Aiden clears his throat, then gestures vaguely toward the bathroom door.
“I’ll—uh. Grab you some extra blankets.”
It’s so sweet and practical, I almost miss the way he completely ignores the wordbed.
“Okay,” I say, like my heart didn’t just trip over both of those things.
I finish wiping around my sink, and he flicks off the light, letting me walk ahead of him. The house feels quieter tonight after a full day with my parents. Tomorrow it’ll be even busier.
I try to ignore the fact that my parents are asleep upstairs and focus more on how cozy our room is. Or the way the snow is still piling up outside our bedroom windows.
Ouris a term my brain is using entirely too interchangeably, like it’s been waiting for permission to acknowledge what I’ve wanted from day one.
The fire has burned down to a low glow, the flames lazy and warm. I don’t miss the way he’s got the lights on that he helped me string my first night in here, and my heart trips in gratitude.
He opens the bench at the foot of the bed, pulls out a quilt, then hesitates—just a beat too long—before adding another.
“I move a lot,” he says lightly. “In my sleep.”
Something in the way he says it—half joke, half warning—snags.
“That’s fine,” I reply. “So do I.”
It’s not the entire truth, but something in his expression tells me he needs that from me.
We add the quilts, like this is yet another thing we do every night, the rustle of fabric loud in the quiet. When I slide into bed, the sheets are cool and crisp, smelling faintly of pine and smoke. It’s like everything in this house smells like the evergreens outside, and I don’t think it’s an accident.
He joins me a moment later, careful, like even though we’re grown-ups—married ones—we’re breaking some kind of rules. There are several inches of respectful space between us, which I immediately hate.
It’s too much space for married people, and too little to pretend it’s irrelevant. It’s space that screams we’ve got no clue how to do this, even though everything else feels like second nature.
Why?
Because we tiptoe around everything that isactualintimacy, like we’re not allowed to have it. We kiss, but we’re careful not to want too much. After a practically loveless marriage and an entire decade of missing Aiden, being this close to him with space between us feels like a literal chasm.
And I’m eaten up with want. The want of his arms around me while we sleep, of a blurred kiss with barely open eyes, and a mumbled “good morning”.
Nothing risque, just him.
That last step we keep depriving ourselves of.
But I don’t say anything, and when he clicks off his lamp, I do, too.
“Night, Chloe,” he murmurs.
His words slide over my skin, and I want to ask him to hold me. But we probably need to find rhythm in this, too, so I don’t.
“Goodnight,” I whisper.
Darkness settles between the glowing light bulbs and what’s left of the fire in the fireplace.
I lie on my back, hands folded on my stomach, aware ofeverything—the heat of him beside me, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the way the mattress dips slightly when he shifts. My brain refuses to power down.
And it’s not just Aiden beside me in bed, it’s worrying about my brother’s arrival tomorrow. Worrying about my parents, and all the balls we’re now juggling on top of Phoebe, the farm, the sessions I’mstillsqueezing in after a massive schedule readjustment.
My clients were more open to moving their slots to later in the season after they found out I had also gotten married and moved to the farm. That’s something I haven’t quite let myself sit with yet.
Minutes pass. Probably more like an hour.
