Chapter 318: Chapter 320: I Am Married
ARIA’S POV
She woke up before he did.
That was unusual .... Damien was always awake before her, had been since the beginning, the particular early morning quality of a man whose brain didn’t know how to stay still. But this morning he was asleep beside her.
She lay there.
She looked at the ceiling.
She thought.....I’m married.
Not anxiously. Not with the calculating part of her brain that usually got to everything first. Just the simple fact of it, sitting in her chest warm and certain.
She was married.
She turned her head.
He was on his side facing her, one arm loose between them, his face in sleep doing the thing it did....the particular unguarding of it, the composed controlled version of him completely absent, just the actual face underneath. The one she’d been collecting for a year. The one nobody else got to see.
She looked at the ring on her finger.
Eleanor Blackwood’s stone. Twenty years in a drawer. Now here....on her hand, in the morning light, catching it the way it caught every light.
She thought about forty three years.
She intended to exceed that.
She looked back at him.
His eyes opened.
Not gradually....all at once, the way he always woke up, immediately present. He looked at her and she looked at him and the morning sat between them warm and unhurried and completely theirs.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," he said. His voice rough with sleep.
"You slept."
"I slept." He looked at her face. "You watched me sleep."
"I was thinking."
"About what."
She looked at the ceiling. "That I’m married."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then his hand found hers on the sheet between them. His thumb moved across the ring.
"Yes," he said. "You are."
She turned her head back to look at him.
He was looking at her with the expression....the one she’d been learning for a year, the one that only existed here, the one that was all of him without any of the management.
"Are you happy," he said.
She looked at him.
She thought about the garden yesterday. The arch and the peonies and walking down that path toward him and the moment he’d said finally before he kissed her. She thought about Marcus’s speech and Alexander’s face and her mother saying even if you found him by breaking into his house. She thought about Julian running through Heathrow. She thought about dancing in the west garden with her head against his chest and the lights above them and everything right.
She thought about this morning. The ring. His face in sleep. The specific settled certain warmth of waking up and knowing exactly where she was and exactly where she wanted to be.
"Yes," she said. "Completely."
He reached up and touched her face.
She leaned into his hand.
"I have something to tell you," he said.
She looked at him.
"Last night," he said. "When you were walking toward me." He held her gaze. "I had about thirty seconds where I understood something I’ve understood for a long time but hadn’t let myself say directly."
"What," she said.
"That I would have waited," he said. "However long it took. However long you needed. Whatever it required." He held her gaze. "I would have waited indefinitely."
She looked at him.
"I know," she said.
"I’m telling you anyway."
"I know that too." She moved closer to him. "That’s one of the things I love most about you. The waiting." She held his gaze. "You never made me feel rushed. You never made me feel like I owed you a pace I wasn’t ready for."
"You didn’t owe me anything."
"I know." She was very close now. "That’s the point."
He looked at her face.
"Mrs Blackwood," he said quietly.
She felt it everywhere.
"Say that again," she said.
Something moved in his eyes. "Mrs Blackwood."
She kissed him then.
It started slow.
That was the thing about this morning....there was no urgency in it, no desperation, none of the frantic quality of before when everything had been complicated and time had always felt limited. Just....time. Stretching out in every direction. Nowhere to be. Nothing urgent. Just this room and this morning and the two of them with all of it ahead.
He kissed her like he had all day.
He did, technically, have all day.
His hands moved through her hair, across her shoulders, learning her all over again with the thorough unhurried attention of a man who had decided this was the only thing that existed right now.
"Damien," she said against his mouth.
"Mm."
"We have nowhere to be."
"I know," he said.
"So stop being..."
"Stop being what."
"So deliberate," she said.
He pulled back slightly to look at her.
The dark eyes. The expression that made her nervous system completely override everything else.
"I’m being deliberate on purpose," he said.
"I know you are."
"Then stop complaining about it."
She looked at him.
"I’m not complaining," she said. "I’m...redirecting."
"You’re impatient."
"I’m allowed to be impatient it’s the morning after my wedding."
Something moved across his face. "Our wedding."
"Our wedding," she agreed. "Which means...."
He kissed her again and she stopped talking.
He took his time.
She had, over the course of the last year, learned to let him take his time. Had learned that the deliberateness of it wasn’t withholding...it was the opposite of withholding. It was attention. Complete and focused and entirely directed at her, at what she felt, at the specific geography of her that he had learned with the thoroughness he brought to everything.
His mouth on her throat. Her collarbone. The soft skin below her ear that he’d discovered early and returned to consistently because of what it did to her breathing.
She made a sound.
"There," he said against her skin.
"You’re insufferable," she managed.
"You married me anyway."
"I did." She pulled him back up to look at her. "I absolutely did."
He looked at her face in the morning light....her hair loose across the pillow, her eyes dark, the particular expression she wore when she’d stopped managing what showed....and she watched him take it in the way he always took it in. Like something he intended to remember.
"You’re beautiful," he said.
She looked at him.
He didn’t say it often. He showed it....in the way he looked at her, in the way his hands moved, he showed it with his attention. But he said it rarely and when he did it landed differently than it would have from someone who said it constantly.
"Damien," she said.
"You are," he said simply. "I don’t say it enough."
She reached up and pulled him down.
"Then stop talking," she said against his mouth. "And show me."
He showed her.
He moved over her with the focused patience she’d learned to stop fighting and start trusting....the patience that wasn’t withholding, that was its opposite, that meant she was the only thing that existed right now and he intended to make sure she felt every second of that.
She did.
She felt it when he looked at her face and found the angle that made her grip the sheets.
She felt it when he said her name...her real name, the one he’d known before she told him, the one that had been a revelation when she’d first heard it from his mouth and that was still, after everything, capable of undoing her completely.
She felt it when he said quietly against her temple: "Mine."
Not possessively. Not the way it might have sounded from someone else. Just....certain. The statement of a fact he’d known for a long time and was now saying in a morning where there was nothing between them and no reason not to say it plainly.
"Yes," she said. Just as simply. Just as certainly.
His.
Completely and without reservation and entirely by choice.
****
Later that morning.
She was lying with her head on his chest and his hand moving slowly through her hair and both of them breathing.
Neither of them spoke for a while.
She listened to his heartbeat.
"The honeymoon," she said eventually.
"Yes."
"You haven’t told me where we’re going."
"No," he said.
"Damien."
"You’ll find out when we get there."
She propped herself up to look at him. "You’re not going to tell me."
"No."
"I need to know what to pack."
"Marcus has handled what you need to pack."
She stared at him. "Marcus packed for my honeymoon."
"Marcus coordinated. Sebastian executed." He looked entirely unbothered by this. "Your bags are already done."
"When did this happen."
"Two weeks ago."
She looked at him for a long moment.
"You planned this two weeks ago."
"I’ve been planning it for longer than that," he said. "But the packing was coordinated two weeks ago."
She put her head back down on his chest.
"You’re ridiculous," she said.
"I’m thorough."
"There’s a difference."
"There really isn’t," he said.
She felt his chest move....the laugh she’d come to love, the one that lived just beneath the surface, the one that arrived more easily now than it used to.
She smiled against his skin.
"Okay," she said. "I trust you."
He pressed his lips to the top of her head.
"I know," he said. "That’s still the thing I’m most grateful for."
She closed her eyes.
She thought about everything that had brought her here.
The desperation of it. The false name and the plan and the greenhouse in the dark. The falling apart of everything she’d planned and the building of everything she hadn’t.
She thought about standing in front of a plant with her bag open and not being able to make herself take it.
She thought about what that had cost her.
She thought about what it had given her.
"Damien," she said.
"Mm."
"Whatever Morrison says about the Foundation expansion in the board meeting next week,,,,"
He made a sound.
"I want to be in that meeting," she said. "It’s my Foundation."
"I know it’s your..."
"I want to be there."
"You’re on the honeymoon next week."
"Then schedule the meeting for when we get back."
"Aria."
"It’s my Foundation," she said again.
He was quiet for a moment.
"I’ll have Marcus reschedule," he said.
"Thank you."
"You’re insufferable."
"You married me anyway."
"I did," he said. "I absolutely did."
She smiled.
She stayed exactly where she was, because that was exactly where she needed to be.
