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These days her mornings start like this:
She opens her eyes and the sun is peeking in through the curtains of their bedroom.
Their bedroom. She would have expected it to take time for her to be comfortable thinking of it like that–as their bedroom–but it hadn’t. Loid had taken her hand one night after their shared confessions and asked her if she’d like to spend the night in his room. She had. And then the next thing she’d known was the comfort of his arms around her, holding her flush to his chest. How the pillows in his room smelled of black orchard, musk, and tobacco. How easy it was to forget everything when she was alone with him. She learned how much easier it was to fall asleep in his arms, how safe and secure she felt knowing that he’d be there when she woke up.
And by that first morning, Loid’s room had become their room.
She breathes in the cold morning air. Based on the calendar hanging on the wall, it is spring but the winter had been a harsh one and the remnants of it linger in the mornings. She feels it on her lips and the arm that has snuck out of the blankets in the night. The rest of her is warm. From her shoulders to the tips of her feet. Warmed further by the body pressed against her back.
It is rare for her to wake up before Loid.
She often thinks that her husband sleeps like he’s expecting war at any moment–one foot in the land of the living and the other in the land of dreams. He sleeps like a soldier. If he had a gun he would sleep with it under his pillow or at the bedside table, just in case. Yor doesn’t sleep like this. She sleeps and she sleeps deep, but she understands. Loid is a worrier. He tries to hide it but she can see how his mind runs and runs, how he obsesses over the smallest of details. She worries too. But her worries are the quiet sort, the kind you push back into the dark, cold parts of your mind because if you allow them sun they’ll take root and never let you go.
She is usually woken to the sight of her husband, wide awake, looking down at her with a smile on his face. And that’s good too. That’s beautiful. But times like this feel different . When she manages to wake before him it feels like she’s won some sort of prize, like she’s managed to steal away some small piece of heaven that she gets to keep.
Since knowing him, her life has been filled with so many blessings. A home, a family, a love that seems immeasurable. A love unearned. Beautiful things that she never thought a sinner like her, baptized in blood and violence, would ever be afforded. Her life is filled with small moments of joy, enough to fill her heart till she swears it might just burst.
She turns herself in his arms until she can see him.
Moments like this.
Watching Loid before he wakes. His face unguarded, unburdened by the weight of his responsibilities. When he is awake her husband is all sharp angles, perfect smiles, and keen eyes. She loves him like that. But when he’s asleep his herculean beauty–like sculpted marble–softens to a boyish charm that gives her a glimpse of the small, happy child she imagines he was once upon a time. It strikes her and renders her speechless.
He’s always beautiful, but like this he’s perfect.
Truly he is.
And she’d tell him so if she wasn’t such a coward.
But things like that take time. This is all still so new.
She will tell him. Eventually.
In truth, she is much more careful these days. She has been a creature of instinct and habit nearly her whole life but these days she finds herself thinking and thinking again before making any moves. She considers the best course of action. She wants to keep this. This family, this life, this new special thing. She wants to keep Loid. She has been a predator her entire life and she recognizes how easy something this soft and fleshy would be to kill, how easily her claws could sink in. She doesn’t want that.
She doesn’t want to scare him away.
And she is self-aware enough to understand that she doesn’t have the slightest idea how to keep from doing that.
So she proceeds with caution. She stalks from behind the tall grass.
She does not pounce, no matter how badly she wants to.
And in watching, in waiting, she is rewarded.
She has been rewarded. She worried and fretted over her feelings. Over recognizing them, knowing them, having to live with them. She nearly drove herself sick wondering how–or, god, if –she would tell him that she loved him.
But, in the end, they came together like magnets.
By design, and with little regard for anything else.
Good things, she is learning, come to those who wait.
She’s watching the sun rise on his skin when he finally opens his eyes.
Ocean blue. Cerulean.
The color of the hottest flames.
He looks at her and she feels herself slot into place. She wonders how she’d ever managed to survive without this man looking at her like he does. “Good morning.” His voice is raspy, deep, and lovely. Just as warm as the morning sunlight. “Why are you up so early?”
She shrugs.
“Morning,” she says.
He pulls away and smiles. “You know,” he says, “this is my favorite time of day.”
“Is it?”
He falls back onto the bed and pulls her closer. “Yes.”
She can hear his heartbeat. It’s a rhythmic thud against her ear, a song that had been playing long before she knew him. If she had it her way, all the music in the world would be replaced with that sound.His heart would beat forever.
She feels warm in his embrace, soft in a way that she rarely allows herself, and so she shares her secret with him. “It’s my favorite time of day too.”
It’s a truth.
Not the truth, not the creature lurking in the grass, but this one is easier to say here in the morning light.
She listens to him breathing. “Why is it your favorite?” she asks.
He presses a kiss into her hair.
“I love waking up to you.” It’s the truth. She can hear it in the steadfast, honest rhythm of his heart. Lub dub. “No day can be bad when it starts like this.” He kisses her again, long and deep. He’s breathless when he says, “Waking up next to you makes everything that came before worth it.”
She agrees.
With her heart and her soul–she agrees.
In all the life that they share, it’s the morning that she looks forward to the most.
When his eyes are closed, his breathing is slow and she can just watch him exist in the quiet of their room. The way morning sunshine hits his skin and bathes him in gold. That’s when everything seems like it might just work out.
She strokes his cheek with the flat of her thumb. “You make everything worth it.” He has tiny, minuscule little freckles. Invisible to the eye unless you look up close. She’s looking up close. She’s closer than she ever thought possible. She has crossed what had once seemed like an impasse, and immeasurable distance, between them and found acceptance. She had nothing before and now she’s counted each of his freckles tens of times over. “The past, the present, and the future.” She says, “Whatever happens… It was worth it for this.”
And there is nothing he can say to that other than, “I love you.”
She kisses him. The chill is gone from the room and her lips are no longer cold.
Spring has come.
“I love you, too.”
They have to get up soon. Anya will be up soon and they have to get themselves ready before that. They can’t stay here forever, no matter how warm it is.
The world is calling.
Yor moves to stand but Loid tightens his hold on her.
“Stay,” he says. “Just a little longer.”
And so she does.