“Because I have. I’ve loved you every second we’ve spent apart and every week we’ve spent together. I love you when you’re hurting, and I love you when you’re careful, and I love you when you’re not sure if it’s safe to love me back. I know you can’t help worrying, but I wish I’d told you from the fucking start that—that there’s nothing you can do to make me stop. I’m tried and tested, Abbie. I’ve been halfway around the world, loving you. I’ve been an usher at your fucking wedding, loving you.” He laughed, sounding genuinely disbelieving. “I literally cannot stop. And I should’ve told you before, because if there’s anything I can do to make you feel even the tiniest bit safer, I want to do that. I do. So I’m sorry. And that’s everything. That’s all.”
“Oh,” Abbie said, very, very softly. And then she was silent. She waited while Gravy’s second kitten was born, grateful beyond belief that it was done quickly. She wrapped the little snuffling thing up next to its mother and its sibling. And then, very quickly, with her filthy, gloved hands held safely out to the sides, she turned to face Will and kissed him.
He must’ve been surprised, because he made this baffled noise in the back of his throat, and it took him a split second to kiss her back. But he did. He couldn’t touch her either, was still holding the brambles aside, and so they spent a long, hungry moment pressed together, mouth to mouth and body to body, holding each other with nothing but every emotion they poured into that kiss.
I love you, she thought, fucking wild with it, dizzy with it, breathless with it, and hoped he could taste it on her tongue, hoped he picked it up when he bit her lower lip, hoped he could feel it in the aching rock of her hips against his. Because she tasted it on him, felt it from him, heard it in those searingly honest words that ran around and around her head. “I’m tried and tested, Abbie. I literally cannot stop.” She didn’t want to need that; she wanted to simply, blithely trust him, or rather, to trust that things could be good, that nightmares weren’t always waiting around the corner. But she wasn’t quite there yet, and he knew it, and he didn’t mind. He was willing to give her those words instead, a lifeline when she needed it, and surely he had no idea—he could have no fucking idea—how much that meant to her.
Pulling away from him might be the hardest thing she’d ever done, but they had newborn kittens out in a blizzard here, so they didn’t have much of a choice. He groaned when she broke the kiss, and it was so fucking surreal how obvious this man was about wanting her. She didn’t think she’d ever had that. She hadn’t known she needed it.
“Kittens,” she breathed. “We should … move them.”
“Yeah,” he said, “yeah.” Then he smiled. “Hey.”
“What?”
“You’re mine as fuck.”
She laughed as she picked up the cats, feeling younger than she had in years, feeling the way she used to, when they were just them and nothing was complicated. “That doesn’t make any sense, William.”
“It doesn’t need to, Abigail.” He released the brambles and took the cats from her arms, ignoring his allergies as always. “Mine as fuck. Remember it.”
“I still need to—I have things I need to do,” she told him, trying not to get ahead of herself, feeling like a helium balloon. “I think I should maybe go back to therapy.”
“Probably,” he agreed as they stood up.
“Hey!”
“What? I went back to therapy after I thought I was done.”
She stared at him through the snow. “You went to therapy?”
“I lived in California. You have to do that kind of shit over there, or you’ll never fit in.” But then, after a moment, he gave her one of his rare, serious looks and said, “I’ll tell you about it sometime.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you,” she said. I love you, she thought.
And like he’d read her fucking mind, he said, “I love you,” right back.
She couldn’t believe those were words they’d exchanged, never mind feelings they’d actually felt. Her heart had been swallowed up by a beam of sunshine, and she felt herself glowing all the way back to the house. They were opening the scarlet front door when it occurred to her—she wanted to give him sunshine too, wanted to make him feel the way she did, which meant she had to give him back whatever he gave her. “I, erm ... I mean, when you said just now that you loved me, I should’ve said—”
He looked down at her, a smile in his voice and a bundle of cats in his arms. “There’s no should, Abs. I said I understood where you’re at, and I meant it.” She thanked God her glasses were steaming up from the house’s warmth, because if she could see his gorgeous fucking face in finer detail as he said this, she might faint with the perfection of it all. “You already told me you loved me today,” he continued. “I bet that’s you done for the rest of the week.”
She laughed, dizzy with affection, with adoration. “I can do better.”
“But I don’t want better,” he said calmly. “I like what I’ve got. You’re in charge here, you know. Anything that changes between us will be your choice.” His eyes turned her inside out. “All I ever wanted was to be yours. Am I?”
“Yes,” she breathed. God, yes.
He grinned, happier than she’d ever seen him. Including that one time when a butterfly had landed on his nose, which was saying something. “Then I’m good. Now call your brother and tell him to bring Ms Tricia back here. Someone smarter than us needs to take a look at these cats.”
“Oh, shit, yeah.” She took off her gloves, snatched her phone from her pocket, and followed Will into the family room as she dialled. Jase picked up while Will was bent beneath the Christmas tree, depositing Gravy and her kittens under the red-and-gold baubles.
“You found her?” was Jase’s immediate greeting.
“Yep. We’re at the house. Also, she gave birth.”
There was a shrill “What?” in the background, then a few grunts and sounds of a struggle before Grandma, predictably, took over the phone. “What happened?”
“Two kittens delivered safely,” Abbie reported, while Will gathered more blankets and dragged a few cushions off the sofa. There might be weird afterbirth stains, but she was pretty confident Grandma wouldn’t mind. “She seemed really tired and cold outside, but she’s licking the first one now, and the second one’s feeding, so that’s a good sign, right?”
“Yes,” Grandma agreed. “Well done. We’re heading back.”
Abbie felt a bit glowy about that “Well done.” Maybe listening to Chitra talk about pool births and placentas for months had made her ready for anything, or maybe her own habit of imagining worst-case scenarios had done that. Whatever the case, she was glad she hadn’t fucked up Gravy’s babies.