Page 54 of Marrying the Pakhan

“Most people aren’t watching someone they love build an entire person out of nothing.” He presses his thumb into the arch of my foot again, and I feel it everywhere, not just where he’s touching. “It’s hard not to notice everything, given what’s actually happening.”

I go quiet at that, at the easy way he said love like it’s a fact he settled on a while ago and stopped questioning, and my chest goes warm and a little unsteady.

“You don’t have to look so surprised every time I say it,” he says, watching my face. “I mean it every time.”

“I know. It still catches me off guard.”

“Good. I’d worry if it stopped.”

He shifts, gentle in the way he’s gentle with everything lately, and pulls me closer until I’m tucked against his side instead of just resting my feet in his lap, one hand settling low over the small, barely-there curve of my stomach.

“Does it feel real to you yet?” I ask. “The baby, I mean. Twelve weeks still feels abstract to me some days.”

“It felt real the second you told me.” His hand stays where it is, warm through my shirt. “I think about it more than I probably should during a normal workday. Whether it’ll have your stubbornness or mine. Whether Ginger’s going to be a good big sister or an absolute menace about it.”

“Both, probably.”

“Both, definitely.” He shifts slightly, thoughtful now. “I keep catching myself doing the math. Due date, how old Ginger will be by then, whether we’ll need a bigger crib than the one I already looked at online without telling you.”

“You’ve been looking at cribs.”

“In secret, yes. I wanted to have an idea before we actually talked about it, so I wouldn’t just be standing there nodding along uselessly when you brought it up.”

“That’s oddly sweet, for a man who spent our first conversation trying to figure out why a stranger was proposing to him.”

“I contain multitudes. We’ve established this.”

He presses a kiss to my temple, unhurried, and I feel the shift happen slowly, nothing sudden about it, just his mouth trailing lower, along my jaw, my throat, patient in a way that’s different from how he usually is with me.

“You’re being gentle tonight,” I say, half teasing, tilting my head to give him better access.

“I’m always gentle with you.”

“Not always. Sometimes you’re not gentle at all, and I’ve never once complained about it.”

He laughs against my skin, low and warm. “Tonight’s different. I want different tonight.”

“Different how?”

“Slower.” He pulls back just enough to look at me properly, something unguarded in his face that has nothing to do with restraint and everything to do with how much he’s stopped protecting himself from feeling all of this at once. “I don’t want tonight to be about how much I want you, even though I do, always. I want it to be about how much I actually love you, and I want to take my time proving that instead of rushing past it.”

My throat goes tight, and I don’t trust myself to answer with words, so I answer by pulling him back down to me instead, slower this time, matching whatever pace he’s set without either of us having to say it out loud.

He stands, taking me with him, and this time there’s no urgency in the walk to our bedroom, no doorstep tension threatening to spill over before either of us is ready.

Just his hand in mine, unhurried steps, the quiet certainty of two people who’ve stopped needing to rush toward anything.

He undresses me like he’s committing it to memory, unhurried, reverent in a way I don’t have another word for, his hands mapping the changes in my body with the same attention he gives everything else about me now, the small curve of my stomach, the fuller weight of my breasts, changes I’ve barely adjusted to myself yet.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, and it doesn’t sound like a line; it sounds like something he’s simply reporting, factual, undeniable to him.

“You don’t have to keep saying that.”

“I’m not saying it because I have to. I’m saying it because it’s true, and because I don’t think you actually believe it yet, and I intend to keep saying it until you do.”

I don’t have an answer for that, so I pull him closer instead, and he lets himself be pulled, unhurried, patient, like we have every minute in the world and no reason to spend any of them rushing.

He closes the bedroom door behind us, and the quiet settles differently than it used to.