She shook her head again—a communication to herself this time instead of him—then wiped her tears away with the back of one hand, cleared her throat and blew her nose. “Sorry,” she said when she finally spoke.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” he assured her, shifting his hand where it rested on her shoulder, letting it slip down her spine to the small of her back. It was something she’d told him she liked once: a possessive gesture that made her feel protected instead of owned. He put his other hand on her thigh, not high enough to be overtly sexual, not low enough to be mistaken for platonic.
Because he knew she wouldn’t tell him until he actually asked, he asked, “Wanna tell me what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” Her voice was quiet, and she still wouldn’t look at him.
“Ah.” He nodded. “So tears of joy then.”
She laughed a little. “Yeah. Something like that.”
He rubbed small circles on her back, keeping his hand closer to her waist than the slope of her hips. “You’re going to have to wait here for a minute while I go check the owner’s manual on that. Tears of joy aren’t something I can diagnose just by listening to the ping.”
She didn’t say anything to that. He gave her several seconds before he prompted, “Look at me, Sadie.” Then, because that sounded a little too much like an order, he softened it by adding, “Please?”
When she looked at him, the small niggling of absolute terror screaming at the base of his spine eased. For the most part, he wasn’t particularly prone to self doubt; but knowing his Sadie was sitting in a glorified closet on her wedding day, crying in her petticoats to a degree her best friend felt it necessary to call for reinforcements … he couldn’t deny that cramped a small knot of a panic into his gut, couldn’t deny it scared the hell out of him that he might turn out to be the reason why.
Or if not him in specific, then the idea of marrying him. Of spending the rest of their lives together. Of merging his messed up family and hers; of being mother to his kid as well as hers.
There was nothing he could give her as a counterbalance for the blood on his memory, for the death in his dreams. Nothing he could do about the darkness inside him no one like Sadie had any business being near, let alone loving. He knew it was this darkness—even more than him not being Maury and having a complicated family—that was the one thing Sadie least expected to find in the man she let put a ring on her finger for the rest of their lives.
Because nothing better was ever coming along for either of them, and they both knew it. She might have taken a little longer to see something that was obvious to him from the get-go, but once she saw it, she never turned away, never looked back. Even without expecting him, she’d fallen for him in a way he’d known, from the very beginning, wasn’t just looking for a replacement for her saint of a dead husband.
He hadn’t had the luxury of a whole lot of love in his life, but what love he’d had—what love he’d witnessed—was hard and strong and true. His parents loved each other the way he wanted to love somebody. It had been so long ago, and there’d been so many years of lonely between their deaths and now, that some might have thought he wouldn’t remember it as clearly as he did.
But he did remember it. He remembered everything about it.
He remembered the way his dad used to look at his mother; the way he’d run a casual hand along the small of her back as he passed. He remembered the way his dad’s whole body would tighten up and pull in when he kissed her, like she was a magnet and it was a force of nature for a man of steel like him to connect with her. He remembered his dad’s easy smile when she was around, and the things he’d say about her when the two of them were alone in the garage—just he and Mike—his dad under the car, Mike handing him tools and parts on request, trying to anticipate what he’d ask for next, trying to make sure he never picked up the wrong thing, never got confused between a wrench and a socket driver, between a spark plug and a lug nut.
It was everything he remembered about them, how much they loved each other, and he felt that way about Sadie. And he’d be a flat-out, bald-faced liar if he said he thought she felt anything less for him.
But even so, a small jolt of stark terror hit him hard when he heard Caleb say she was crying, that she might not want to see him. It was strong enough—primal enough—he would have gone through any man but Caleb who tried to stop him, never heard anything anyone but Caleb said about stopping, thinking, making sure he let her say no if no was what she wanted to say.
But even hearing Caleb, Mike knew he wasn’t strong enough to do it. He knew if it turned out he was the reason she’d fallen to tears, if she’d changed her mind and decided she didn’t want this to happen, he wouldn’t be able to just walk away the way a stronger man would, the way a better man would.
But he could see in her eyes, studying them right now, right here, that it wasn’t him. Whatever she was crying about, it wasn’t him. She hadn’t changed her mind. She still wanted this to happen.
“Stupid day to cry like a little girl, huh?” she asked, trying to smile.
“I don’t know about that. I hear that’s the tradition or something. And I cried like a little girl just last night. Of course, I was drunk off my ass and had a stripper in my lap, but still …”
She laughed a little, punched him in the shoulder the way she always did when he said something like that.
“You’re a jerk,” she said.
“But I’m your jerk, baby,” he replied. “Let me hold you for a minute.”
She shook her head again, her body resisting him when he tried to pull her close a second time. “No. I don’t want to be held right now, Mike.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “Tell me what you do want.”
She glanced at him, then looked away again. “You,” she said quietly. It was the perfect glib answer, the perfect amount of sexual innuendo mixed with the perfect amount of capitulance to the whole I-do-ness of the day’s theme.
But she wasn’t being glib or sentimental. She was being serious.
“You’ve got me,” he said. “Anything else on your list?”
*****
“God, Mike, don’t stop...” Sadie groaned, trying hard to keep her voice to a hushed whisper. Mike gasped for air as he felt his wife’s tight ring of muscle clench around him, leaving him momentarily incoherent.
“S-Sadie…” Mike mumbled into her neck, “Shit, baby, so tight for me tonight…”
They were currently attempting another late night quickie, which is all they seemed to be getting in lately ever since moving in together. But they weren’t complaining; they were willing to sacrifice deep, body-exploration sex until the rare occasions when they would go and visit Sadie’s mother in law or Michaela’s mother for the weekend.
For now, this would suffice when they both needed it badly enough.
“Fuck, Mike, hurry up,” Sadie urged, grinding down as Mike thrust himself deep.”I’m tryin’,” Mike panted, “Ah, so good… feel so good around my cock baby…”
“Keep… oh… keep your v-voice down…”
“I know, babe, I know…”