Page 61 of Until You

My hands tighten on her hips, fingers splaying across her skin, tracing the ink on her thigh, the soft curve of her belly. I run my thumb across the place where the skin is a little firm, rounded, and protecting our baby. Something enormous and quiet settles in my chest.

She looks down at my hand on her stomach. Her eyes meet mine.

“You’re beautiful,” I tell her. “Every part of you. The ink. The piercings. Your softness. All of it.”

Her chin wobbles for a fraction of a second before she steadies it. “If you make me cry during sex, I’m filing a formal complaint.”

“Noted.”

She braces her hands on my chest and rides me. Her gaze never leaves mine. I cup her breasts, rolling the barbells between my fingers, and she arches into the touch.

She grabs the headboard behind me and her rhythm shifts—deeper, faster, chasing something, and I feel her start to tighten around me.

There are no more words. Just the sounds of us. Her soft gasps, my rough breathing, the creak of the bed, the impossible intimacy of two people who tried to keep this in a box and failed spectacularly.

Her climax hits, and she comes apart above me with her eyes closed and her mouth open and her whole body shaking. I have never seen anything more beautiful. Not a sunrise over the south pasture, not a clear sky after a storm, nothing.

My own release follows hers, building from the base of my spine and crashing through me with a force that takes my breath and my composure and every last wall I had left. I grip her hips and press deep and say her name again and again. Like a chant. Like a prayer. Like a promise.

“Cora.”

She collapses against my chest. I wrap both arms around her and hold on.

We lie there. Her heart hammering against mine. Her breath warm on my neck. The ceiling fan turning slowly overhead.

I press my lips to her temple. To the place where her hair meets her skin. I breathe her in.

“I love you, Cora. I really, truly do. I wasn’t expecting you. Wasn’t even looking. But there you were. Everything I ever needed, all wrapped up in one gorgeous, spectacular person.”

She presses kisses all over my cheeks, chin, and jaw.

“Oliver?” she murmurs against my throat.

“Yeah?”

“I love you too.” She looks me straight in the eyes. “It’s not too soon. You’re actually pretty damn easy to love. Your whole family is.”

“They’ll get on your nerves at some point,” he says.

That makes her laugh. “I’m glad I walked up to you that night.”

My arms tighten around her. “I’m glad you wore my hat.”

Another laugh. “I looked good in that hat.”

“You looked incredible in that hat.”

Quiet.

Her breathing evens out. Her body goes heavy in my arms, the particular weight of someone falling asleep without meaning to. The weight of someone who is, for the first time in a long time, not bracing for what comes next.

I stare at the ceiling. My hand rests on her back, tracing slow circles between her shoulder blades.

I think about the night at Ace’s. The neon green. The way she’d tilted her chin up and asked me to dance like she’d already decided I was going to say yes.

I think about the truck. The rain. The hat. The rules she’d set—no names, no expectations, no tomorrow—and the way I’d agreed to all of them while knowing, somewhere underneath, that they were already broken.

I think about the sticky notes in purple ink. The pot roast. The slideshow. The photograph of my grandparents in the hospital that she’d placed at the center because she understood, instinctively, what that moment meant.

I think about the ultrasound. The flickering heartbeat. The small miracle that brought us here.

I might not know everything about love. But I’ve grown up in a house full of it. Watching Mimz and Pops, and my parents, compromise and commit again and again. Because love is a choice you make every day.

I press one more kiss to her hair.

“Goodnight, Mischief,” I whisper.