by Hazel Parker
I don’t mind. It’s not far, but just far enough to draw out the anticipation of seeing Steph again.
After a couple of blocks, her apartment building comes into sight. I thumb the call button beside the ground floor door. It buzzes faintly, then more loudly as she rings down to allow me entrance to the building.
Again, it isn’t late, but I don’t pass a soul on my way up to Steph’s floor. That’s just as well. Other people would only feel like obstacles to me at the moment.
I pause at her door, suddenly wishing I had at least changed clothes. But that would have entailed going all the way home, then all the way back, an agonizing wait that I’m not sure I could have taken.
I knock. There’s a brief silence, then comes the sound of the door’s locks being drawn open. The door itself swings wide, and there she is, just as beautiful as ever, perhaps even more so. She’s changed into a lightweight dress of some thin white material so that I can see every curve on her frame.
“Sure you won’t get in trouble for cutting out early?” she asks, leaning on the door jamb.
“I’m my own boss, remember?” I tell her.
“How could I forget?” she laughs and takes my hand, drawing me across the threshold and into her living room.
I think we are going to sit, but she keeps her feet, looking at me. Finally, she steps up to me, puts her hands on either side of my face, and kisses me. It feels both comfortable and exotic at the same time, like indulging in some rare pleasure after a long period of abstinence.
“I’m not complaining,” I say when the kiss eventually breaks, “but you said we had things to talk about. If you do that again, I can’t guarantee how much talking we’ll do.”
She smiles, puts her hands on my chest. “You’re right,” she says. “I do have things to tell you. I’m just not sure where to start.”
I put my hands on her waist. “I find that sometimes it’s best to just start talking and let your intention come across in its own time.”
“Fair enough,” she says. Still with her hands on my chest, she steps close to me, goes up onto her toes, and puts her lips to the cup of my ear.
She whispers two words.
My whole world suddenly shifts.
She looks at me…how? Expectantly? Joyfully? Fearfully? All of the above.
I put my arms around her and draw her in close for another kiss.
Chapter 29 - Steph
I murmur my secret, or at least one of them, into Trent’s ear and draw back just in time to see his eyes widen and his lips part. It is the look of a man who is not typically surprised by anything, only here and now taken completely unawares.
I step back, watching him, his face, his body language. This is going to tell the tale, how he takes the news. Will he take it well, or not?
He folds me into his arms and kisses me softly. It’s all the answer I need, and I’m sure now that everything is going to be all right.
“And there’s more,” I add.
“More?” he says, incredulous. “Don’t tell me it’s twins!”
“No,” I laugh. “At least I don’t think so. No, this is other news.”
“I don’t see how it can compete with what you just told me,” he says.
“It’s pretty big, at least it is to me.”
He holds up a hand. “You got to go first, so how about I take a turn? I have news of my own, too.”
I look up at him and nod. “Go ahead.”
He takes a deep breath and lets it out. “Steph…”
“Yes?”
Another deep breath goes in and out. Then, “Steph, I love you.”
The words hit me hard, but like pillows. Each of the four syllables lands with a soft, resounding thud.
“I love you,” he says again, “and I’m all in.”
I put a hand to my mouth, trying to hold in the sound there. It’s not quite a sob, not quite a laugh, but a strange mixture of the two.
Without thinking, I reply, “I love you, too, Trent.”
He kisses me again, in a way that I can now think of as loving. I put my arms around his neck and whisper into his ear, “I’ve loved you for a while now, even when you were away. Don’t go away again. Please.”
“Not a chance,” he says. “I’m back and here to stay.”
“Promise?”
He nods. “I promise.”
I can’t believe how in such a short period of time I have gone from feeling so at loose ends to feeling so fulfilled, so complete, so loved.
And I do feel loved. It is a foreign experience, but one which I can and will readily accept. I drink up the feeling like a warm liquid, only to find that there is more there.
This, I realize, is what true love feels like.
“Trent,” I whisper, “I missed you so much.”
“And I missed you,” he replies. His hands are at my waist, and I can feel their strength there. The kiss between us intensifies, and soon we are locked in a passionate embrace, our hands all over each other’s bodies.
In the bedroom, we quickly work our way out of our clothes and fall onto the bed together.
I reach down and take him in my hand and guide him into me. He penetrates me with one long, hard thrust, and I cry out against his shoulder. His hands are in my hair, his mouth on mine, my throat, my breasts.
He is moving slowly inside me, pulling back until he almost slips free, then glides back in with one long, gradual stroke. The teasing is driving me out of my mind. I hook my legs around him and lock my ankles, trying to pull him to me faster and harder. He easily resists, maintaining that same slow, deliberate rhythm.
“Trent,” I gasp. “Trent…”
It’s all I can get out, but it seems to work. Hearing the sound of his name on my lips appears to wear down his resolve, and bit by bit, his pace increases.
Just when I think it feels as good as it possibly can, he changes the angle of his hips so that the length of his hardness scrapes against me, sending huge darts of pleasure through my body. I grab at his shoulders, but they may as well be made of solid rock. I can’t make so much as a tiny dent in the flesh there.
I realize he is holding himself back and put my hands to his face.
“It’s all right,” I tell him. “You won’t hurt me.”
The last of his control goes, and he is now moving in me hard and fast. His hands are cupped beneath my ass, tilting my hips up to meet his thrusts squarely. I push against him, which only inflames him all the more.
His tongue skates across one sensitive nipple, then the other, then back again. I’m already close, close from lack of contact and strength of wanting.
I pant his name into his ear. He comes up onto his knees without breaking contact with me, manipulating my lower body as easily as a rag doll. My lower body is thrown back down onto the bed, helpless against the ecstasy his thrusting is pushing me into.
I’m not sure how much more I can stand when the heat begins to bloom and spread in my lower belly, soon rushing out to all of my limbs. I am positively vibrating with pleasure, clutching desperately at Trent’s arms and screaming unabashedly.
My cries are enough to push him over the edge. He lunges into me one last time, and then I can feel him coming, again and again, deep inside me. I have my arm locked around the back of his neck and am still shaking from the effects of my orgasm.
Finally, we collapse against one another. There are no words at first, only the sound of our labored breathing. I am curled up against him, and he has his arm across my shoulders.
We lay like this for what feels like a long time. Then, at last, we are back under some semblance of control.
“Love me?” I ask, my eyes closed and my cheek pressed against his chest.
“Yes,” he answers.
“Stay with me?” I ask.
“Yes,” he repeats. “Always.”
“You have just over seven and a half months to get used to the idea of being a father, too.”
He kisses the top of my head. “
I’m already used to the idea.”
“So where do we go from here?”
“All I care about is that we go together,” he says. “All of us.”
“All of us,” I echo, and begin to drift away into a pleasant sleep. Dreams can’t compare with the splendor of my reality but are good all the same.
Chapter 30 - Trent
A little over a month later, DuMonde’s had risen from the ashes like a phoenix, looking, as Steph had vowed, better than ever. I can personally attest that some parts of it have been secured with particular care.
On this, the eve of DuMonde’s grand re-opening, Steph is nowhere to be seen, which isn’t surprising. She’s in the kitchen, juggling multiple tasks with her usual skill. I sit at one of the tables in the dining area, knowing that I probably won’t see her.
I am surprised, then, when she appears momentarily, just long enough to give me a kiss on the cheek and an “I love you,” before disappearing into the kitchen again. I smile as I watch her go. She’s radiant, which sounds like a cliché, but I have learned that just because something is cliché doesn’t mean it’s not true.
I lost the bet we had made by a couple of days, but that’s all right—they were days spent wrapped up with Steph, making love and making plans. This pleasant delay had pushed the restaurant over the wagered deadline for being open, but neither of us minded.
Now it is time to pay up, though. I take out my phone and go back to scrolling through various recipes on the screen.
I hope she takes it easy on me. I haven’t cooked anything in…well, I’ve never really cooked anything of consequence. I’m torn between trying something simple that I can’t botch too badly and something that will perhaps come within shouting distance of her standards.
I have learned that Steph most appreciates things that come from the heart and from my own hands. While she works with expensive materials, she doesn’t really have extravagant tastes. That’s also okay by me. It will make my task just a tiny bit easier.
After the baby, Steph has said that she will turn over the head chef duties to Daniel. She has already abdicated the position in both of her remaining two restaurants as her pregnancy has advanced. When I ask her if she ever has second thoughts about relinquishing this degree of control, she shakes her head and places her hand on her gently rounding stomach.
“It doesn’t feel like relinquishing,” she says. “It feels like switching my focus to something else. I know that sounds like the same thing, but it’s not.”
“Something else?” I ask.
“Someone else,” she amends.
I settle on a dish that is humble enough that I think I can handle it and still exotic enough to be interesting. It’s time for me to go to the car and have Curtis drive me home so that I can get to work in my kitchen.
I leave without interrupting Steph’s work, knowing that Curtis will return to bring her home in a few hours as well, where, hopefully, a meal of my own creation will be waiting for her, just as I will be waiting for her.
“Don’t burn the place down,” she has jokingly told me. We laugh over this and go back to our busy lives, the ones which have opened to allow full and ample space for the most important thing—each other.
Epilogue
|
“If the evening went as well as the place looked,” Trent says as I come through the door, “then it must have been a home run.”
“Oh, yes,” I confirm, smiling at him.
“A successful re-opening, then, Ms. White?” Curtis says as he closes the door. It’s taken me a while to get used to the spaciousness of Trent’s place. It still feels like wall-to-wall luxury to me, and that includes the attentions of Curtis. Luckily, he’s so thoughtful and approachable that I’ve been able to make the transition from one home to another pretty well.
“To keep up with the baseball analogies, it was a grand slam,” I say as I turn to face him.
My words fall on empty air, as he has already exited the room like a cool breeze.
“That’s weird,” I say, turning back to Trent. “He got out of here in a hurry.”
“Just wants to give us some time alone, I expect,” he says. “So tell. How did the night go? How was Daniel? Is he going to be ready for ‘the show,’ do you think? After all, he’s going to be head chef at a very prestigious restaurant in the not-to-distant future.”
“He’ll do great,” I say. “The restaurant will be great. Everything’s great. I can’t believe how great actually.”
Trent takes me in his arms and we kiss. Then he steps back and goes to one knee in front of me. Believe me, even when you’ve seen it in the movies and on television a thousand times, when it happens to you in real life, your breath just stops right in your throat.
“Stephanie White,” he says, producing a small box from his inside coat pocket and opening it. All the light in the room seems to leap into the box and the ring it contains. “Will you marry me?”
Speaking of movies and television, those scenes of the woman taking the proposal by becoming happily weepy? That’s a true thing, too.
“Yes,” I whisper, then manage to repeat it slightly louder. “Yes!”
He slips the ring onto my finger, rises and we kiss again, deeper this time, more passionately. It promises of some fine things indeed later on tonight.
“I have dinner ready,” he says, then grins. “For good or for ill. Go easy on me, though, okay? I’m only a novice here.”
“I’m sure it’ll be wonderful,” I assure him.
“Thanks for the faith. Come on, we’d better eat before it gets cold.”
“Wait,” I say. “One thing. I have something for you.” I go into my purse and extract a small box of my own.
He eyes it curiously.
“Should I open it right now?” he asks.
I nod. “You’ll be glad you did.”
“Okay,” he says cautiously, and removes the lid.
Inside is a tiny pink onesie. “Daddy’s Little Girl” is embroidered across the front.
He looks up quickly.
“Are you sure?” he asks, beaming.
“I wanted to surprise you,” I tell him.
He sweeps me into his arms again and kisses me harder than ever.
“Happy?” I ask when our lips finally part.
“Never been more so,” he says. “But no more surprises for a little while, okay?”
“Trust me, I’ve had enough to last me for a long time,” I say.
“Glad to hear it,” he returns. “Now, about dinner…”
“Oh, yes, I’ve been looking forward to it.”
We walk off arm in arm, not just to the dining room, but to a future better than either of us had ever expected.
There would be surprises, of course. There always are. That’s just life. But having someone with whom to navigate the waters of those surprises makes all the difference in the world.
The End
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