Married In A Heartbeat novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Wedding Night

Tobin lived over a workshop in North Las Vegas, up an outside staircase with a flickering bulb.

The apartment was one big room.

A kitchen counter ran along one wall, and a bed sat under the window with a quilt pulled tight.

The couch was too short for him.

There was one lamp, one shelf of paperbacks, and a drafting table covered in blueprints with a coffee ring on top.

"I'll take the couch," he said. "It's your night. You get the bed."

"It's our night," I said. "We're married."

"For about six hours."

"Six hours is a long time."

He put my overnight bag on the floor and turned away to give me room.

I stood in the middle of his apartment in my mother's veil, with forty cloth buttons running down the back of my dress.

I could not reach the middle ones.

I had never been able to.

"Tobin," I said. "I need help."

He looked at me over his shoulder.

"With what?"

"Buttons."

He crossed the room slowly.

I turned around and lifted my hair, and I felt him stop right behind me.

His fingers touched the first button at the nape of my neck.

They were rough, and very careful.

He undid it.

Then the next one.

The sound of each little button was louder than the air conditioner.

"You're shaking," he said low.

"I'm not scared."

"I know."

His knuckle slid down my spine to the next button, and my breath caught.

I leaned back an inch, and my shoulder blades touched his chest.

He was warm through his shirt, and solid, and he smelled like sawdust and coffee and something clean underneath.

"I haven't stopped thinking about your mouth since the chapel," he said into my hair.

"Then do something about it."

He undid the rest of the buttons faster.

The dress fell off my shoulders and slid over my hips and puddled on the floor.

I stood there in a white lace bra and underwear and my veil, with the whole room humming around me.

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