Page 120 of Never Alone
The light from the curtain moved across the pillow. Her hand was on my back. My mouth was at her temple. The morning was a long, slow, gold thing, and Tessa was under me, and her body was telling mine that she was here, that she was staying, that whatever Nicholas had stood in a parking lot and tried to give me had been the gift of a man who had nothing left to give.
She was mine.
I was hers.
That was the only thing in the room.
Afterwards, she was on my chest. Her hair was across my collarbone. The blanket had come down to our waists. The light had moved off the pillow and onto the floor.
She was breathing slowly. Her hand was on my ribs, the thumb moving in small, absent passes, the way her hand moved when she was thinking about something that wasn't a problem.
I closed my eyes.
She was here. Her hair was on my chest. Her leg was over mine. The lease at the front door had both our names on it. Theroom down the hall in Ashford Street was painted in the color of her eyes. Her son had been at school an hour ago and would be home at three and would put his shoes by the door because he lived here, in this apartment, with the man his mother had chosen.
She had chosen this.
She had chosen it at the bakery when she'd told me she didn't want me to leave. She had chosen it the night after, in this bed, with her hand on my chest in the dark. She'd been choosing it every morning since, in the way she reached for me when she woke up, in the way she kissed me at the door, in the way her hair had been down today because she didn't pin it up for me anymore.
Nicholas had stood in a parking lot and tried to make me forget that.
He had failed.
"Cole."
"Yeah."
"That was a good morning."
Her voice was soft. Half-sleepy.
"Yeah, it was."
She made a small sound against my chest—half a laugh, half a hum, the kind of sound a woman makes when she's settling in to sleep against the man she's chosen. Her hand stilled on my ribs.
I put my hand in her hair and held the back of her head, and let myself feel her breathing.
She was here.
She was mine.
That was enough.
CHAPTER 23
Tessa
The mornings he was on shift had a different shape now.
I'd be aware of it before I was fully awake. The bed was warmer in the middle than at the edges. The hum from the fan he'd taken to leaving on was lower than the sound of him breathing on the pillow next to mine. The light at the curtain was the only thing keeping me oriented.
He wasn't there. He'd be home at eight.
I would lie in bed for a few minutes, in the warm middle, and let myself miss him.
I'd never been a woman who missed a man. I'd been a woman who managed a man, or tracked one, or stayed out of one's way. Missing was new. It wasn't painful, exactly. It was just a low ache that said the person who belonged to this morning wasn't in it.
I'd think about his alarm going off at five, and how I'd felt him sit up and kiss the back of my shoulder before he went. He'd been efficient about it. Eight years of doing the same thing in the same order. He'd been quiet on the stairs so he wouldn't wake Noah. He hadn't even turned the lamp on.
