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It happens on a Saturday in the middle of the day. All of the kids are out of the house doing one activity or another so Beth’s taken the time to do some baking. While she flitters around the kitchen, Rio’s perched on one of the stools at the island counter with a newspaper in hand. They’d fallen into a routine like this some time ago.
For a long while it was just sex but then here and there, instead of rushing off, they would just be with each other for a bit until eventually, they were hanging out more than they were having sex. Enough now that all of her kids are used to him just being at the house sometimes. There were a lot of questions at first but now they almost expect him to be there. They’re used to him, to the situation. Beth is too. For the most part. Some things catch her off guard but she likes it all, likes the feeling that she’s getting to know him better, that she’s seeing a side of him that was completely off-limits before.
And he’s gotten to know her too because, as she’s coming to the conclusion that she doesn’t have enough sugar to make enough cinnamon cookies, he clocks it. She’s chewing on her bottom lip, trying to think up the most convenient plan of action when he says, without looking up from his paper, “what you panicking about?”
“I’m not panicking,” she says but it doesn’t help that her voice cracks a little. “I just don’t have enough sugar.”
“Why don’t you ask a neighbour?”
“The only ones who will be home at this time will talk my ear off for the next hour.” Beth huffs. “Besides, they’ve seen you come and go from here more than once.”
This time Rio looks up from his paper. He raises a brow at her. “So?”
“So, I’m technically still married.” Not to mention none of them has any real idea what Dean did and Beth’s pretty sure she’s looking like that bad guy and the reason her marriage is dissolving into divorce.
Suddenly, he grins. “A’ight, so you the gossip of the street then, eh?”
She huffs out a frustrated breath. “You don’t have to look so amused.”
He goes back to his paper as he shrugs. “Could always give them something more to talk about.”
And she knows where he’s going with this but she doesn’t have the time and just- “Why? Are you going to go and ask them for more sugar?”
At that, he pulls a face of disgust. “Nah.”
“Well, I’m going to have to go get some otherwise there won’t be enough for everyone.”
Rio doesn’t lift his head but she can see his eyes scanning over the contents of her baking, spread out over the island counter. “And who’s everyone?”
“Well, me and my kids but I also like to have a little extra in case Annie and Ruby want to take some,” she explains. “And then there’s you and Marcus.”
“I’m sure your girls can feed themselves,” he says but then pulls another face. “Well, don’t know about Annie.”
“Yeah,” Beth agrees. “If Annie bakes something… Run.”
He chuckles. “And me and Marcus don’t need none.”
“You’re telling me that you’re going to sit here while I bake and not want any?”
Rio chews on his lip as he refuses to look at her. “A’ight, so I might take one.”
“If you have one, you’ll have more,” she tells him because she knows. It’s why she started baking extra in the first place. “And Marcus can’t miss out.”
“He ain’t even here,” Rio points out. “It ain’t like he’s gonna know.”
“I’ll know.”
Putting the paper down, he sighs. “So, go get some sugar when you pick the kids up.”
“I wanted the cookies to be done before then,” she admits.
“I could go get it.”
Beth blinks. It’s not a totally absurd gesture, just a little unexpected. He’d done things like this before but it was usually when he was on the way to hers. It didn’t seem like much that he would take a slight detour to pick up some milk or something else she’d forgotten in her weekly shop. Actually leaving her house to get something and then coming all the way back is completely different though.
“No, no,” she decides as she swipes up his cup to put in a fresh tea bag and fill it up with hot water. “You stay here and I’ll just pop out now to get some.”
He looks at the cup as she places it back down on the counter in front of him and then he looks at her with a smile. “You know you ain’t gotta make sure everyone gets some every time you bake.”
Beth hums a little but she’s not really listening because that’s just absurd. Instead, she concentrates on grabbing her coat and bag from where she’d placed them over the back of the couch in the TV room earlier and puts them on. She’s checking for her phone and keys as she goes back into the kitchen. Ruby would probably be her best bet considering she doesn’t need that much sugar and it would be better than buying loads when she knows she’s not going to have time over the next few weeks to bake much of anything.
“There’s plenty of food in the fridge if you’re still hungry so help yourself,” she tells Rio as she quickly covers up any opened ingredients as well as the mixing bowl that’s got some already mixed together. “But do not touch anything on this counter.”
Rio looks amused as he licks his lips. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“You better not,” she says, a little flustered as she goes over the recipe in her head to try and figure out if there’s anything else she should be picking up while she’s out.
And she’s not entirely sure why she feels so flustered. Maybe it’s the fact that Rio had brought up the night before that the two of them should do more stuff together or that he should bring Marcus to spend the night some time. It all felt so real, too real, and so she threw herself into baking and now she can’t even do that.
By the time she’s done and ready to go, she’s in so much of a rush and it all happens so fast. One second she’s snatching up her purse, the next she’s leaning in and pressing a kiss to Rio’s cheek. “Okay, right, I love you and I shouldn’t be too long.”
It’s only once she’s outside and hurrying down towards her car that it hits her. She stops dead in her tracks, tensing up. So maybe she could stretch it out a little bit, take her time getting some sugar.
Beth does just that. Ruby had an unopened bag in the back of her cupboard but Rio didn’t have to know that. She even swiped a bag of unopened white chocolate chips and some vanilla extract, two things she knew she had already but the more she brought back, the better. Despite protests, she gave Ruby some money to replace it all and reluctantly left.
After that, she just… Drove around. She knows it’s stupid, avoiding him like that. He might not have even heard her or perhaps it didn’t register but deep down she knows that’s just wishful thinking. She would have just stayed at Ruby’s for a bit but she didn’t want to hold her up from her plans for the day and honestly, Beth didn’t want to explain why she was hiding out in the first place.
Eventually, she goes back home. She hasn’t been gone a worrying amount of time. Enough that she might have needed to go to the shops after Ruby’s to pick up some of the things she’s brought back. Rio’s car is still there when she arrives which is a good sign but Beth can’t help but feel nervous. Her stomach twisting up as she parks her car and climbs out. Hugging the ingredients to her chest, she walks up to the door and lets out a breath.
“Was gonna send out a search party,” Rio says as she steps inside.
She manages to drop her bag onto the bench beside the door and dumps the ingredients onto the island counter. “I wasn’t gone that long.”
He just hums and Beth’s eyes finally go to him. There’s a fresh cup of coffee sitting in front of him and he’s scrolling through his phone, tapping every now and then. She starts to feel a little hopeful, let’s herself relax as she turns away from him and takes her coat off, laying it carefully over the bench.
“So, what took you so long?”
Beth jumps as Rio slides up behind her, wrapping his arms around her middle. She hadn’t even heard him get up. He melds himself against her back, chin on her shoulder but she keeps on looking right ahead, knowing the second he sees her face, he’ll know she’s lying.
“Struggled to get everything I needed.”
“Right, right,” he says, dragging each word out. “Ain’t ‘cause of what you said before?”
She can’t quite catch herself before her body stiffens. He doesn’t let go, just lifts his head so he can kiss her shoulder instead, arm momentarily tightening around her. By the time he kisses her neck, she’s managed to relax.
“It just kind of slipped out,” she admits and he makes a noise like he figured as much. “And I wasn’t going to bring it up again because it just kind of happened and I don’t want you to think you have to say it back.”
“Okay.”
She twists around to look at him. “Okay?”
“I can’t say it back,” he tells her.
Beth smiles, something genuine and big because she gets it. She does. And if she’s being honest, it’s a relief. They might be hanging out more than they were having sex or doing work and they might be talking about going places together just for fun or about Marcus staying over when Rio was round but it’s still new. And okay, she’s not entirely sure she didn’t mean it. A part of her must have meant it to let it slip out like that but she never would have thought to say she loved him this early on. So, she can’t really expect it of him.
“This means you can’t tease me about it though,” she says, jabbing her finger against his chest. “Or use it against me when you want something.”
He grins. “I don’t know about that. Gotta use what I can to up my chances of swiping a cinnamon cookie while you’re baking.”
Beth rolls her eyes. “Unbelievable.”
Instead of saying anything, he just kisses her.
It happens a few months later. They’re in her bed, both naked and wrapped up in the sheets. Rio’s sitting with his back against the headboard, has Elizabeth pulled back against his chest. They’ve been talking about this and that, nothing too important, stuck in a post-sex haze, and he fills the bouts of silence with soft kisses to her neck and shoulder.
She’s giggling at something he’s said and shit, he can’t even recall what it was but it’s enough to make her a little breathless and then, she sighs happily, and says, “I love you.”
It’s the first time she’s said it since that day with the cinnamon cookies. This time it also slips out but it doesn’t seem like much of an accident. She doesn’t tense this time, at least not as much as she did back then. He can just imagine the look on her face, the blush creeping up her neck, and he’d normally tease the fuck out of her but it don’t seem right this time. He wants to know what the difference is, how deliberate it actually was. So he puts his head back against the headboard, forces his face into a neutral expression and just waits.
Waits so long that she visibly relaxes and sinks back into his chest. It’s clear she ain’t gonna say a word and it don’t feel awkward. She don’t ask him to say anything. Instead, she relaxes so much that he thinks she might even fall asleep given half the chance.
“It’s just me, right?” Elizabeth asks suddenly.
Rio kisses her shoulder. “What’d you mean?”
“That you’re…” She clears her throat. “Sleeping with? That I’m the only one who has you.”
“What makes you think you got me full stop?”
“Oh, well, if that’s how you’re going to be…” She tries to move away from him and he clocks the way she immediately looks towards her robe which lies on the floor not too far away. He huffs out an annoyed breath and drags her back, wrapping his arms together around her. He can just sense her triumphant smile. “So, am I the only one?”
“The only one,” he agrees.
She settles comfortably back against him again. “Good.”
“That all you need to know?”
She nods and so he leaves it at that. The words don’t bother him. Not one bit. They didn’t when she’d first let them slip either. He knows he’s happy to spend whatever time there is with her, in any fucking way she wants, but he can’t say it back to her. It didn’t feel right to him when she first let it slip. He said them in his head but even there they sounded forced and he knew how he felt was akin to love but the words were foreign when he applied them to her.
Now?
Not so much.
The first moment he notes the change is a couple of hours later after they’ve finally dragged themselves out of bed. They shower separately for a change. She goes first and it’s when he steps out of the en-suite, freshly dressed after his shower, that he finds her sat up in bed. It takes him a moment to realise she’s sewing up one of Marcus’ shirts, one with a t-rex on the front. It’s a favourite but Rio’s sure he’d thrown it out weeks earlier ‘cause of a hole in the back of it. He shakes his head a little knowing full well his son had probably pulled it from the trash.
It’s later, when they’re in the kitchen, that he can’t help but bring it all up. Elizabeth’s chopping vegetables at the island counter and he’s across from her, sat on one of the stools, leaning on the counter with his head propped up on his hand. Her eyes keep darting to him but he refuses to look away or say anything.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks, her voice strained in a way that tells him she’s trying to be nonchalant.
Rio doesn’t say anything at first, just gets up and goes around to the other side of the island and stands behind her, wrapping his arms around her. If it bothers her, she doesn’t say, just keeps on preparing dinner. It’s this soup she makes — refuses to say what it is exactly, a weird combination she thought up years ago apparently — but he loves it. He never normally has just soup for dinner, ‘cept when he’s sick, but when it’s this one, he wants nothing else.
“You’re making that soup,” he comments.
Elizabeth hums. “Yeah, I know how much you love it.”
“How much?” he asks, already feeling the corners of his mouth tugging up into a smile.
He don’t need to look at her to know she’s rolling her eyes. “Too much.”
Rio grins as he squeezes her tighter. “Love you more though.”
She freezes instantly, body tensing just like he knew it would. She sets the knife down on the counter and slowly turns in his arms, his grip loosening to let her. She leans back against the counter and looks up at him. He’s forced his face into a blank expression but he keeps his arms loosely wrapped around her and waits, letting the words wash over her.
“Did you just…?” Deciding to try and make light of it, to help her relax a little maybe, he gives her a confused look like he don’t know what she’s talking about. Slowly, she frowns, a blush creeping over her and he breaks out into another grin. She hits his chest, glaring at him. “That’s not funny!”
Still smiling, Rio leans in to kiss her. “Love you,” he mumbles against her lips.
When he pulls away, Elizabeth’s watching him carefully. “Why now?”
“That fucking t-rex t-shirt.”
“I'm sorry…” She gives him a questioning look. “What?”
Rio rolls her eyes and takes hold of one of her hands. “You fixing Marcus’ t-shirt for him.” He drags her over to the fridge. “‘Cause I know he dug it outta the trash and asked you to fix it.”
When he looks at her she momentarily looks away. “I was supposed to keep it a secret. So, don’t tell him.”
He smirks, can just imagine Marcus trying to hide the t-shirt, making sure the coast is clear before he quietly asks her to help. “Secret’s safe but…” He points to the fridge. “What’s that?”
“Artwork, school work…”
He points out a few specific ones. “Who’d they belong to?”
Leaning past him a little to get a better look at the fridge, Elizabeth smiles softly. It makes Rio’s stomach twist up a little, watching her eyes scan over each piece with admiration. “Oh. Marcus.”
He hums, dragging her over to her wall of family photos where he points at a few specific ones. “And what are these?”
“Photos of my kids…” Although her brow furrows like she’s still a little confused by the whole thing, there’s a blush creeping up her neck. “And Marcus.”
This time Rio drags her to a specific spot and points at the ceiling. “And what’s above us?”
“Jane and Emma’s bedroom.”
“And what’s in the corner of their room?”
“A little space to put up a camping bed for when Marcus stays over,” Elizabeth says, looking at him like he’s mad which makes sense. He’d actually helped her move the girls’ room around a little a couple of months back when Marcus started coming over more.
Still, he nods at her and keeps going. “What else is in that corner?”
“A little light, some wall stickers, and some space for his favourite toys or whatever else he wants to bring,” she says softly, still looking confused. “Rio, I don’t… I don’t understand.”
“You make space for him.”
“Well, yeah,” she says, a frown forming. “I want him to be comfortable when he stays over.”
“Nah.” Rio shakes his head at her. He’s been thinking about it non-stop for the last few hours, ever since he saw her fixing that damn t-shirt. “That’s why you make some space for him to sleep. It ain’t why you put his picture on your wall or his art on your fridge. It’s not why you keep extra clothes in the girls’ wardrobe or buy his favourite foods.”
“I-”
“You love my kid,” he says, cutting her off.
Her frown is slowly disappearing but she tilts her head to the side a little, eyes scanning over him. He doesn’t push her, waits patiently instead to see what she says next, how she’ll react. “And that makes you love me?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, it just made me realise that I started loving you a while back. Wouldn’t have let you put his photo up or pin his stuff to your fridge or make a space for him upstairs. I let him belong here.”
Elizabeth grips the front of his shirt so suddenly he ain’t got time to register it before she pulls him down to her. She leans in enough that her lips brush against his. “Say it again.”
Softly, Rio brushes his lips back against hers, his nose gently nudging hers. “I love you.”
Instead of saying anything, she just kisses him.