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Maverick: I noticed the sheets.

I grin.

Me: They’re festive.

Maverick: They’re ridiculous.

Me: They’re soft.

Maverick: Goodnight, wife.

I stare at the screen. Wife. He called me wife. Which is ridiculous because I am his wife. Have been for almost a month. But somehow seeing the word now feels different.

I type a reply. Delete it. Type another. Delete that too.

Then I settle on:

Me: Goodnight, husband.

I hesitate. There’s one more thing I want to say. Something simple. Something that feels important.

Me: Welcome home.

I set the phone on the nightstand. Then I turn onto my side and close my eyes. I’m still smiling. Which is probably nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Just a woman happy that her husband is finally home. Her very large, very grumpy, very attractive husband. Who has dimples.

I’m in so much trouble.

chapter

fourteen

Maverick

The next three weeks, we fall into a rhythm that feels so natural it should probably concern me more than it does.

It doesn’t.

At some point, I stop waking up and reminding myself that I have a wife.

She’s on my mind nearly as much as my son. And she seems to always be there. Dependable, reliable, and consistent, she’s there.

At the breakfast table in one of her ridiculous Christmas shirts, drinking coffee with too much cream while Shiloh argues that syrup is technically a fruit because it comes from a tree.

She’s in the mudroom when I get home, helping Shiloh wrestle off his boots while he tells her about something his friend Oliver did at preschool.

She’s in the kitchen with Dottie, learning how to apple fritters.

She’s on the couch with her feet tucked under her, reading a book.

She’s in the passenger seat of my truck. Beside me at Shiloh’s Christmas program. Across from me at dinner. Next to me at Shiloh’s bedtime.

And her scent is embedded in my nose when I go to sleep. I’ve had to stop myself from kissing her goodbye on more than one occasion.

And somehow, in the midst of it all, I stop remembering what this house was like without her.

I start coming home earlier. This is not intentional. I simply become more efficient. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.