Chapter 33: Counting the Hours

Six weeks. Six weeks and four days, if Leigh was counting, which she was, because Leigh counted everything. Six weeks and four days since Sofia Whitfield arrived in the world at 6:14 a.m. on a Greek island, screaming with what Jason described as "appropriate lung capacity" and what Leigh described as "vocal projection that suggests a future in either opera or litigation." Six weeks and four days since Leigh's body had been occupied by another human being and was now, finally, returned to her. Mostly. The mostly was the problem. Because her body was back but it was different—wider in places, softer in places, marked in places she hadn't been marked before—and the file in her head about what came next had a large, glaring, highlighted-in-yellow gap where the section on resuming physical activity should have been. Her doctor had cleared her. That happened three days ago. The documentation was comprehensive. The timeline was conservative. The recommendations were specific. Jason had read every page. Jason had read every page and then filed them in the folder and then looked at her with those eyes—the ones that made her stomach drop and her thighs press together—and said, "Whenever you're ready," in a voice that meant the opposite of what the words said, a voice that meant he was barely holding himself in check, that the six weeks and four days had been a particular kind of torture for a man who had once fucked her in a stone shower with enough intensity to recalibrate her understanding of what sex could be. "I'm ready," she'd told him. "The paperwork is clear. The recovery metrics are met. The—" "Leigh." "What." "You don't have to justify it with a briefing." "I'm not justifying. I'm contextualizing." He'd looked at her. She'd looked at him. The baby had been asleep in the bassinet. The Greek sun had been doing something obscene through the window. And nothing had happened, because Sofia had woken up, because that's what babies did, they interrupted at the precise moment tension reached its critical mass, and Leigh had spent the last three days in a state of wanting that was starting to affect her professional demeanor. She was snapping at people. She was misplacing files. She'd caught herself staring at Jason's hands while he changed a diaper and thinking about what those hands had done to her and the thinking had been so vivid that she'd walked into a door frame. Tonight, though. Tonight Sofia was with Jason's mother, who had arrived from London three days ago with a suitcase and a list of opinions about swaddling techniques. Tonight they were alone in the blue room for the first time since the birth. Tonight the sheets were clean and the door was closed and the baby monitor was on the nightstand and the stars were out and Leigh was standing in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror and trying to reconcile the body she had with the body she wanted Jason to touch. The stretch marks were new. They ran in silver lines across her hips and lower, tracing paths she hadn't mapped. Her breasts were bigger—significantly, measurably, statistically larger—and they were tender in a way that made her cautious about contact. Her stomach was softer, not flat the way it had been, and she kept touching it, pressing it, as if checking whether it was real, whether it was hers, whether it would ever go back to what it was or whether this was the new version of her body and she needed to update her records. She heard him come into the bathroom. Felt him before she saw him—his presence had a weight to it, a shift in the air pressure, a thing she'd cataloged early in their relationship and never stopped noticing. He was behind her. She was naked. She hadn't planned to be naked; she'd been planning to shower and then put on something strategic, something that revealed and concealed in calculated proportions, but she'd gotten distracted by the mirror and the inventory of changes and now here she was, naked, in the bathroom, with him behind her, and the plan was already obsolete. "Hey," he said. "Hey." His eyes moved over her in the mirror. Not the clinical assessment she'd been giving herself. Something else. Something that made her skin tighten. "You're staring." "I'm looking." "You're staring with intent. I can quantify the difference." "Can you." "Staring is baseline observation plus desire. You're at desire plus... significant margin." He stepped closer. She watched him in the mirror—his chest, bare, the line of hair below his navel, the way his pajama pants sat on his hips. He wasn't hard yet but she could see the beginning of it, the way the fabric was starting to tent, and that small evidence of his reaction made something between her legs go warm and liquid. "Leigh." "Jason." "Come here." "I'm already here. You came to me. The directional accuracy of that statement is—" His hands settled on her hips. His thumbs traced the stretch marks. She flinched. Not from pain. From something else—exposure, maybe, or the fear that he would see the marks and see damage instead of evidence. "Don't," she said. "Don't what?" "Don't look at those." "Why?" "Because they're—they're not—I haven't updated the file. The file is out of date. My body is out of date and I need to—" "Leigh." His voice was low. His thumbs kept moving. "These aren't damage." "I didn't say damage. I said the file is out of date. Those are different things." "They're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." She met his eyes in the mirror. "That's statistically improbable. You've seen the Acropolis. You've seen the northern lights. You've seen me in lingerie that cost more than your first car." "And these are more beautiful than all of it." His hands moved up. Slowly. Over the curve of her waist, the new softness of her stomach, the fullness of her breasts. He cupped them from behind and she inhaled sharply because they were sensitive, more sensitive than before, and his hands were warm and large and careful in a way that made her want to scream at him to stop being careful. "Gentle," he said. "I know they're—" "I don't want gentle. I told you. Before. I'm not fragile. I'm not porcelain. I'm—" "You're tender." "I'm a lot of things. Tender is a medical designation, not a personality trait." "You're also stubborn." "That is a personality trait and I'm proud of it." His thumbs brushed her nipples and the sensation went through her like electricity—not just the nipples but everywhere, down through her stomach, between her legs, a direct line she hadn't known existed before nursing had rewired her nerve endings. She made a sound. Not a word. A sound. "Okay," she said. "Okay, that's—there's been a hardware update. I wasn't expecting that." "Good update or bad update?" "Don't stop and find out." He didn't stop. He rolled her nipples between his fingers, gentle but deliberate, and she watched in the mirror as her body responded—her back arching, her hips pressing back against him, and he was hard now, she could feel him against her ass, the length of him pressing through the thin fabric, and she wanted him inside her with an urgency that was almost painful. "Jason." "Yeah." "I need you to know something." "What." "I have been thinking about this for six weeks and four days. I have been thinking about this while nursing and while changing diapers and while reviewing contracts and while pretending to listen to your mother talk about swaddling. I have been thinking about your cock inside me while doing tasks that should not be associated with thinking about your cock inside me. This has been a significant cognitive disruption and I need you to address it immediately." His hands stilled on her breasts. His jaw tightened. She watched his reflection process this—the flash of heat in his eyes, the way his throat moved when he swallowed, the way his fingers pressed slightly harder against her skin. "Turn around," he said. She turned. He kissed her. Not the careful, post-birth, I-love-you kisses of the last six weeks. This was the other kind—the kind that made her forget her own name, the kind that involved his tongue and his teeth and his hand in her hair pulling her head back to expose her throat. She kissed him back with everything she'd been saving, six weeks and four days of wanting poured into the collision of their mouths, and he made a sound against her lips that was half groan and half surrender. His hand slid down. Over her stomach, over the stretch marks, between her legs. She was wet. Not mildly wet. Catastrophically wet. The kind of wet that made his fingers slide without friction, that made her thighs slick, that made a sound when he pushed two fingers inside her. "Fuck," he said against her mouth. "You're—" "I'm aware. I've been aware for weeks. This is a persistent condition that requires direct intervention." His fingers curled inside her. Found the spot. She grabbed his shoulders and her nails dug in and the marks she left were going to be visible tomorrow and she didn't care. "More," she said. "I need more. I need all of it. I need you to fuck me until I forget what day it is." "The baby monitor—" "Is on. Is volume-adjusted. Is within hearing range. Stop being a project manager and start being what I need you to be." "And what's that?" "The thing that ruins me." His fingers withdrew. He pulled his pants down. His cock was hard, flushed, and she reached for it—wrapped her hand around it, felt the weight and heat of him, the pulse under her palm—and he hissed through his teeth. "Counter," he said. "What?" He turned her around. Bent her over the counter. She gripped the edge of the marble and watched him in the mirror—his face, the concentration, the way he looked at her like she was the only thing that mattered. He positioned himself behind her. The head of his cock against her entrance. The pressure. The anticipation. She could feel herself opening, ready, desperate. "Tell me," he said. "Tell me what you want." "I want you to fuck me. Hard. Now. I want you to stop asking and start doing. I want—" He pushed inside her. One stroke. Deep. The fullness of it after six weeks of absence was overwhelming—her body stretching to accommodate him, the sensation of being filled after being empty, and she heard herself make a sound that was embarrassingly close to a sob. "Oh, God." "Okay?" "If you ask me if I'm okay one more time I will file a formal grievance. Move." He moved. He pulled back and thrust in and the pace was exactly what she needed—not gentle, not careful, not the measured approach of a man treating her like something breakable. This was the Jason she remembered from the blue room, the one who fucked her like he meant it, like her body was his and his body was hers and the transaction between them was the most honest thing either of them had ever done. The counter was cold against her breasts. His hands gripped her hips—the new width of them, the softness—and he used the grip to pull her back onto him with each thrust, and the depth was staggering, each stroke hitting something inside her that made her vision white at the edges. "There," she said. "Right there. Keep doing exactly that." "Leigh—" "Don't talk. Just—keep—" She was already close. Six weeks of wanting had compressed the timeline. Her body was primed, wound tight, and each thrust was bringing her closer to the edge with a speed that surprised her. She tried to slow it down, to hold on, but her body had other plans. "Jason. I'm going to—" "Already?" "Don't sound surprised. I've been on edge for six weeks. This is a statistical inevitability. I'm going to come and I want you to come with me and I want you to come inside me because I need to feel it, I need—" He reached around. His fingers found her clit and pressed, and that was it. The orgasm hit her like a wall falling—sudden, total, her whole body locking and then releasing in waves that made her clench around him and cry out and grip the counter hard enough to leave fingerprints on the marble. He followed her. Three thrusts later, his rhythm gone, his hands tightening on her hips, and she felt him come—the pulse, the heat, the way his body curved over hers as he let go, his chest against her back, his mouth against her shoulder, his breath breaking apart. They stayed there. Bent over the counter. Breathing. His cock softening inside her. The marble warming under her body. The bathroom steam from the shower she'd never turned on, or maybe that was body heat, or maybe it was something else entirely. "Item one," she said. Her voice was wrecked. "Postpartum resumption of activities. Completed. Filing under 'exceeded expectations.'" He laughed against her shoulder. The vibration went through her body and she felt it in places she didn't know could feel things. "Leigh." "Jason." "I need to tell you something." "If this is about the baby, I swear—" "It's not about the baby." He pulled out. Turned her around. Lifted her onto the counter so she was sitting, eye level with him, and his face was doing the thing—the thing she'd seen in the blue room, the thing she'd seen when Sofia was born, the thing that looked like his entire emotional infrastructure was being rebuilt in real time. "I have something," he said. He reached into the pocket of his pants, which were around his ankles, and the logistics of this were awkward enough that she almost laughed, except then she saw what he was holding. A ring. A simple band. Not diamond. Not flashy. A thin gold ring that looked like it had been chosen by someone who understood that Leigh Ashford did not want a billboard on her finger, that she wanted something that said what it needed to say without shouting. "I've had this for three weeks," he said. "I was going to do it properly. Dinner. Speech. The whole thing. But you just called our sex life a filing system and I realized that properly was never going to be the right approach with you." She looked at the ring. Looked at him. Looked at the ring. "You're proposing to me on a bathroom counter." "Yes." "While you're naked." "Yes." "After we just had sex." "Yes." "With your pants around your ankles." "The logistics were challenging but I managed." She stared at him. This man. Naked on a Greek island with his pants around his ankles and a ring in his hand and her marks on his shoulders and his child asleep down the hall and his heart in his eyes, the whole stupid, beautiful, disorganized heart of him, offering her something that no file could organize and no highlight could mark. "Jason Whitfield." "Leigh Ashford." "This is the least organized proposal in recorded history." "Is that a no?" "It's a yes, you idiot. It's a yes with a note that the presentation was below standard but the substance was—" He kissed her. The ring was between their palms. Her legs were around his waist. She was naked on a bathroom counter and he was naked on a bathroom floor and somewhere down the hall their daughter was sleeping and somewhere outside the stars were doing whatever stars did over Greek islands at midnight and she was going to marry this man, this disorganized, patient, infuriating, thorough man who highlighted her birth plans and changed her sheets and fucked her like she needed and loved her like she deserved. "Item forty-one," she said against his mouth. "Marriage. Status: accepted. Timeline: pending. Filing requirements: significant." "I'll handle the filing," he said. "You handle the highlighting." She laughed. He laughed. The ring slid onto her finger and it fit, because of course it fit, because he paid attention to details the way she paid attention to details, because they were two people who had built a system out of chaos and a family out of a file and a life out of items on a list that kept growing and would keep growing, item after item, highlight after highlight, for as long as they had. Which, if Leigh's projections were accurate—and her projections were always, always accurate—was going to be a very long time. Starting now. Starting with a naked man on a bathroom floor and a ring on her finger and a baby down the hall and the whole improbable, unplanned, un-filed future stretching out in front of them like a sea at midnight, dark and wide and full of things no one had named yet. She couldn't wait. She couldn't wait for every single item.