Page 92 of Accidental Vegas Vows

A little shaking sound came from her, and the hand over her mouth made it impossible to tell if she was taking short little breaths from the buildup of tears or if it was something worse, if she was laughing.

“Liv?”

She uncovered her mouth, revealing a wide grin beneath it. “It’s so cheesy,” she snickered. “The name.”

Oh, for fucks sake.

“I’m sorry, thank you for saying it, but that — that is so funny, Dame,” she laughed. She took a step toward me, her shoulders bouncing from her breaths between cackles. “Your neighbors are going to make fun of you.”

“I don’t… I don’t care if they make fun of me?—”

Her arms wrapped around my jacketed torso, her stomach pressing against mine before the rest of her slotted in. “It’s so dumb. I love it.”

Her words, however silly, hit me like a punch in the fucking chest. But instead of knocking the air from me, it loosened me, it relaxed me, it opened up my airways and holy shit, I could breathe. She was here. She was here, and she was holding on to me, and she wasn’t yelling at me or walking away.

I let myself hold her. I let myself lift her, let my fingers dig into her clothed flesh, let my myself breathe her in and keep her to me. “Hey, hey, you’re not supposed to lift pregnant women!”

“Shit, sorry,” I laughed, dropping her back to her feet. She pulled away and for the shortest, horrifying second, I wasn’t sure how far she’d go or if she’d run off. I grabbed her and brought her back to me, cupping her face in my hands, directing her bright green eyes up at me. “Please don’t leave.”

“I wasn’t,” she said.

My chest fucking cracked.

“I get it, Dame.” A tear slipped from her eyes and I swiped it with my thumb before it could make her colder. Why the fuck isn’t she wearing a jacket? “Genuinely, I do. I’ve had a lot of time to sit on it and I think I realized a while ago that you couldn’t say it because of him.”

I couldn’t help myself.

I pressed my lips to hers, felt the chill of them against mine. She parted for me instantly, and the second I delved into her mouth, all I could taste was the lingering flavor of a pumpkin spice latte and the rest was all her. I kissed her desperately, held her to me, wrapped my hand around the back of her neck and kept her from pulling back.

I didn’t realize how much I needed that. It had been at least four months since she’d let me kiss her, and from the way my body reacted instinctively, I could tell that I hadn’t been fixating on something that wasn’t real or something I’d built in my own mind. She was here, she was real, and she was coming back to me, finally.

“He’s going to be so fucking happy,” I mumbled against her lips. “He’s missed you so much. Maybe more than me, if that’s possible.”

She pulled her lips away and bounced up on her tiptoes, looking over my shoulder at the boat behind me. “Is he here?”

“God, no,” I laughed. “He’s with Carrie and Lucas. If you were receptive to this, I wanted you to myself for at least a few hours.”

She beamed up at me. “I am, in fact, receptive.”

“Thank fuck for that,” I grinned.

————

The setting sun over the horizon set the sky on fire, shooting orange and rose colored rays across the water beneath us as we stood on the edge of the bow of the ship. We’d anchored almost an hour ago, and the moments of calm where she hadn’t been telling me all about her least favorite classmate at the birthing studio and how that woman’s husband shelled out multi-level-marketing smoothies, I couldn’t stop thinking about how easily we slotted back into normalcy.

She hadn’t been able to stop smiling, even when she was complaining. She missed cheese and wine and sushi and her usual overabundance of coffee. She missed sleeping comfortably, she missed her ankles and feet not hurting. She missed me. But she said it all while looking at me with an unmovable grin, her eyes almost twinkling, and I knew I’d done the right thing. I didn’t give up.

Even when it seemed like all hope was lost. Even when I’d pulled myself together for Noah.

I wrapped my arm around her bump as I slotted myself in from behind her, careful not to put too much pressure as she leaned against the railing. The jacket I’d given her was keeping her sufficiently warm, but that left me a little too cold, a little too vulnerable in the cold air.

“I apologize if this is presumptuous,” I said softly, my lips just an inch from her ear, “and you might think I’m fucking insane. But I don’t want to waste another second with you after not seeing you for three months.”

Her head turned, her face just slightly too close to be able to focus on. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I am more sure about you and our future together than I have been about anything in my entire life,” I said. I swallowed past the lump in my throat as I sunk my fingers into the pocket of my slacks. “I was terrified when Noah came into my life. I was terrified when you told me about her. But with you, Liv, it was always easy. Marrying you didn’t scare me the first time.”

Her eyes narrowed as I slowly pulled back just a few inches from her. She spun around, leaning her back on the railing instead. “Damien,” she deadpanned.

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