and carried me back to him.

"I can see them now," he murmured fiercely against my hip, his warm breath sending a shiver straight down my spine. "They look like a silver lining, Em. You're so incredibly beautiful."

When he finally moved over me, his forehead came to rest against mine. His eyes were wide open, staring directly into my soul. Mine were open too, and neither of us looked away. He slid his fingers through mine on the pillow, lacing our hands tightly together, pinning them against the sheets.

The rhythm between us was slow and devastatingly deep.

"Marry me," he said.

Two raw words, gasped out against my lips while we were as close as two human beings could possibly be.

"I want to spend the rest of my life inside your world," he murmured, his voice breaking with an intensity that gutted me. "Every single morning. Every sunset you have to describe to me, and every sunrise I get to open my eyes to see. I want all of it, Emma. I want to be your home forever. Marry me."

A heavy tear slid from the corner of my eye, soaking into my hair on the pillow. Ralph leaned down, his lips catching the next one before it could fall, kissing the grief out of me.

"Yes," I whispered into his mouth, my chest heaving.

He kissed me—deep, slow, tasting of salt, of the future, and of every beautiful thing I had spent the last three years believing I was too broken to deserve.

"Yes," I said again, the word vibrating between our lips, because once wasn't nearly enough to cover the canyon of my love. "Yes. A thousand times, yes."

I felt the sudden, glorious shape of his joy as a smile broke against my mouth. My fingers traced the sharp lines of his jaw, memorizing the exact way happiness looked on his face from this close.