Page 75 of Reluctant Bride

She’s crying openly now, no attempt left to hide it, breaths coming in ragged gasps.

I reach up, slow enough that she could step back and doesn’t, and take her left hand in both of mine, my thumb and index finger finding the platinum band.

“You weren’t not enough,” I say. “You were never not enough. You were the only thing that ever mattered enough to terrify me, and instead of telling you that, I decided it was easier to let you believe you weren’t worth staying for. That’s not your wound to carry, Sage. That’s mine. I built it. I’m the one asking you to let me finally put it down.”

For a long moment she doesn’t say anything at all. The mountain sits huge and silver behind her, the whole valley gone two-in-the-morning quiet, like even Rimrock is holding still to hear what she says next.

She sinks down in front of me instead of pulling me up, until we’re both on our knees on the living room floor, eye level, her hand still caught in mine, and she reaches out with her other hand and wipes at my jaw like there’s something there that needs wiping away, though there isn’t, not yet, not until she says what she says next.

“You want my truth?” Sage says, her voice breaking clean open on every word. “I never stopped either.”

TWENTY-FIVE

SAGE

“I wasn’t a nun, Dawson.”

I’ve spent every year since Cornell building a life around never saying that, and out loud it comes worse than I rehearsed it, blunt and a little too loud for a living room this quiet.

We’re both still on our knees on the living room floor, my hand still caught in both of his. His tear-streaked face does one quick thing and then locks. Braced, like a man bracing for a blow he’s already decided to take standing, except he’s kneeling in front of me still cracked in half from what he just handed me.

“I know,” he says.

“No, you don’t. You know the sentence.” I pull my hand free and press it flat against my own sternum, like I can hold the rest of it in by force. “There were men. Real ones. Chosen ones. I picked them on purpose, because picking felt like the opposite of what you did to me.”

“Okay.”

“I’m not finished.” My voice comes out rougher than I want it to. “I let men fall asleep next to me. I woke up next to them. I liked some of it. I liked the espresso guy in Ithaca more than I’ve ever told anyone, and the second-year law student even more than that.” I make myself hold his eyes, because looking away now would be a lie of its own. “But every one of those nights, right before I fell asleep, I thought about what it felt like to fall asleep against you. Not most nights, Dawson. Every one.”

He doesn’t say anything. His eyes move back and forth between mine. He doesn’t fill the silence, and the not-filling it is the thing that finally undoes me a little.

“Nobody got the version of me that puts her glasses on and makes bad jokes about community property. Nobody got the girl on this porch. I kept her locked up so tight I forgot I still had her, until I found my own book with your handwriting in the margins and I found out I’d been renting her out to strangers in pieces the whole time.” My eyes go hot and I let them. “I love you. That was never the problem, Dawson. Trusting you with it was.”

He comes up off the floor so fast I don’t have time to brace for any of it, his arms already banding around me, lifting me clean off my feet and pressing me down onto the sectional before I’ve even registered leaving the ground, his mouth never once leaving mine.

“Dawson, the stairs are right there.”

“I know exactly where the stairs are.” He drags my shirt over my head in one motion, mouth already finding my collarbone. “I’ve spent years being careful with you. I’m not walking away from this room to be careful about it one more time.”

He strips me bare against cushions that have never once seen anything like this, his hands shaking against my skin, like a man who’s spent a decade rationing himself and just found out the rationing was never necessary.

“Cricket’s right there,” I say, half laughing, half gone already.

“Cricket’s seen worse. She’ll survive.” He settles between my thighs and looks up at me once, dead serious under all that hunger. “Tell me something. The nights you were alone. Did you ever use any tools on yourself?”

Heat crawls straight up my throat. “That’s a bold question for a man who was just crying on his own living room floor five minutes ago.”

“Don’t act surprised. You married a man who reads contracts for fun.” His hand finds my hip, thumb dragging along the bone. “Answer the question, Sage.”

“Yes.”

“Did you say my name when you came?”

I squirm under his hands, a flush spreading up my chest that has nothing to do with his mouth and everything to do with what he’s asking. I could lie. I don’t want to. “Every time.”

Something dark and satisfied moves behind his eyes, gone stormy in the low light. “How often?”

“Often enough that I should probably be embarrassed telling you this.”