Page 141 of Marry Me Not
I didn’t mind. It gave me an excuse to watch her move around the kitchen. And watching my wife had quickly become one of my favorite pastimes.
She tasted sauces straight from the spoon. She hummed under her breath whenever she forgot I was there. She left cabinet doors ajar and put utensils back wherever the hell she felt like it.
And she always tied her hair up before she began cooking, although tonight loose curls had escaped and framed her face. I loved her hair. Loved twisting it around my fist. Loved finding strands of it clinging to my suits during meetings. Loved waking every morning to see it spread across my pillow as proof that she was still there.
She’d long since moved into my bedroom, scattering traces of herself there and everywhere else in the house.
It wasn’t until the day she apologized for leaving glaze samples across the dining table that I realized I didn’t mind any of it. Me, a man who had once prized order, precision, and austerity. That was when I understood how much I’d changed since she came into my life—and how much more I liked this version of myself.
I wasn’t lonely.
“It’s almost ready,” she said, stirring the pot of braised beef she’d been working on.
“I’ll get the bowls.” I touched the small of her back as I passed. That constant need to touch her still caught me off guard sometimes. If she was within reach, my hand found her, as though some part of me needed continuous confirmation that she was mine and exactly where she belonged.
People had noticed. My brothers, her friends, even Rafaele. The last time I saw him, he’d asked whether we were already trying for children.
Apparently, we were giving off that impression.
The thought of a little girl with Nettle’s curls and my temper running through this house did something violent to my chest.
But I also wanted her to myself for a while longer.
Selfish? Absolutely.
I’d spent months fighting what I felt for her and had only just stopped being an idiot. I wasn’t ready to share her attention yet, even with someone who would have her eyes and my surname.
I opened the cupboard and took out two beige bowls painted with small black birds along the bottom. Like most of Nettle’s work, they were intentionally imperfect. One bird was slightly larger than the other, and the rim of my bowl dipped on one side.
“Your latest creations,” I said, setting them to the right of the stove, “might be my favorite.”
Fabiana shot me a warm look. “You say that every time.”
“Because you keep getting better.”
The plain black dishes I’d owned before she moved in had disappeared weeks ago. I’d told her to replace all of them with pieces she made herself. She’d stared at me as if I’d casually told her to burn down the house. Then, she told me it would take months.
I’d said, I didn’t care.
She’d asked me if I was sure. Not everything would match. Some of it might not even be practical.
She still hadn’t understood. Even after everything, she still expected me to only tolerate her in careful doses.
I wanted all of her. Every piece she’d give me and more. And I wanted to give her the world, but the one thing I would never give her was permission to make herself smaller for me or anyone else. If it took the rest of my life to break that instinct in her, then that was how long I’d spend doing it.
So I’d told her I knew exactly what I wanted and that she could stop trying to negotiate me out of it.
A few weeks later, she finally began to relax into the house. Into us.
And somewhere along the way, pottery became more than a hobby. I’d noticed it before she had, because I noticed everything about her. She came home from the studio energized, even when she was exhausted.
She loved making things.
When she’d mentioned offhand that she was considering opening a ceramics shop one day, I secured a space for her in SoHo the following week. It was in a building we owned and it had been sitting empty, but I knew it would be perfect for her.
“It was only an idea,” she’d said when I handed her the keys, her expression slightly panicked.
“Now it can be real. Go get it, Nettle. No excuses.”
