The ring was in his pocket for eleven days before he asked.

Maria knew. She'd known since the Tuesday he came home with his hand pressed flat against his thigh like he was holding a wound shut, and she'd said nothing, because watching him carry it was its own pleasure — the way he'd catch himself touching the pocket when he thought she wasn't looking, the way he'd go quiet at dinner and then ask her, too casually, how her back was feeling, whether she wanted to sit down, whether she needed anything. He'd been like that the whole year. Tender in a way that made her chest ache. But the pocket had changed him. It made him nervous in a new key, a key she'd never heard from him before.

Tonight he'd made her sit on the couch with her feet up and brought her tea she didn't want and then stood by the window with his back to her for a full minute, and she'd watched the muscles in his shoulders work under his shirt, and she'd thought: now. He's going to do it now.

"Maria."

"Mm."

He turned. His face was doing something complicated — the jaw working, the mouth trying to hold a shape it didn't know. He reached into his pocket and his hand came out wrong, fumbling, and the little velvet box went off his fingers and hit the floor and slid under the coffee table.

She laughed. She couldn't help it. It came up out of her belly and she clapped a hand over her mouth, but it was already out, and Jared went down on one knee to fish the box out from under the table and came up red to the ears, and the laugh turned into something else — something wet at the corners of her eyes.

"That's not—" He was laughing too now, the nervous kind, the kind that shakes. "That's not how I practiced it."

"You practiced it?"

"In the truck. On the way home. Every day for a week." He got the box open — finally, after thumbing it twice — and the diamond caught the lamp and threw little white sparks across his knuckles. "I had a whole speech. I had — I was going to say something about the drawer. About the first night you put your things in it. I had it all worked out, and then you laughed at me and now I can't remember any of it."

"Jared."

"Just — let me—" He took her left hand. His fingers were warm and a little damp and they were shaking, actually shaking, this man who could throw a hundred-pound sack of feed over his shoulder without breathing hard, and she felt the tremor travel up through his palm into hers and settle somewhere behind her ribs. "Maria. I've been in love with you since I was twenty-three years old and too stupid to know what to do with it. I left because I was a coward and I've spent six years regretting it and I'm not going to spend another six. Marry me."

She said yes before he finished the word.

It came out of her — not a word so much as a sound, a yes that had been sitting in her throat for a year, for six years, for longer than she'd let herself count — and she was nodding and crying and pulling him up off his knee by the front of his shirt, and he slid the ring onto her finger and it stuck at the second knuckle and he had to work it down, both of them laughing now, her thumb pressed against his thumb, the diamond dragging against her skin.

"It fits," he said, doubtful.

"It fits."

He kissed her and she kissed him back and the baby kicked — hard, a sharp little heel right under her ribs — and Jared felt it through her dress, his hand flat on the swell of her, and he pulled back with his eyes wide.

"She did it again."

"He," Maria said. "Or she."

"She." Jared's hand stayed where it was, spread wide, like he was holding something in place. "She knows. She heard me ask."

Maria looked down at her hand. The new ring sat above her wedding band — Christian's band, thin and pale gold, the one she'd worn for seven years and hadn't taken off once, not even the night she'd packed her bag and driven across town. She turned her hand in the lamplight and the two rings sat there together, one old and one new, and the old one looked small next to the new one. Not lesser. Just — small. Like a thing from another life that had wandered into this one and hadn't found its way out yet.

"Jared."

"Mm."

"Help me take this one off."

He went still. His hand came off her belly and he looked at her hand and then at her face, and there was a question in his eyes he didn't ask out loud, and she answered it anyway.

"I want to be all yours." She said it quietly. "I've been yours for a year. I want the rest of it to say so."

He didn't say anything for a moment. Then he took her hand and turned it over and worked the old band up over her knuckle — it came easier than the new one, worn smooth by years — and he held it in his palm, a little circle of pale gold, and looked at it like it was a letter he didn't want to read.

"Where do you want it?"

"The drawer."

"The drawer's full."

"Then the box on the dresser. The one with the earrings." She laughed, soft, and wiped her face with the back of her wrist. "I'll deal with it tomorrow. I just — I don't want it on my hand tonight."

He nodded and put the band in his shirt pocket, and she watched him do it, watched the small weight of it settle against his chest, and something in her went loose and warm and settled. He kissed her knuckles, one by one, the way he did, and then he said, into the back of her hand:

"You know we're going to have to tell him."

"I know."

"Tonight?"

"Tonight." She was already reaching for her phone on the arm of the couch. "He should hear it from me. He's been — he's been good about all of it. Better than I expected."

Jared's mouth did something at the corner. "He's been good about it because he gets off on it."

"Jared."

"I'm not wrong."

"You're not wrong." She scrolled to Christian's name and her thumb hovered over it, and she thought about the last year — the way he'd answered every time, the way he'd never once made it hard, the way he'd said congratulations when she told him about the baby in a voice that had sounded, genuinely, like he meant it. "Still. He deserves to hear it from me."

She pressed call. It rang twice.

"Maria." His voice was the same as it always was — a little eager, a little careful, like a dog that had learned not to jump. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's okay." She looked at Jared. He'd sat back on the coffee table, elbows on his knees, watching her, and his shirt pocket had the little circle of gold in it and she could see the shape of it through the fabric. "Better than okay. Jared asked me to marry him."

A pause. She heard him breathe. Then: "He did?"

"He did. Tonight. He dropped the ring under the coffee table and everything."

Christian laughed — a real laugh, startled out of him — and she felt something in her chest unclench that she hadn't known was clenched. "Maria. That's — I'm happy for you. I mean it. I'm really happy for you."

"Thank you."

"Both of you. Tell him I said congratulations."

"I will."

"And — Maria." He hesitated. "The divorce. I'll — I can file. Whenever you want. I don't want to be in the way of the wedding. You shouldn't have to wait on me for anything."

She closed her eyes. Behind her lids the diamond threw its little sparks. "That's kind of you."

"It's not kind. It's just — it's the least I can do." A breath. "I'll get a lawyer. I'll have the papers drawn up. You just tell me where to send them."

"Okay."

She opened her eyes. Jared was still watching her, patient, his hands hanging loose between his knees. And she didn't know, afterward, why she did it — whether it was cruelty, or tenderness, or something in between that didn't have a name — but instead of saying goodbye she said, "Hold on a second," and she took the phone away from her ear and set it face-down on the arm of the couch, and she didn't press the red button.

The call timer kept ticking.

"He offered to file," she said, to Jared, and her voice was steady. "He said he doesn't want to be in the way."

"That's decent of him."

"It is." She stood up, and her back complained, and she put a hand under her belly and stretched, and the new ring caught the lamplight and threw sparks across the wall. "Come here."

He came. He always came when she said it in that voice. He stood up off the coffee table and crossed to her and put his hands on her hips, and she took his face in both hands and kissed him — slow, unhurried, the way you kiss someone you're going to keep kissing for the rest of your life — and she felt his mouth curve under hers.

"We should celebrate," he said against her lips.

"We should."

"I mean really celebrate." His hands slid down over the curve of her ass and pulled her in, and she felt him hard against her thigh through his jeans, and she made a small sound into his mouth. "The way we did the first night. When you said yes the first time."

"The first time I said yes to what?"

"To me." He kissed the corner of her jaw. "To all of it."

She laughed, low, and her belly pressed against his and the baby rolled under her skin like a slow wave, and she said, "Okay. But I want to lie down. My back's been talking to me all day."

"Bedroom."

She turned to go and then — and she would think about this later, in the dark, and not be able to explain it to herself — she reached back and picked up the phone off the arm of the couch. She looked at the screen. The call timer read 00:47 and climbing. Christian was still there. She could hear nothing, which meant he was being very quiet, which meant he was listening.

She looked at Jared, who was already walking toward the bedroom, pulling his shirt over his head as he went, the little gold band in the pocket going with it, and she followed him with the phone in her hand and her thumb resting on the side of it, not pressing anything.

In the bedroom she set the phone on the nightstand, screen-down.

Then she lay back on the bed — on her back, one arm folded under her head, the other hand resting on the swell of her belly — and she watched Jared come to her. He knelt on the bed and put both hands on her, one on her belly and one on her thigh, and he bent his head and kissed the stretched skin just above her navel, and she felt his beard scrape and his breath go warm across her, and she closed her eyes.

"You're beautiful," he said, into her skin. "You've been beautiful every day of this year and you're more beautiful now."

"Flatterer."

"It's not flattery if it's true." He kissed lower, dragging his mouth down the slope of her belly, and she felt her hips tilt up toward him without her telling them to. "Tell me what you want."

"You know what I want."

"Say it."

She opened her eyes and looked at him — down the length of her own body, past the rise of her belly, to where he knelt between her legs with his mouth an inch from her skin, and she said it, because he'd asked, and because she wanted him to hear her say it, and because the phone was on the nightstand and she wanted whoever was on the other end of it to hear her say it too.

"I want your mouth on my pussy."

Jared's eyes went dark. He pulled her underwear down over her hips — she lifted for him, a practiced motion, the two of them having done this a thousand times — and he tossed it off the side of the bed and put his mouth on her without waiting another second.

She was already wet. She'd been wet since the ring went on, since the second she said yes, the heat sitting low and heavy in her all through the phone call, and his tongue found it immediately — flat and broad at first, dragging up through her folds, and then narrower, the tip of it finding her clit and circling, slow, and her whole body jumped.

"Oh — fuck."

He hummed against her, pleased, and the vibration went straight up through her and her hands came down and found his hair and held on. He worked her like he had a map of her, like he'd memorized the terrain over a year of nights — the slow circles that made her thighs shake, the firmer pressure she needed when she got close, the way he'd back off right at the edge and lick her softer, flatter, until she whined and pulled at his hair and he'd go back in.

"Jared—"

He pulled back just far enough to speak, his mouth wet, his chin shining. "Not yet. I want to be inside you when you come the first time."

"Then get up here."

He didn't. Instead he shifted — sat up on his knees, unbuttoned his jeans, shoved them and his boxers down over his hips, and his cock came free, thick and dark and already slick at the tip, and she reached for it and wrapped her hand around it and felt it jump in her palm. He hissed through his teeth. She stroked him once, twice, and watched his head fall back and his throat work, and then he caught her wrist and pulled her hand away.

"You're going to make me come in your hand like a teenager."

"Wouldn't be the first time."

"No." He grinned, that slow warm grin, and moved up her body, careful of her belly, bracing his weight on his arms on either side of her. "But tonight I want to be inside you. Turn over."

She turned. It took a moment — her body was slower now, heavier, and he helped, one hand under her hip, and she settled onto her side with her top leg bent up and he came in behind her, his chest against her back, his cock sliding into the wet crease of her ass and then lower, finding her. She reached back and guided him with her hand and he pushed in.

She gasped. Even after a year, even after a thousand times, the first push still took the breath out of her — the stretch of him, the fullness, the way he bottomed out and his hips met her ass and he stayed there, buried, breathing hard against the back of her neck.

"God," he said. "You feel — every time. Every time you feel like this."

"Move."

He moved. Slow at first, long strokes, pulling almost all the way out and pushing back in, and she could hear it — the wet sound of it, obscene and perfect — and her hand went down between her own legs and found her clit and began to rub in time with him.

"That's it," he said, against her ear. "Touch yourself. Let me feel you."

"Faster."

He went faster. His hand came around and cupped her breast, heavy and tender, and his thumb found her nipple and rolled it, and she arched back into him and he took the invitation and bit down gently on the muscle where her neck met her shoulder, and she cried out — a real cry, the kind that carried through the walls — and with her other hand she reached back and grabbed his ass and pulled him into her harder.

The phone sat on the nightstand, screen-down, the call timer ticking past three minutes now, and neither of them looked at it, and both of them knew it was there.

"You're close," he said. Not a question.

"Yes—"

"Wait for me."

"I can't—"

"You can." His hand left her breast and came down over hers, over her fingers on her clit, and together they pressed and circled, his fingers over hers, and his hips snapped into her, harder, and the sound of it filled the room — skin on skin, wet, the bed frame working against the wall. "Wait for me. Come with me."

"Jared—"

"Now."

She came. It rolled up through her from where he was buried inside her and broke over her whole body, and her cunt clenched hard around his cock, once, twice, a third time, and she heard herself make a sound she didn't recognize — long and low and helpless — and behind her Jared groaned, deep in his chest, and his hips stuttered and he pushed in as far as he could go and held there, and she felt him come, felt his cock pulse and spill into her, felt the heat of it, and his arms came around her and held her tight against his chest while he emptied himself into her.

For a long moment neither of them moved. His breath was hot and ragged against the back of her neck. Her hand was still trapped under his over her clit, both of them sticky. The baby kicked once, a small protest, and they both felt it and both laughed — weak, breathless laughter, the kind that comes after.

"She's complaining," Jared said.

"She's got opinions." Maria turned her head and he kissed her, soft, over her shoulder, and then he pulled out slowly and she felt the wet slide of him leaving her and the trickle that followed, running down the inside of her thigh.

He flopped onto his back beside her and stared at the ceiling. She lay on her side and looked past him, at the nightstand.

The phone was still face-down. The call timer, she knew, was still running. Somewhere on the other end of it, in the house she'd left a year ago, Christian was lying awake in the dark with his phone at his ear, and he had heard all of it — the ring, the yes, the drawer, the I want to be all yours, the sound she made when she came. She could picture him. She didn't have to try.

She reached over and picked up the phone and looked at the screen. 00:06:41. Still connected. She held it in her hand and looked at it, and Jared turned his head on the pillow and looked at her looking at it.

"Maria," he said, slowly. "Is that call still going?"

She didn't answer. She put the phone back down on the nightstand, screen-down, and she lay back against the pillow and put her hand on her belly and looked at the ceiling, and beside her she felt Jared go very still.

Then he laughed — low, dark, a sound she hadn't heard from him before — and he reached across her, and his hand closed over the phone.

Christian held the baby through the vows, and the baby did not cry once.

She was seven weeks old and had the whole church in her pocket — every time she made a small sound, three rows of people turned their heads like sunflowers and forgave her in advance. Christian had her against his chest in the cotton wrap Maria had shown him how to tie, and he'd done it wrong twice before he got it right, and now he stood in the front pew with his hand cupped under her head and he could feel her breathing through his shirt, quick and light, a little metronome. He had not been this calm in a year. He had not been this calm since the Tuesday he came home with his hand pressed flat against his thigh.

At the altar, Maria looked like something out of a painting that had been waiting for the right frame. Six months after the baby, she'd come back into her body — the hips first, then the rest — and the dress was a simple cream thing with a low back, and her hair was up, and she held a spray of white ranunculus and looked at Jared the way she'd looked at him the first night, across a rented room with a broken radiator. Jared had on a dark suit that fit him badly in the shoulders because he'd bought it off the rack like a man who didn't intend to own more than one. He kept reaching up to touch his collar. He kept saying his vows like he was reading them off the inside of her face.

When the priest said the part about what God has joined, the baby kicked against Christian's sternum, and he put his hand over her back and leaned down and whispered into the wrap, "I know. I know."

He wasn't sure, afterward, who he'd been talking to.

Maria caught his eye as she came back up the aisle and she did something with her mouth — not a smile, exactly, more like a promise to smile later, when there was time — and she reached out as she passed and touched the baby's foot through the wrap, one finger, quick, and then she was gone down the steps into the light and the whole church stood up and made noise.

At the reception, in the rented hall with the string lights and the folding tables, Jared's mother drank too much and cried into a napkin, and Maria's aunts took turns holding the baby and arguing about which of them she looked like. Christian stood by the dessert table with a cup of punch he didn't want and watched Maria dance with her father, and then with Jared, and then with the baby, who was asleep and didn't care. He thought about the year. He thought about the drawer. He thought about the way he'd felt the night she called to tell him about the ring — the unclenching, the strange bright relief, the fact that he had sat in the dark with the phone at his ear for six minutes and forty-one seconds and had not, at any point, wanted it to stop.

He'd thought, at the time, that he was being generous. He knew better now. Generosity would have been hanging up.

Jared found him near the end of the night, when the band had packed up and the aunts were stacking chairs.

"You're still holding her," he said.

"She's asleep."

"That's not what I meant."

Christian looked down at the wrap. The baby's face was turned toward his collarbone, her mouth open a little, one fist curled against his shirt. He'd been holding her for four hours and his back had started to ache an hour ago and he hadn't put her down.

"I know what you meant," he said.

Jared was quiet. Then he said, "We leave Monday. Ten days. Maui."

"I know. You told me."

"I'm telling you again." Jared's voice had the same drop in it that it always had when he was about to say something he'd already decided. "Ten days is a long time for a baby to be without her mother."

"She'll have me."

"That's what I'm asking."

Christian looked up. Jared was standing with his jacket off and his sleeves rolled and his tie loose, and he looked tired in the good way, the way a man looks when the day has been long and he's been carrying something heavy and he doesn't mind. There was no angle in his face. That was the thing about Jared — there was never an angle. He said what he meant and then he waited.

"You're asking me to keep her," Christian said.

"I'm asking you to keep her."

"For ten days."

Christian thought about the empty house on Bell Street, the one he'd moved back into after she left, the one where the second bedroom had stayed empty except for a box of her things he hadn't been able to throw away. He thought about the crib he'd bought last month and assembled by himself at two in the morning with the instructions upside down, the one he'd told nobody about, the one that sat in that second bedroom now with a mobile over it that played a song he'd heard Maria hum a hundred times.

"Yes," he said.

Jared put his hand on Christian's shoulder — just once, just flat, the way you'd steady a man on a ladder — and then took it away.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don't."

"I'm going to."

"Jared."

"I'm going to thank you every time I see you for the rest of my life, and you're going to have to stand there and take it, so you might as well get used to it now." He was already turning away, already looking across the hall to where Maria stood in the doorway with her shoes in her hand, and his face did the thing it did when he found her in a room. "Monday. We'll drop her at your place on the way to the airport."

Christian looked down at the baby. She slept on, unbothered, her fist curled against his chest.

"Monday," he said.

The suite had a wall of glass that looked out over the water and a bed the size of a small country and a bottle of champagne on ice that neither of them touched.

They got the door shut and the suitcase on the floor and Maria's shoes off, and then Jared took her by the waist and lifted her — actually lifted her, the way he used to before the baby, before the extra softness that had settled on her hips and stayed — and she made a sound that was half laugh and half something else and wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her across the room and put her down on the end of the bed and stood over her with his tie hanging loose and his chest going hard.

"Say it," he said.

"Say what?"

"You know what."

She looked up at him. The lamp behind him threw his shadow across her, and she was still in the dress, the cream one, and the zipper ran down her back and she reached up and found his belt with one hand and pulled him a step closer.

"I'm your wife," she said.

His jaw moved. He got his knee on the bed and came down over her and kissed her, and it wasn't the wedding kiss, the polite one, the one the priest had blessed. It was the other kind. His hand went into her hair and closed, and she felt the pins give, one by one, the whole careful architecture of the morning coming down around her shoulders, and she didn't care.

"Again," he said, against her mouth.

"I'm your wife."

"Again."

"I'm your wife, Jared."

He groaned and buried his face in her neck and she felt his teeth on the tendon there, gentle, and she arched up into him and got her hands under his shirt and dragged her nails down his back, and he shuddered and came up on his elbows and looked down at her like he was trying to memorize the exact arrangement of her face.

"I've wanted to hear that for six years," he said.

"Well." She was breathless already. "You took your time."

He laughed — that low warm laugh — and then he got serious, and he sat back on his heels and pulled his shirt off over his head and tossed it, and she lay there and watched him do it, watched the muscles move under the skin of his shoulders, the ones that had thrown a hundred sacks of feed and had held her up against a wall more than once, and she felt the heat settle low and heavy in her the way it always did when he started taking his clothes off with intent.

He reached down and found the zipper of her dress and pulled it, slow, tooth by tooth, all the way to the small of her back, and then he peeled the dress down off her shoulders and she helped him, lifting her hips, and it slid off onto the floor, and she was in the slip she'd worn under it, cream too, thin, and he looked at her in it and didn't say anything for a moment.

"Take that off too," he said.

She did. She got it over her head and dropped it off the side of the bed and lay back down, and his eyes went down her body slowly, from her throat to her breasts to the soft swell of her belly to the dark between her legs, and she watched him look and felt herself get wetter under it, the way she always did, the way she'd been getting wet since the door closed.

"Come here," she said.

"Where do you want me?"

"You know where."

"Say it."

"Jared."

"Say it."

She reached up and hooked her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him down so his ear was at her mouth, and she said it against his skin, low, so it was just for him. "I want to sit on your face."

He made a sound in his chest like something coming loose. He rolled onto his back beside her and got his jeans open and shoved them down and kicked them off, and his cock came free — thick, dark, already slick at the tip, standing up off his belly — and she looked at it and then at his face, and he was already grinning at her, already reaching for her hips, already pulling her up over him.

She swung a leg over his chest and settled her knees on either side of his head, and he got his hands on her ass and pulled her down, and she braced her hands on the headboard and lowered herself onto his mouth.

The first touch of his tongue took the breath out of her. He licked up through her, flat and slow, from the wet edge of her cunt all the way up to her clit, and she felt the whole length of it, the heat of his mouth, the scrape of his beard on the inside of her thighs, and her hips dropped and her back curved and she heard herself make a sound she hadn't planned.

"Fuck," she said.

He hummed against her, pleased, and the vibration went up through her and her thighs clenched around his ears. He worked her like he always worked her — like he had a map, like he'd memorized the terrain over years of nights — the slow tongue first, then the firmer pressure, then the flat of his tongue pressed hard against her clit while his hands on her ass pulled her down and held her there. She rocked against his face and he let her, and the wet sound of it filled the room, and she looked down the length of her own body and saw his eyes closed and his jaw working and his nose buried in her, and she pressed down harder, the way he liked, and he groaned into her and the vibration made her whole spine curl.

"That's it," she said, breathless. "That's — right there, don't stop—"

He didn't stop. His tongue found a rhythm and kept it, steady, relentless, and his hand slid up off her ass and his thumb found her clit and rubbed slow circles around it while his tongue worked lower, into her, and she felt the pressure build behind her navel and spread out through her hips and down into her knees, and she got one hand off the headboard and into his hair and held his head against her and rode his face in earnest, her hips moving on their own now, her breath coming in short fast pieces.

"Jared—"

He pulled his mouth away just far enough to speak, his lips and chin wet with her, and he looked up past the swell of her belly at her face. "Don't hold it. Give it to me."

"I want you inside me."

"After." His thumb kept moving on her clit, slow, merciless. "I want to feel you come on my mouth first. I've been thinking about it all day. During the vows. During the cake."

She laughed — a broken, breathless laugh — and then he put his mouth back on her and the laugh turned into something else, and she stopped thinking about anything at all. His tongue worked her clit in fast tight circles and his fingers slid down and pushed into her, two of them, curling up and finding the spot that made her whole body jerk, and she bore down on his face and gripped the headboard and the headboard creaked and she came — hard, sudden, a long low sound pulled up out of the bottom of her chest, her cunt clenching around his fingers, her thighs shaking on either side of his head.

He didn't stop until she pushed at his forehead with the heel of her hand, oversensitive, laughing and gasping, and then he let her go and she rolled off him onto her back and lay there with her chest heaving and the ceiling spinning above her.

"God," she said.

"Yeah."

She turned her head. He was lying on his back beside her with his mouth and chin shining and his cock standing up off his belly, hard and dark and leaking, and he was looking at her with a kind of open, undefended want that she'd only ever seen on him, that she'd only ever wanted to see on him.

"Come here," she said. "I want you inside me. I want you to put a baby in me."

His whole body went still. Then he moved — fast, the way he moved when he'd decided something — and he came up over her and she opened her legs and he settled between them and reached down and guided himself to her and pushed in.

She gasped. The stretch of him, the fullness, the way he bottomed out and his hips met hers — six months since the last time, since the baby, and her body had to remember, and it remembered slowly, and she felt every inch of it, the giving, the ache, the heat. He held still inside her with his forehead against hers and his breath coming hard through his nose, and she felt his cock pulse once, deep in her, and she wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him in the last half inch.

"Move," she said.

He didn't move slow. He'd been holding still for her, letting her body take the measure of him, and the second she said it something in him let go and he drove in — all the way, to the root, so her breath punched out of her and her hands flew up and caught his shoulders. She was wet enough that it didn't hurt, but it was a lot, the whole width of him splitting her open after six months of nothing, and she made a sound into his throat and he swallowed it.

"Yeah," he said, his voice wrecked already. "There she is."

He pulled back until just the head of his cock sat in her, and pushed in again, and she felt the drag of every ridge of him along her walls, the way her cunt gripped and released and gripped again, learning him back. He did it a third time, and a fourth, and by the fifth she'd stopped bracing and started meeting him, her hips tipping up to take him deeper, and he groaned and dropped his mouth to her neck and bit down on the muscle there and she gasped and raked her nails down the back of his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.

"Faster," she said.

"I'm not going to last if I go faster."

"I don't care. Faster."

He went faster. He got his forearms braced on either side of her head and his hips found a rhythm, deep and hard and steady, and the wet slap of their bodies filled the suite and the headboard started knocking against the wall, and she got her heels dug into the backs of his thighs and pulled him in on every stroke. The angle was right — he was hitting the spot he always hit, the one high up near her navel that made her whole abdomen tighten — and she heard herself start to make the small broken sounds she made when she was close, and Jared heard them too and lifted his head and looked down at her.

"Look at me," he said.

She opened her eyes. He was above her with his hair in his face and sweat already on his chest and his jaw clenched, and he was looking at her like she was the only thing in the world that had ever mattered to him.

"Say it again," he said.

"I'm your wife."

"Again."

"I'm your wife, Jared. I'm your wife and you're going to put another baby in me —"

His rhythm stuttered. He dropped his forehead to hers and his hips snapped harder, losing the steady cadence and going rough and wild, and she felt the head of his cock swell inside her, that last thick fullness before he went, and she grabbed the back of his neck and held him there and came with him — her cunt clamping down around him in long rolling waves, her thighs shaking, her heels digging in — and she felt him spill, hot and deep and pulsing, one shot and then another and another, his whole body locked over her and his mouth open against her cheek and his fingers dug into the sheets on either side of her head.

He stayed in her after. He didn't pull out. He lay his full weight down on her — careful of her belly, always careful of her belly — and she wrapped her arms and legs around him and held him inside her while his breathing slowed and the wet heat of him stayed sealed up in her cunt.

"Don't move," she said.

"I wasn't going to."

They lay like that a long time. The glass wall had gone dark and the water outside was black with a line of moonlight across it, and the champagne sat in its bucket and sweated. Somewhere down the hall a door opened and closed. Maria traced the shape of Jared's shoulder blade with one fingertip and felt his heartbeat against her sternum, fast at first and then easing, and she thought about the church and the priest and the way Christian had stood in the front pew with her daughter breathing against his chest, and something in her chest went loose and warm and stayed that way.

"You're crying," Jared said.

"I'm not."

He lifted his head and looked at her and there was wet on her cheeks, and he wiped it with his thumb, and his face was so open it almost hurt to look at.

"Happy?" he said.

"Yeah." She turned her face into his palm and kissed it. "Happy."

He pulled out of her slowly and she felt the loss of him and then the slow seep of what he'd left behind, and he rolled off her and pulled her with him, tucking her against his chest with her back to his front, one arm heavy over her waist and his hand splayed flat on her belly. She put her hand over his and laced their fingers together there, low, where a second baby would start, and neither of them said anything for a while.

"Ten days," she said finally.

"Ten days."

"You think she'll be okay?"

"She'll be with Christian." Jared said it without any edge at all, like it was the simplest fact in the world. "He'll hold her the whole time. He won't put her down once."

Maria laughed, wet and quiet. "He's going to spoil her rotten."

"Good." Jared pressed his mouth to the back of her neck. "She should be spoiled. She's got three people who love her."

Maria turned in his arms so she was facing him, and she put her hand on his jaw and looked at him in the dark of the room with the moonlight coming across the bed, and she said the thing she'd been carrying since the door closed.

"I love you."

"I know."

"Say it back."

"I love you, Maria." He said it the way he said everything — plain, no ornament, meaning every syllable. "I've loved you since the rented room with the broken radiator. I loved you through six years of not being allowed to. I'm going to love you until I'm dead."

She kissed him. Slow, this time, nothing behind it but the fact of him, and when she pulled back he was smiling at her, and she felt the whole impossible shape of it settle around them — the marriage, the daughter asleep in another man's arms a thousand miles away, the second baby already maybe starting inside her — and she was grateful, so grateful it sat in her throat like something she couldn't swallow.

"Thank Christian for us," she said. "When we call tomorrow."

"I will."

"He gave us this."

"He did." Jared pulled her in closer, tucked her head under his chin, and his hand came back to rest on her belly. "He gave us everything."

Outside, the water moved in the dark, and the moon made its long thin line across it, and in the suite the champagne went untouched and the two of them lay tangled together in the big bed with nothing between them and nothing left to want. Maria closed her eyes and listened to Jared's heartbeat slow under her ear and let herself fall asleep in her husband's arms, on her honeymoon, at the beginning of the rest of her life.