Page 33 of Reluctant Bride

“You elbowed me,” I say.

“You stole the pillow.”

“I didn’t steal it. I redistributed it.”

“That’s theft with better PR.” He hitches my leg higher over his hip, and every complaint I had lined up dies somewhere in my throat. “Redistribution implies consent from the other party.”

“You gave consent when you married me. It’s in the vows. Somewhere between for richer and till death, there’s an implied pillow clause.”

“I read that contract twice. No pillow clause.”

“Then I guess we’re doing this the hard way.”

He laughs against my mouth, a deep rumble I feel all the way down my spine, and it’s such a strange sound coming out of a man who spent two years handing me nothing but blank calm and controlled menace that I almost stop to mark the occasion. I don’t get the chance.

What happens next is lighter than last night and messier than the dark, and involves at least one more elbow, a pillow that ends up on the floor, and Cricket scratching at the door right when it matters most. Dawson says something deeply uncharitable about that dog’s timing. I laugh so hard it should ruin everything. It doesn’t.

When it’s over we lie there sweaty and useless, my leg still hooked over his, his thumb tracing lazy circles against my hip like he’s not ready to stop touching me yet.

“That was better,” I declare.

“Better than what?”

“Better than last night. Last night felt like a funeral for everything we lost. This felt like breakfast.”

“I haven’t fed you yet.”

“Figuratively.”

“I know what you meant.” He presses a kiss to my temple, unthinking, the kind of gesture that means more than the ones that try harder. “I liked the funeral too, for the record. Just so we’re clear.”

“Noted for the eulogy.”

He laughs again, and I let myself enjoy it before Cricket scratches the door a second time, more insistent, and the spell breaks into something that just feels like morning.

I steal his shirt off the floor because it’s the closest thing within reach and because some petty, satisfied part of me wants to walk around his kitchen wearing his name on my back like I won something. I pull on the pair of cutoff shorts and skip the underwear entirely, because apparently marriage has stripped me of some baseline modesty I used to have. I find my glasses on the nightstand where I left them last night and put them on without thinking, and I catch him watching from across the room, an unguarded flicker crossing his face before he reins it back in.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing.”

“You’re doing the thing again.”

“What thing?”

“The thing where you look at me like I did something remarkable, and I’m putting on my glasses because I don’t have my contacts in.”

“You still have them.” He says it like it matters more than it should, and the weight in his voice makes me want to look away first, so I don’t. “The same pair. From before.”

“They’re not actually the same pair. Similar frames, much worse prescription. They’re glasses, Dawson. Not a shrine.” I push them up my nose and head for the kitchen before he can turn this into something bigger than it is.

“If you say so.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“The soft voice. Save it for someone who hasn’t spent this long learning exactly what believing it does to a person.”