Two years. The same two years he spent not calling me. Not confronting me at functions. Not doing a single thing to indicate that the night in Prague had affected him at all.
He wasn't doing nothing. He was building a house.
The thought tries takes root somewhere between my ribs and I push it away before it can fully dig in.
He opens the front door and steps back to let me enter first.
The interior is open and warm. Exposed beams overhead, the original timber, are sanded and sealed but left rough enough to show their age. A wide living space with a deep sofa and a stone fireplace. A kitchen along the far wall with dark countertops and open shelving. Everything is clean and simple, nothing showy, nothing trying too hard. It looks like him. Steady and built to last.
I stand in the middle of the room in my elaborate gown and feel absurdly out of place. Like a chandelier someone hung in a cabin.
Aidan closes the door behind us and the soft click of the latch sounds louder than it should.
We're alone.
Truly alone, for the first time since Prague, and the awareness of that presses against my skin like a change in air pressure.
It's my wedding night.
The thought arrives fully formed and unavoidable, and with it comes a rush of something I refuse to call anxiety. I don't get anxious. I control the variables and I execute. But standing here in this warm, quiet house with the man I married four hours ago, the man whose hands I can still feel on me if I let my guard down for even a second, I realize I have no strategy for this.
I don't know what he expects. I don't know what the rules are. In my father's world, the rules were clear. The bride performs. The husband takes. The marriage functions. But Aidan has not followed a single rule I expected him to follow since this started, and I'm running out of scripts.
"There's a bedroom through there," he says, nodding toward a hallway to the left. "Bathroom attached. Your things were sent ahead. Everything should already be in the closet."
I stare at him. "My things are already here?"
"Your father called my brother it earlier this week. Ma sorted your things. I hope that’s okay."
Of course, this was all arranged before I even saidI do. The house is built. The room is ready. The closet is full. And I walked into it like I was choosing to, when the truth is every step was laid out for me long before I took it.
Something snaps inside my chest like a thread pulled too tight finally giving way.
"What are you playing at?" I ask.
My voice is quiet. Controlled. But the ice in it is thinner than usual and we both know it.
Aidan turns to face me fully. He doesn't look surprised by the question. He looks like he's been waiting for it.
"I'm not playing at anything."
"You are. You requested me. You built this house. You had my things moved in before the wedding. You've been calm and patient and perfectly behaved all day, and I want to know why."
"You know why."
"I want to hear you say it." I clip each word out like it has spikes, and hope that he feels them.
He holds my gaze. The quiet intensity is back, the same look he gave me across the reception, but closer now. Unfiltered. There's no room between us to dilute it.
"I waited years for you to notice me, Tanya. At every function. Every dinner. Every time we were in the same room and you looked straight through me like I wasn’t even there." His voice is even. Unhurried. Like he's reciting something he's thought about so many times the words come out smooth. "And then Prague happened. And you came to me, and you let me touch you, and for one night you were honest. And then you left."
I hold my breath, steeling myself against his words which aren’t spikey at all.
"I've spent two years since that night thinking about you." He takes a step closer. "That's what I'm playing at. I'm not trying to trap you. I'm not trying to own you. I'm trying to get back to the woman I met that night, because she's the only version of youthat was real, and she is the only woman I want to spend the rest of my life with."
The words seem to enter me. Get into the small box inside myself that I keep locked. The place where I stored the memory of his voice against my neck and the way his hands shook, just slightly, when he touched me for the first time. Like I mattered. Like I wasn't a body he was using but a person he'd been aching to reach.
"You don't know me," I say, but it comes out wrong. Too soft. Too close to a question.
