Page 81 of Reluctant Bride

“So we don’t sign either one.” I close her folder, then mine, and stack them. “Not tonight. I’ve signed a lot of paper across a lot of tables in my life and I want to sign this one exactly once, and I want it to mean something when I do.”

“That’s not a contract clause. That’s a feeling.”

“It’s both.”

She doesn’t argue that one. She just looks at the two folders for a moment, then at me, and I watch her put the whole war away somewhere she can find it later, when it’s time.

The bath is her idea, technically, though I’d already staged it before she asked, candles already lit along the ledge, and neither of us says anything about the fact that my body wash is sitting next to hers like it’s always been there.

She sinks in first, water rising to her collarbone, and I settle in behind her, keeping my stitches dry, her spine against my chest. I squeeze the body wash into my palm and work it over her shoulders, down her arms, careful over the bruises still marking her side, and she lets out a soft sound when I linger there instead of rushing past it.

“I used to think about this,” she says, quiet, eyes closed. “Not this exactly. Just being allowed to be tired around you. Not managed. Not handled. Just tired.”

“You can be tired around me every day for the rest of your life. I’ll consider it an honor. I’m working on being the best husband you’ve ever had. Your best friend too, if you’ll let me apply for the position.” A beat. “I know that’s corny. I don’t care.”

She laughs, her real, bright one, and the sound of it cracks my heart open.

We dry off, trading the towel back and forth, and by the time we make it out to the porch swing the sky’s gone that deep, midnight blue that shows up an hour before full dark, the mountains cut black and jagged against it, one star already burning hard and white over Broken Sky.

I bring the wine bottle instead of the glasses. She doesn’t complain.

We sit close, her legs thrown over mine and her back against the pillow, the swing creaking its old, familiar creak. Cricket’s a red shape asleep against the door. The valley’s gone quiet for the hour, crickets starting up in the grass, the last of the heat lifting off the boards under us.

I don’t stop watching the tree line even now, same vigilance that doesn’t switch off just because the night’s gone soft, and Sage catches me doing it, the quick flick of my eyes to the fence and back.

“Still working,” she says.

“Always working. Just quieter about it tonight.”

“Eight years ago,” she says finally, “we used to hide out here because we were terrified our fathers would find out and end it before it even started.”

“I remember.”

“And now they’re the reason we’re here at all.” She takes the bottle from me and drinks straight from it, an impressive slug, watching the mountain instead of me. “That’s either the funniest thing that’s ever happened to either one of us, or the cruelest. I genuinely cannot decide which.”

“Both. I’ve decided it’s allowed to be both.”

She looks at me then, and her eyes have gone so black, only a sliver of brown iris left catching the moonlight, in a way that has nothing to do with the wine.

“I used to lie in my apartment in Ithaca and think about this exact spot,” she says. “Not metaphorically. This porch. This swing. I used to wonder if you ever thought about it too.” She doesn’t wait for the answer. She got it in a granite pool with the water still on both of us, and neither of us needs it said twice.

She sets the bottle down on the porch boards and climbs into my lap without a single word of warning, her knees braced on either side of my hips, her hands framing my jaw like I frame hers.

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” she says, her lips barely touching mine. “I want more of what you gave me last night. The couch, then the bed. Dirty and desperate and like you’d combust if you didn’t have me right then.”

I don’t need to be told twice.

I pull her mouth down to mine and there’s nothing held back in it, nothing measured out like I’ve made myself do since the courthouse. My hands untie her robe and she’s already tugging at my shorts, and by the time the porch swing stops rocking under us we’re both bare to the night air, no audience but the mountain and one white star.

She rises up over me and sinks down in one long stroke, her slick, tight heat already starting to clench around me before she’s even finished. I hold still for it, just a second, just to feel her settle around me instead of chasing the finish.

“Fuck, Sage, I could do this every night for the rest of my life,” I say with awe in it, “and still want you again the second we’re done.”

Her head tips back, and I set the pace slow at first, both hands braced on her hips, watching every second of her face while I move inside her, and it’s a long time before either of us lets it turn urgent, both of us rocking into a rhythm that’s more instinct than plan, chasing each other harder and faster.

There’s no grief in it tonight. No fury from the Ledger floor, no confessions still hanging in the air between us. Just her, and me, and all the wanting finally allowed to be simple.

“Sage.” Her name in my mouth like a vow instead of a warning. “Look at me.”