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Tim Bradford is a morning person.
Most days, he gets up when the sun is still rising, soft pinks and oranges filling the sky. He gets his run in as the dawn is breaking over the beaches—sometimes with Kojo, sometimes with just his favorite playlist and his thoughts to keep him company. (His thoughts are much better company now than they ever were before—mainly because they’re now thoughts of the woman waiting for him back in their bed.) On those days, he’s showered and caffeinated before the dew has evaporated off the grass (and long before he hears her beautiful voice softly singing show tunes in the bathroom).
Some days, though, he stays in bed and watches the early morning light filter through the windows, making everything look more beautiful in its soft glow.
Everything, that is, except the woman sleeping next to him.
Lucy doesn’t need sunlight to look more beautiful. Hell, Tim is pretty sure she makes her own sunlight.
Her hair forms a curtain of dark waves around her as she sleeps deeply on her back, taking up more space in their bed than he would have thought her small frame was capable of in the dangerous moments when he would let himself imagine a scene like this long before he first knew what the curves of her body felt like under his hands and what she sounded like when she came apart in his arms.
Sometimes he wonders if this is weird or creepy—laying here, watching her sleep. But he doesn’t want to wake her up. She looks too peaceful. And he knows how hard peaceful sleep still is for her.
(He knows the feeling of her body jerking awake in the middle of the night, the sound of her gasping for air as she fights to emerge from the remnants of a nightmare, the taste of her tears as he kisses them from her cheeks.)
So when he watches her lips quirk into a small smile in her sleep, he treasures it. When he watches her bring a hand up to her face or poke a leg out from under the sheets, he appreciates each movement. And when he watches her chest slowly rise and fall under her black tank top, he cherishes it like the gift it is.
Because he almost lost all of it.
He knows what it was like to feel her cold lips against his as he desperately tried to breathe life into her, silently bargaining with whatever higher power was listening—willing to give them whatever other sacrifice they demanded as long as those lips smirked at him again.
He knows what it was like to feel her body limp and lifeless under his hands, hating himself for the times he used to wish she could stop fidgeting and just be still.
He knows what it was like to watch her chest and see no movement, realizing in that moment that nothing would ever matter more to him than the sound of her breath if he ever got to hear it again.
So when he hears her soft breathing in the quiet of their bedroom, something inside of him breaks open—as warm and hopeful and happy as the sunrise creeping through the curtains.
And when she slowly blinks her eyes open, smiling up at him, he treats it like it’s something precious—because he can still hear the sobs that wracked her body when she woke up on that dry, rocky ground.
He kisses her gently, wanting to taste the sunshine of her smile, and his fingers travel under her shirt to brush against the numbers imprinted on her skin.
He thinks back to a moment in the ambulance that she probably doesn’t remember, right before the sedative they gave her because she wouldn’t stop shaking started to work. She was gripping his hand, and his eyes caught their first glimpse of the new tattoo on her side. He thinks back to the bile in the back of his throat at the sight of DOD—the realization of how close he really came to losing her. But then he thinks back to the pride and relief and love he felt when her eyes followed his and she sleepily sighed, “Looks like he was wrong.”
It was the first day of the rest of her life.
It was the first day of the rest of his life too.
“You okay?” she asks him softly, covering his hand on her side with her own.
“Just thinking,” he replies, leaning down again to press his lips to her forehead.
“It’s too early for thinking,” she whines, turning to bury her head in the pillow.
“You’re right,” he says with a sigh as his lips begin charting a course down her jaw...over her neck...across her collarbone.
He was done thinking about how lucky he is to have her, to hold her, to love her.
It was time to show her.