"Then come for me. Hard."
I do. Screaming his name while he works me through it, wave after wave, until there's nothing left of me but stars behind my eyes and his name on my lips.
He follows me right over the edge, and I watch as he falls apart. And before I can even catch my breath, he’s pulling out of me and removing the toy. The first thing he does is kiss me. Kisses me until my lungs burn.
“We need to do that again,” I whisper against his lips.
“Yes, ma’am.”
After, he unties me slowly. Kisses each wrist where the rope was. Massages the feeling back into my arms with those big, careful hands while I lie there boneless, watching him through half-closed eyes.
"Don't move," he murmurs, disappearing into the bathroom.
He comes back with a warm washcloth and cleans me up, gentle as anything, pressing a kiss to my hip when he's done. Then my bump. Then he pulls one of his flannel shirts over my head, it falls to my thighs, and smells like him, and helps me into a pair of his socks because he knows my feet get cold no matter the weather.
"Where are we going?" I ask as he tugs gray sweatpants on and scoops me up off the bed.
"You'll see."
"Ace, your arm?—"
"Woman, if you tell me about my arm one more time on our wedding day."
He carries me down the stairs and out the front door, into the warm night air. And there, parked facing east with the tailgate down, is his truck.
The bed is already made up. Blankets layered thick and pillows stacked against the cab. Just like we always used to do.
"Ace," I whisper.
"Figured we'd end the night the way we started everything." He sets me down on the tailgate and climbs up beside me, settling against the pillows and opening his good arm. "C'mere, Mrs. Sterling."
I crawl into the spot against his side. The spot that's been mine since I was sixteen. My head on his chest. My leg over his. His hand splayed over our daughter.
Above us, the Arizona sky does what it does best. No clouds. No light. Just an ocean of stars so thick and bright it makes you feel small and infinite at the same time.
"There's Orion," I say, pointing.
"Look at you. Show-off."
"I learned from the best."
"Damn right you did." He points. "Big Dipper. Cassiopeia. And that one there?—"
"Don't say it."
"That one's called Frank Junior."
I laugh into his chest, and he laughs into my hair, and the truck rocks gently with it, and the crickets sing, and somewhere out in the dark, Seven snorts at us from the paddock like he's heard the Frank joke a thousand times. Because he probably has.
"Hey, Goldie?" Ace says, pointing up. "You know, making a wish on a shooting star is real, right?"
I lift my head. "They're not shooting stars, Ace. They're space debris burning up in the atmosphere."
"See, that's where you're wrong."
"That's where I'm literally a journalist who fact-checks things."
Or was. I’m taking a career break for now. I want to focus my time on raising April and being with Ace. Helping on the ranch. Ace made it clear we do not need money; he has enough to see us through and our future grandkids.
