New Husband. Old One Gone novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: The Apartment Upstairs

Sawyer gives his bride the bed and finally tells her how long he's loved her, and by morning the wedding clip is everywhere and the base has canceled the yard's contract.

I didn't go home.

At eleven that night I was sitting on Sawyer's kitchen counter in his Pickard Restoration T-shirt, eating lemon cake out of the pan with a fork.

The dress lay over the back of his couch.

It had taken him twenty minutes and a pair of needle-nose pliers to get me out of it.

He'd kept his eyes on the ceiling the whole time.

"There were forty-two buttons," he said now, from the stove. "I counted. Who designs that?"

"A woman who hates brides."

He was heating milk in a pot because I'd told him I couldn't sleep.

His apartment sat on top of the Ropewalk.

It was one long room of old brick with a bedroom off the end, the river windows black with night.

He poured the milk into two mugs and handed me one.

Then he leaned on the counter next to my knee.

"The bed's yours," he said. "Clean sheets. I'm on the couch."

"It's your bed, Sawyer."

"It's your wedding night, Gwaltney. You get the good pillow."

I turned the hex nut on my finger.

"Your granddad read the vows out of a tide table," I said.

"High water, 6:42 a.m."

"You remember that?"

"I remember he said 'till low tide do you part' and you cried because you thought that meant six hours."

"I was eight."

"You hit me with a Barbie."

"You laughed at me."

"I was ten. I was a fool." He drank his milk. "You were the toughest bride I ever saw."

I set the fork down in the pan.

Here's the thing I didn't say.

I knew he'd known something on Tuesday. He'd known enough to dress a ballroom.

I didn't ask him how long.

I didn't want the number yet.

Sawyer set his mug down.

"Ro, I'm going to say something once, and then I'm not going to say it again till you ask me to."

My heart did a stupid thing.

"Okay."

"Five years ago you rebuilt my granddad's skiff in one weekend. You had epoxy in your hair and you sang the whole time, every song wrong."

"I did not."

"You sang 'Free Bird' with words you made up." His slow smile came and went. "I've loved you since that Sunday. I was going to tell you the night Jesse died. Then he died. Then Bryce."

"I didn't throw this wedding to trap you," he said. "It's paper. If you want out Monday, I'll drive you to the courthouse myself."

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

He nodded and went to get a blanket out of the closet.

I lay in his bed for an hour.

His sheets smelled like cedar and soap.

At half past twelve I got up for water.

He was in the hallway, coming back from the bathroom, in a pair of gray sweatpants and nothing else.

We both stopped.

He had a farmer's tan that stopped at his biceps and sawdust still in the hair on his arms.

He was breathing like he'd run up the stairs.

"Sorry," he said. "I'll go around."

There was no around.

I didn't move out of his way.

He didn't make me.

He put one hand flat on the brick beside my head, slow, giving me every second to duck under it.

I didn't duck.

His shirt was down to my thighs on me. I felt every inch of the cool air under it.

He lowered his head until his forehead touched mine.

His breath smelled like lemon and milk.

"Ro," he said, very low. "Tell me to go back to the couch."

My hands were on his chest. I didn't remember putting them there.

His heart was going like a bilge pump.

I slid my palms down his ribs. He made a sound in his throat I felt in my knees.

His thumb found my jaw, then the corner of my mouth.

I tipped my face up.

Our lips touched.

Barely. Just the brush of it.

His other hand slid to my waist and pulled me off the wall an inch.

I was pressed against him from my chest to my bare knees.

Every part of him agreed with what we were doing.

I wanted it so bad I shook.

And this morning I'd had another man's ring on.

I turned my face away into his shoulder.

"Not tonight," I whispered. "I can't tell what's mine yet."

He went very still.

Then he kissed my hair, once, and stepped back into the bathroom doorway to let me pass.

"Good night, Mrs. Pickard," he said, rough.

I went back to his bed and lay there with my mouth burning until the windows went gray.

At 6:15 my phone started buzzing and didn't stop.

The videographer had posted it before the cake was cut. Bryce's paid man, filming his runaway bride.

Me in the hotel hall, pulling the ring off. Me in traffic in ivory silk. The man in the pickup yelling, "Get it, girl!"

Me kissing Sawyer under the bulbs.

The local news had it by six. Three hundred thousand views.

"MARINE MAJOR'S BRIDE RUNS OFF WITH CONTRACTOR."

Sawyer came in from the couch with his hair flat on one side and handed me coffee.

"I'm a contractor," he said. "That part's fair."

I almost laughed.

Then an email dropped in on top of all of it at 7:00.

It came from the base marina's contracting office.

"Effective immediately, the maintenance agreement between Marine Corps Community Services and Gwaltney Marine is terminated."

Forty percent of everything Daddy built. Gone before breakfast on a Sunday.

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