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“Okay.” The worry barely settles. “I have to be honest; it’s my turn to feel my trust issues flaring.”
She lets out a soft laugh and sits beside me on the bed. “Matthew, I fell in love with you for you, not because of your ability to make a child. I love you because you’re a choice I want to make every day of my life. And I know that if having kids is something we want to do, we’d figure it out together. I’m certain that if we ever decide to, I would love any member of our family with the same fierceness I love you.”
My body relaxes onto the bed. Yeah, I was a complete fool for allowing my past to shame me from telling her. “Thank you for saying that.” I finger the soft curls resting on her chest.
“I mean it. I would much rather have you and no children than children and no you.” She nods, running her warm hand over my torso.
I never wanted to admit what those words would mean to me, especially from someone I love as deeply as Molly. But hearing her say them causes some part of me to unlatch.
“What I said last night stands; we can always revisit the conversation and talk about our options.”
“I know that, thank you. I’m certain we’ll never stop talking about it and checking in with each other,” she says, and I squeeze her hands. “It won’t be an easy decision for us to make, and I’m not oblivious to the way this could affect our life in the future, but I’m committed to you. I trust us to get through this.”
To be loved and accepted by her is the biggest gift I’ve ever let myself have.
Not sharing the truth about my infertility was silently crushing me. But it’s the first morning in weeks, maybe even years, that I haven’t felt some kind of chain wrapped around me.
It’s my turn to feel safe in my own skin.
I pull her into a hug, and she rests her head on my chest for a while. “I feel lighter than I have in a really long time.”
She looks up at me. “I value you so deeply. You’re my man.”
Her man.“I could spend my whole life making sure that I’m worthy of the title.”
“You are, you’re worthy of it. Yesterday, today, tomorrow.” Molly gives me a sleepy smile and pulls away, returning to my bookcase. “Now, I have to ask,Moby Dick?” She pulls a book off of a dusty shelf.
I catch the mischievous grin on her lips. “It’s the first book that made me fall in love with the ocean.”
She peruses the artifacts in my childhood bedroom as I readjust my back on the silk pillowcases. I picked them up at Bergdorf’s before we left because they would be better for her curls.
A little piece of her normal, nestled against my full-sized childhood bed.
“Just a man and his whale,” she giggles quietly. She reshelves the book, continuing to examine my room as if she’s attempting to absorb my past. “You played hockey?”
The trophy she’s glancing at is tarnished and dusty. “Not very well,” I chuckle, stretching my legs out on the navy sheets. “It’s a rite of passage to at least attempt hockey when growing up in this neck of the woods.” Molly returns to bed. I tug her to my side, and the old, springy mattress bucks under her weight. “How are you actually feeling, darling?”
“Close to you. Happy that I have you in my life,” she whispers. I kiss the edge of her smile. “This is what I want.” Molly taps her pointer finger onto my chest. “This feeling. Forever.”
“I want that too.”
The blood in my cock makes it tent my plaid pajamas, and I attempt to readjust beneath her weight. She turns, settling her forearms on my chest and laying her body flat on top of me.
Molly plants a little kiss on my lips and hovers her face over mine. “What do you think younger Matthew would make of our relationship right now?”
My chest expands beneath her weight. “I think he wouldn’t believe that he ever managed to get a girl like you to fall for an ordinary boy like him.”
“Ordinary? Since when?” She exaggerates a quiet gasp that makes me laugh.
“What about you? What would younger Molly think about us?”
She softens her amber eyes, smiling. “She’d be really surprised to know that she’s found someone she can be herself around. That she doesn’t have to hide the ugly or the silly parts just to feel loved. That being noticed could feel as good as it does when it means being noticed by you.”The way I don’t have to conceal the ugly parts of me any longer.“Oh,” Molly giggles. “And, if we had been the same age as teenagers, she would’ve been drooling over your glasses and books.”
“You think so?”
She nods, shifting her weight on top of me. Her hips tilt deeper into my thigh. “Yep. She would’ve abandoned all social decorum and found her way right up into this bedroom.”
“If you would’ve come up here, I wouldn’t have known what to do with you. I’d probably just stare at you, gobsmacked, as you looked at my shelves.”
