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“I am now. Maybe I needed to hear it just like that.”
“For me, this worked out better. Maybe not for you. I’d never tell you how you should feel. But we found our way back to each other when we were ready for it. When we actually had a chance to make it last.”
Her thumb brushed over his knuckles.
“Yeah. You’re right. Maybe that’s why I started slower than you. Because I didn’t want to mess it up again.”
And that right there said everything she feared.
“You didn’t mess anything up back then and you’re not going to now.” She stood up. “Come, let’s go relax together, let’s put the seriousness of this conversation aside, and let’s remind ourselves that what we’ve got is the foundation we need for this to continue.”
He stood with her, she led him to her room and she was going to show him with actions rather than words what she felt for him.
Show him that their love was maybe something that started decades ago and lay dormant for the right time.
For now.
She just needed him to feel it.
To stop thinking. To stop replaying the past and worrying about the future.
Her fingers stayed wrapped around his as she led him down the hall, the quiet of her condo closing around them.
He stopped just inside the doorway of her room.
“Marly,” he said softly.
She turned back to him, still holding his hand. “What?”
His eyes searched her face, some of the tension still there, but mixed with something deeper. Something steadier.
“You always knew how to win an argument.”
She smiled faintly. “That’s not what this is.”
“No?”
“No,” she said, stepping closer. “This is me reminding you that you don’t have to keep carrying everything alone.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth.
“And how exactly are you planning to do that?”
Her answer was to slide her arms around his neck and kiss him.
Slow at first. Soft.
Not rushed or desperate, just warm and certain, like everything she’d said on the couch was now being sealed between them. His hands came to her waist automatically, pulling her closer until there wasn’t an inch of space left. As if he needed this as much as she did.
He kissed her back deeper the second time.
The tension he’d walked in with melted away, his fingers spreading along her back as if grounding himself in her, stealing some of her strength, some of her emotions, some of her certainty.
“Mmm,” she murmured against his mouth. “There you are.”
“There I am?” he asked quietly, brushing his lips along hers again.
“The man I love,” she said. “The man who isn’t afraid to listen, to open up, to absorb what he might not have thought of himself.”
