Chapter 68

Chapter 68
Brooklyn

There’s a point, somewhere between giving birth to twin boys and trying to zip a wedding dress over a body that still feels new to me, where every mirror in the world becomes either an enemy or a test.
I haven’t decided which yet. Ashlynn’s guest room is full of garment bags, shoes, and the kind of clutter that follows women trying to plan a wedding while also raising babies. One of the boys is asleep in the portable bassinet by the bed. The other one’s downstairs with Collin. Lily’s in the den with Nora and Maddison, and Aspen and Raleigh are here because of course they are.
The dress is hanging from the closet door. I loved it when I picked it. The problem isn’t the dress. The problem’s that I unzip my jeans, peel off my shirt, catch sight of my stomach in the mirror, and feel that old ugly flicker under my ribs before anybody can stop it.
It isn’t even simple vanity. That’d be easier to dismiss.
It’s the disorientation of not knowing where I end some days. My body used to feel like one thing. Then it carried Lily and changed. Then it carried the boys and changed again. Now I’ve got softness where I used to have angles, stretch marks silvering low across my belly, fuller breasts that ache if the boys sleep too long, and hips that seem to have made private decisions without consulting me.
I know all the right things to say about that, but knowing isn’t the same as feeling.
“You okay?” Raleigh asks from behind me.
I meet her eyes in the mirror. She’s got one twin infant on her hip like the woman was born with a child attached to her. Her own body changed too, and she moves through the world like she’s done apologizing for it.
“Depends,” I say.
“Bad depends or normal depends.”
“Annoying depends.”
Aspen comes in carrying water and takes one look at my face. “Oh, no. We’re not doing this.”
“I’m literally just standing here.”
“You’re having thoughts. I can tell.”
Ashlynn steps in last, calm as ever, and shuts the door with her hip. “Talk.”
I sit on the edge of the bed in my bra and underwear because dignity’s overrated among women who’ve all seen each other at worse moments than this.
“I feel stupid,” I admit. “I love the dress. I love him. I love getting married. I’m not having some runaway bride crisis. I just keep looking at myself and thinking none of this used to sit here like this.”
My hand skims low over my stomach before I can stop it.
Nobody rushes to contradict me. That helps more than a fake line would. Finally Ashlynn says, “No. It didn’t.” I look up.
She leans against the dresser and folds her arms. “Because this body hadn’t done what yours has done yet.”
Silence settles around that. Aspen moves closer. “I know it’s different, but different doesn’t mean wrong. It means lived in.”
Raleigh snorts softly. “Also, for whatever it’s worth, Jackson looks at you like a man who’d ruin a perfectly good day just to get you naked. So maybe trust the witness testimony.”
I laugh so hard I have to bend forward.
Then Ashlynn crosses the room, takes my face in both hands, and says the thing that sticks.
“Your body isn’t on trial.”
That does get me, not the ugly cry, just a sting behind my eyes and a tightness in my throat because apparently the right sentence at the right time can still cut a woman clean open.
She lets go and pats my cheek. “Now put the dress on so I can tell you how right you were the first time.”
Between the four of them, the zipper goes up. The dress settles.
And when I look in the mirror again, I still see the softness. I still see the changed parts. But I also see something else that wasn’t there ten minutes ago. Me.
Not the old me. Not some ghost I’m supposed to keep chasing.
Just me, standing in a dress I chose to marry the man I already built a family with.
By the time I get home that night, the boys are asleep, Lily’s passed out across Jackson’s chest on the couch, and the television’s playing low enough that nobody’s actually watching it.
He looks up when I walk in. And then he really looks. His eyes move slowly from my shoes to my face, and stay there like he forgot every other language but awe.
Instead it makes me nervous again. I set the garment bag by the chair. “You can stop looking at me like that.”
“No.”
He carries Lily upstairs and comes back down ten minutes later with the kind of focus on his face that usually means somebody’s about to get interrogated or kissed senseless.
“The boys are still down,” he says.
“Okay.”
He comes closer. “Show me.” My stomach flips.
“Jackson.”
“Brooklyn.”
That tone does something to me every single time. Calm, low, and sure.
I exhale and reach for the zipper at the back of the garment bag. My hands feel clumsy. He watches without helping, which annoys me until I realize he’s giving me room to move at my own pace.
I pull the dress free and hold it up.
His expression doesn’t change, and still that same rough awe. “It’s beautiful,” he says.
“It needs a slight adjustment at the ribs.”
“That dress is beautiful,” he says again, stepping closer, “but I wasn’t talking about the dress.”
There it is, that heat, sincerity, and the maddening way he says things like they’re so true it doesn’t occur to him anybody might argue.
I laugh softly and look down. “You’re biased.”
“Very.”
He reaches out, hooks one finger under my chin, and lifts my face back to his. “Try it on.”
“You just want me half naked in the living room.”
“Most definitely.”
I consider arguing, pointing out that it’s bad luck to see the dress before the wedding.
When I come back out of the bathroom, I’ve got the dress zipped as far as I can manage alone and my hair loose over one shoulder. The room’s quiet. The whole house feels suspended between breathing and sleep. Jackson goes still.
I stop three feet away and try to make a joke because that’s easier than standing inside whatever look is on his face. Nothing comes out.
He crosses the distance slowly, puts his hands on my waist, and turns me toward the hallway mirror before coming up behind me. I brace automatically.
His gaze never leaves our reflection. “You see softness,” he says quietly. “I see the body that gave me Lily and then gave me my boys.”
His mouth brushes my shoulder. “You see changed. I see mine.”
That one takes the air with it. He unzips me slow, drags the dress down inch by inch, and kisses each new strip of skin like he’s grateful for it. Then he sinks to his knees in front of me and presses his mouth just under my navel. I shake.
Not because I’m afraid. Because nobody’s ever looked at the parts I was struggling with like they were a privilege.
His hands spread over my thighs. He kisses the soft curve of my lower belly, the faded lines crossing my skin, the place where everything stretched and changed and held.
“You’re killing me,” I breathe.
“Good.”
His grin flashes quick against my skin before he goes back to worship like he means it.
He undresses me the rest of the way and stands, stripping his own clothes off in quick, brutal motions while I’m still trying to recover from the fact that he just kissed every part of me I’d spent all day trying not to judge. Then he’s back. Mouth on mine. Hands everywhere.
He carries me to the couch because apparently neither of us has the patience for stairs, lays me down against the cushions, and kisses me till I’m so hot and restless I can’t hold still.
His mouth trails down again, more deliberate this time. He takes my breasts in his hands and groans. I’m still nursing enough that my body answers fast, sensitive in ways that make me gasp, but he handles it like he understands every inch of me and intends to use that knowledge well. He does.
By the time he drags his tongue lower, kisses the inside of my thigh, and looks up at me from between my legs with those pale eyes gone dark, I’m already wrecked.
“You still think I’m biased,” he asks.
I laugh breathlessly. “You’re awful.”
“You love me.”
“I do.”
“Then let me prove it.”
And God, he does. His mouth on me is never detached. He pays attention like it matters to him where I break and how. He holds my thighs open, talks to me under his breath, tells me how beautiful I look, and every word lands because every word matches the way he touches me.
When I come, it’s hard enough to make my whole body jerk.
He kisses his way back up after, mouths slow over my stomach again, then over my breasts, my throat, my jaw, until he’s over me and I can feel exactly how turned on he is.
I reach between us, stroke him once, and his head drops to my shoulder with a rough curse.
“That’s right,” I whisper, because if he gets to ruin me, I get a turn too.
His laugh shakes. “Mean.”
“We’ll both live.”
We’ve used this couch enough for him to know the angle. He hooks one of my legs high, lines up, and pushes in slow enough to make me feel every inch. I hold on to his shoulders and let the stretch take me all over again. He goes quiet the way he always does when the emotion underneath the sex climbs too close to the surface to ignore.
That quiet gets me every time. “Look at me,” I whisper.
He does. And there it is. Love so bare it could cut. Then I pull him down and kiss him till he moves.
What follows isn’t gentle exactly, but it isn’t rushed either. It’s hungry in that married way, intimate because he knows me too well to ever make me feel hidden, filthy in flashes because I say his name against his mouth and he answers with praise that turns dirty before it turns sweet again. He keeps one hand spread over my stomach half the time like he can’t stop touching the place that carried our babies. Every time he does, heat shoots through me harder.
By the time we finish, I’m shaking all over, his face buried in my neck, both of us trying not to laugh at the fact that the monitor on the coffee table stayed silent through all of it like the universe finally decided to mind its business.
He rolls us enough to get me comfortable and brushes damp hair off my forehead.
“You still wanna fight the mirror,” he murmurs.
I lie there for a second, feeling my pulse settle, feeling his weight, feeling the ache between my thighs and the warmth over every place he kissed like proof.
Then I turn my head and glance toward the dark window where our reflection barely shows.
“No,” I say honestly. “Not tonight.”
He settles deeper into me with a satisfied breath, and for once I let myself stay there without trying to earn the feeling.
The wedding’s still coming. The babies will still wake. Tomorrow I’ll still have bottles to wash, a seamstress to call, and a daughter who wants breakfast in the shape of flowers, just because it’s Tuesday.
But tonight I don’t feel split between the woman I was and the woman I am now.
Tonight I just feel wanted. And for once, I let that be enough. April’s already crowding the calendar, birthdays first, and the wedding countdown tightening right behind them.