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“Kit,” she whispered. And he kissed her. Her mouth, her forehead, her cheeks. He kissed her and kissed her like there was nothing else he wanted to do in the whole world.
Like he was shocked and unmade by this thing she was.
In her house. In her little house that she had shared with Chuck for all those years.
And suddenly, she couldn’t picture Chuck in it. And sadness closed her throat. Made her gasp. Made it hard to breathe.
“We’ll have dinner later,” he said, scooping her up and carrying her from the kitchen into the bathroom. As if he had been here a hundred times. As if he lived here. He turned the water on, and she waited, shivering as he undressed all the way. And when the water was warm, he put her in the shower and moved his hands over her body, gently, with great care. The warm water washed over her. And it did something to her. She didn’t know if it was healing or hurting. She honestly couldn’t tell.
“I...”
“Hey,” he said. “You are okay. You’re okay.”
And she didn’t know how he could say that. Because he didn’t know. He didn’t know. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her naked body flush against his. He moved his hands over her curves, and he kissed her. Kissed her until she couldn’t think.
Then he turned the shower off, dried her off and carried her to the bed, where he left her for a full forty-five minutes. And she just lay there. Feeling shell-shocked. Afraid that he would join her. Afraid that he wouldn’t. And then he appeared wearing only a pair of jeans, holding two plates of food. He handed her one, and she took it, curled up beneath the blankets still. Then he got into the space beside her, on top of the blankets, his own plate on his lap. “How you doing?”
“Hungry,” she said, drawing the plate up to her face.
“Good. Eat.”
But how did she tell him? How did she explain the strange, fractured feeling blooming in her chest? Like a chip had been put into a windowpane long ago, and now the pressure, the cold, the heat, something, was making that crack expand. Spider outward.
“I think we should get married, don’t you?”
And she didn’t know how to say no. Not this time. Because what leg did she have to stand on? It had made sense to kiss him an hour ago. It had seemed like the best idea in the world. Like it would wrench some control back. Like finding that sexual connection again would somehow erase the tenderness that they’d found. But it hadn’t. Here he was, in bed with her, eating dinner.
“I don’t... I don’t...”
“I want to take care of you,” he said, and she was so grateful he’d said that. Because that wasn’t marriage as she knew it. And somehow, that made it feel safer. “When my sister was sick, my brother and I made her a little wagon. And we decorated it. I spent hours taking her around in that thing. Like she was a little princess. And I loved it. I think I believed in things still. Different than I do now. Like I believed that there was some kind of healing power in love. I couldn’t fix her. And if love could’ve healed her, then she would’ve been here. Believe me.”
And oh, she knew that. She felt it. Deep in her soul, and it just hurt. It hurt so much to hear him say this, she wanted him to stop. It wrapped itself around her own grief and regret and pain. Around the futility of loss, and the merciless movement of the world as it kept on spinning even after your heart had been crushed.
She knew what it was like to wish love could save someone.
To be devastated that it couldn’t.
Even as his words hurt, she felt closer to him. Felt like she understood him.
“And I’m... I spent a lot of years afraid,” he said. “Afraid that I’d lose her. And then I did. And then I was afraid when my mom got pregnant with Callie. That something would happen to her. That something would happen to the baby. And it’s like I’ve spent my whole life on this hypervigilant watch. Thinking that somehow... My love was gonna stop something from happening. My... My will for everything to be okay was going to fix something, and I always thought that caring was just so exhausting I never wanted to care for another person as long as I lived. Not an extra one. But I care for you. I’ll even give you a ride in a wagon if you want.”
And her heart just felt like it cracked in two. Because she was tired. She was tired and he wanted to carry this. She was tired and he wanted to carry her. In a wagon. It wasn’t some empty gesture from some guy who didn’t know the weight of loss. He knew. And he still wanted this. And she could have it. Because it was different. Because... Because she was just so damned tired of being by herself. Because she wanted him to touch her every night. Because she wanted her baby to have a father. And maybe because she was scared and didn’t want stigma.
“I’ll marry you,” she said. “I’ll... Yeah.”
“We don’t have to have a wedding.”
She nodded, tears filling her eyes. “Good. Good. I don’t want to have another one.”
“We just need to go sign the paperwork and do the thing. You don’t even have to really formalize all that. We can have a court witness if you want.”
“I would like that. Thank you. We can just tell everybody that we eloped. I think that would be for the best.”
“Do you want me to move in with you or do you want to move in with me?”
And she realized she hadn’t even been to his house. And she was torn. So torn, because having him here in this place, in her bed was... Unfathomable. But she had imagined raising the baby here.
“I don’t know yet,” she said.
