Beckett groans. “You named him. You handle him.”
Roger finally lumbers off, tail wagging.
Beckett looks up at me, hair messy, gray at the temples now. I like to tell him he’s seasoned. There are lines at the corners of his eyes that weren’t there when we met.
They appeared gradually. Some from laughing, some from loss, some from holding other people’s tragedies in steady hands.
He still runs, but on the ground floor of this house because he likes being married.
“You’re staring,” he says.
“I’m reflecting.”
“On?”
“How right I was.”
He snorts. “About?”
“Everything.”
He pushes himself to his feet and crosses the kitchen toward me before he takes my coffee from my hand, sets it aside, and pulls me into him.
Ten years and he still makes my stomach do a little flutter.
He slides one hand along my waist and brushes his thumb along the curve of my hip. I wrap my arms around his neck and tilt my head back just enough for him to kiss me properly.
His mouth moves against mine with the kind of certainty that only comes from time. Ten years of learning each other’s edges. Ten years of arguing and apologizing and choosing each other again the next morning.
Roger huffs dramatically beside us, offended by the intimacy.
“Ignore him,” Beckett murmurs against my lips.
He deepens the kiss, one hand sliding to the small of my back. I feel that grounded heat and steady pull.The thing that has never once felt temporary.
“Uncle Beckett!”
“Aunt Madi!”
Our front door is almost knocked off its hinges by the small bodies barreling toward us, their backpacks bouncing and their shoes half untied.
Roger explodes into motion.
Beckett barely has time to turn before two of them collide with his legs. He laughs and scoops them both up, one under each arm.
“Whoa, whoa. You’re going to cause an injury, and it’s my day off,” he says as they cling to him.
I roll my eyes and smile.
Always the doctor.
In the next breath, another one crashes into my waist.
“Grandma and Grandpa brought us!” someone announces at top volume, as if we hadn’t noticed the parade behind them.
Then my parents step inside.
My mother first. She looks good. She’s clear-eyed and present. There’s color in her cheeks, and her hair is pulled back the way she wears it when she’s feeling strong.
