Page 72 of Reluctant Bride

“Like this,” I say.

“Like this,” he agrees.

Before he moves, I catch his hands. Both of them. I hold them up between us and look. They look like anybody’s hands, and that’s the part that gets me, because I know what they did this afternoon on the stables road. His fingers go still in mine like he’s waiting for me to set them down and pull away.

I put them on me instead. One at my hip. One spread wide at the small of my back, pulling me in. On purpose. Where I want them.

His breath leaves him all at once.

He slides into me so slowly I feel his entire length, and then he stays there, buried and still, forehead against mine, until I’m the one who has to move. I rock against him and he meets me, small and deep, the two of us barely moving, eyes open, nothing between our faces but breath. No knife-in-the-gravel version of him. No efficient anything. Just two people proving to each other that gentleness survived today too.

The second time builds so slowly I don’t recognize it until it’s already on me, rolling through me in long pulses that won’t stop, his name coming out of me quiet and certain instead of torn out. He holds on until it breaks, watching my face the whole time like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to see, and only then does he let himself go, my name rough against my mouth, his hand still spread on my back where I put it.

Cricket sleeps across the threshold of our door afterward, like she’s decided that’s her post now and nobody’s allowed to argue with her about it.

I fall asleep with my head on his chest and wake somewhere past two, moonlight thin across the sheets. His heartbeat is too quick under my ear for a man who’s supposed to be asleep, and his breathing hasn’t dropped into that slow, even rhythm I’ve learned to recognize.

I drag my palm down his chest, testing.

He doesn’t pretend. His hand catches mine before I’ve even reached his stomach, lacing our fingers together, and I feel him let out a breath he’s clearly been holding for a while.

“You’re not asleep,” I whisper.

“No.”

The Ledger’s still sitting in the back of my mind, that decrypted name Mackenzie handed us right before the frame and the ambush pulled everything sideways. Dated the summer I was twenty, six figures, a shell company nobody was supposed to find. I never got the rest of it, and Dawson’s had the day to decide how much of it he’s still willing to hand me piece by piece instead of whole.

I turn his face toward mine in the dark.

“Now tell me about Ashley,” I say. “All of it. Start with why she got the daylight.”

TWENTY-FOUR

DAWSON

I’ve imagined this confession a hundred different ways over eight years, and not one of them happened lying down.

Sage is propped on one elbow beside me, moonlight cutting a clean white line across her collarbone, her question still sitting in the air between us.

I sit up instead of answering. My feet find the floor before my mouth finds a single word, because I already know I can’t do this stretched out next to her like it’s just another thing we say to each other in the dark.

“Dawson.”

“I need a minute.” I’m already pulling on the sweatpants from the floor, and I hear her go still behind me, deciding whether to let me run or follow me. “Not away from you. Just not here. Not lying down.”

She doesn’t argue. I hear the sheets shift, hear her bare feet hit the floor a few seconds after mine, and I already know why. She’s not coming to make this easier on me. She wants the truth too badly to let me get two steps away from her with it.

The hallway is dark except for the moon coming through the window at the end of it, bright enough tonight that I don’t bother with a light. Cricket lifts her head off the threshold rug, decides neither of us is in danger, and puts it back down.

Downstairs, the living room is a room we haven’t used yet. Six days married and we’ve filled every other room in this house, kitchen, bedroom, the mudroom where I clean my boots, even the garage that’s my workout room, and never once sat in here together after dark. The whole west wall is glass, floor to ceiling, and tonight the moon’s sitting bright right over Broken Sky Mountain, close enough that the granite looks lit from inside.

I go to the sideboard instead of the window.

The whiskey’s still sitting where I left it a few hours ago, the bottle of Redbreast 21 I poured for her after the crash, for the ache in her ribs. I’ve been dreading this exact conversation since the morning Ashley showed up with our marriage certificate. Fuck. Ten minutes from now I might not have a wife anymore. I pull the stopper and pour two glasses, more than I’d pour for company, because my hands need something to do while I figure out how to start.

“That’s not subtle,” Sage says, from the doorway. She’s got my discarded shirt pulled over her head, hair a wreck, arms crossed loose over her ribs. “Liquid courage before a confession. I’ve seen that move before.”

“It’s not courage.” I hand her the glass anyway. “It’s the only thing in this house I know how to do with my hands right now that isn’t reaching for you.”