A week goes by before I can blink.

Both my husband and I buried neck deep in our respective work lives. I had my final draft three quarters finished and my husband was working on the project he had been speaking about to me, spending most of his time at work.

We barely had time to speak, but somehow, he made time or I did. Sometimes, I would drop by his work and share lunch with him. Or he would come home his usual time—instead of late into the night—and we would just...watch a movie. Or discuss my script that he had somehow made the time to read after I had sent it to him. Or his work. Or ...anything. Politics. Tradition. Culture. Marriage. Life. Cartoons. Anything.

We spoke until I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore.

Most of the time I fall asleep where ever we were seated and I know my husband carries me to bed and tucks me in. But I never remember it, having fallen deep into sleep. I only know of it because I wake the next morning in my bed.

I had—miraculously—made time to meet with my parents. I realised I had burrowed myself so deep into my life after marriage, that I had forgotten to tend to my roots. So, I spent the evening with them, laughing softly, teasing, enjoying their need to pamper their 'married and away' (as they referred to me) daughter with food, love and joy.

That day was the second time my husband called me. I had been in mid-laugh about my parents fighting over the stove as was their usual, when my phone dances on the table, flashing my husband's name. A little worried, I pick up immediately.

"Kri," I whisper into the phone, standing and moving a small distance away to the door as my parents bickered in the background oblivious to me.

"Alanna."

I let out a small breath, realising that he was alright. This wasn't an emergency call.

My lips twitch, because not a moment of being in his presence goes by without me feeling the need to verbal-spar with him. Make him smile and if I were really really lucky, rile him up.

"Are you missing me, husband?" I ask, "Calls aren't your thing."

"On the contrary, they're exactly my thing." He says.

I roll my eyes, "Mm hmm." I grin, "Because we chat so much over the phone."

"Why would I chat with you over the phone if I could speak with you in our home?"

His question is so genuine, as if he truly could not see the point, that my heart melts. I smile, looking down at the toe I was dancing along the ground, unknowingly. 

"What's up?" I ask him.

"When are you returning?" He asks, straight to the point.

I look back at my parents, who I realise had moved closer to me and were making a very visible effort to listen in on my conversation—having turned away and pretending to be busy when I looked over my shoulder at them. I smirk and turn back, taking another step into the corridor that lead to the main hall and leaning against the wall there.

"In less than an hour." I say.

A small silence. My brows furrow.

"Kri?" I murmur.

A rough breath against my ears, "Come back home, Alanna."

The words curl around my heart and squeeze. Liquid heat enters my veins.

"Where are you?" I ask softly, the sudden intimacy of our conversation spilling into my tone.

Silence for another few seconds before—

"Driving around town." He says.

I check the time, my brows raise. "You're early."

No response, because I hadn't asked a question. I worry my lip and turn around to peek over the door at my parents who had been whispering to one another and shoot straight as soon as they see me looking. My eyes narrow at their innocent expressions.

They give me wide smiles I don't trust.

I turn away once again and say softly into the phone. "Join us." I say.

Silence.

"Join us, Kri." I say, my stomach and heart soaring at the idea of my whole family sharing the space of four walls at the same time. I persuade him some more, when he doesn't respond.

I know he's listening, I don't know how I do, I just do.

When he finally speaks, he asks, "Will your parents want me there?"

I pout, "I want you here." I state.

A silence that I sense is filled with a little surprise on his end. I scowl.

"Kri." I say chidingly, but before I can say anything else he speaks.

"Ask them if they would like to have me in their home." He says.

My heart hurts at his words, "Kri, I'm sure—"

"Ask Alanna." He says, his voice soft but firm as steel.

I sigh, "You're awfully pigheaded. You should just listen to me."

"Yes, dear." He quips.

I will not smile.

I enter into the room and ask my parents what they thought about having their son-in-law join us. They exclaim with glee then all but push me aside to jump at the stove and begin making something that's 'son-in-law worthy' and not just 'any-old-meal'. I would scowl at them but their acceptance and love for him has me giddy.

I place the phone back in my ears.

"Happy, husband?" I ask.

"Yes, dear." He says demurely.

I'm laughing as he cuts the call.

The doorbell rings exactly six minutes later. I smile secretly, wondering just how close he was to where I was while he was 'driving around town'. Before my parents can fight over who would open the door for their son-in-law, I'm on my feet and rushing—hastening, I mean—to the door.
I throw it open.

Olive shirt unbuttoned at the collar, dark pants, a shock of black hair and icy icy eyes that burned me in the best ways. My husband stands at the door of my parents'. I smile up at him.

"Welcome." I say and step aside. He enters, his eyes bright with interest as he takes in his surroundings while I shut the door behind him. I come to stand at his side, watching him look around the house.

I wrap my fingers around his arm—through his clothes—but still it feels like a jolt to my heart. His eyes snap down to where my fingers are wrapped around his arm and they raise to meet mine. I still, not because I'm scared of what he'll say. But because of how his eyes burn.

My heart thumping in my ears I loosen my fingers and skate them lower...until I can catch his hand. I don't entwine our fingers, but curl mine around his hand so that my palm is pressed flat to his. Now, I watch his face carefully for a reaction.

I don't see a single lash flicker in his face but shadows darken the room for a moment, before our surroundings brightens once more.

Drawing in a sharp breath, I tighten my fingers around his hand and even though he doesn't tighten his finger around mine, he allows for the hold, his hand swallowing mine whole protectively. How he can encompass me without even moving a single finger or flexing a single damn muscle I don't know.

He watches me just as intensely as I suppose I looked at him. His eyes miss no detail, lose no change in my face. He looked as if everything I were was his to see. Maybe not come close enough and touch and have, but to see. To see as if it were something he had wanted all his life and it stood before him, but were not wholly his yet.

My lips part as if I'm about to say something though I don't know what, when my parents enter the room.

Both my husband and I turn to look in their direction the same time they walk towards us with wide smiles and welcoming warmth. My mother straight up walks in for a hug. She leans back, holding her son-in-law.

"Welcome." She says with all her heart and I feel it to the depth of my bones.

My father steps in next and while he doesn't hug my husband, he does place a hand on Kri's shoulder and smiles.

"Son," He says, "Thank you."

The weight of his gratitude and love shivers in the air for a single breath before my husband speaks with a small shake of his head.

"We always take care of our own," He says, "And you are my own."

My husband's words, though his eyes don't glimmer like my mother's was now and his hand doesn't shake like my father's had, reach them just as deeply as theirs had reached me.

What hurts me in the most exquisite way is that he hadn't let his hand break out of my hold the whole time. Keeping us connected.

My mother and father beam at him as they usher him in. We walk hand-in-hand..or rather his hand in mine, straight to the kitchen. This time, I join my mother at the stove as my husband and my father sit and talk shop. Kri's gaze had met mine when I had loosened my hold around his hand, but I ensured to look back at him steadily before walking over to my mother.

I spoke softly to her through her cooking, taking her help moderating the spices. Over the week I had started to understand my husband's taste palate. I had taken the chance and cooked small meals over the week and he had joined me for each of them. I saw what he enjoyed and loved to cook for his taste.

My mother throws me an impatient look when I start to micromanage just a little and I smartly leave her space and join my husband's side, taking the stool beside him.

He welcomes me with a mild shift to his shoulders that make them brush against mine before they're gone, as he listens intently to what my father says. I still almost in shock. A small gesture of being noticed from him and I was .. I was just...

Pleased by every single thing in him, I decide to risk it all. I lift one hand and drop it on his thigh, closer to his knee. But I do it tentatively, giving him the space to shift away if he were not comfortable. But he simply remains speaking to my father, as if nothing had happened. His muscles don't tense, his shoulders don't tighten and his expression doesn't change.

His gestures with one hand as he speaks to my father, but otherwise he hasn't moved an inch. I relax my hand further and rest it wholly on his leg. Then, I sit back and enjoy the evening.

When we drive back home late into the evening, it's in quiet comfort and soft looks. At least mine were soft, his were burning inquisitiveness that reminds me of what he looked like when he was in my room.

"Show me your room," he had asked me.

So I had.

And he walked around the whole room, touching everything with his eyes and reaching out with his fingers to trail over my sheets as if he couldn't help himself...or touching a finger to the knob of my closet...or how he had stood before the long mirror in my room, staring intensely into it. He had looked at everything.

Even the walls had been equally important to his gaze.

But it was the books that had his absolute and utter attention. He stilled as if he couldn't move another muscle as soon as he saw the few paperbacks that I had on the shelf.

They were old and tattered because books don't come in paper any more and these were decades old. He had lifted a hand that had hovered for almost a whole minute before they reached into the shelf to pull out the books.

He had read the backs of each of them, traced a fingers over each curve and bend of the books and replaced them exactly as they had been. When he turned to look at me, I felt ...
I felt as if I had watched something very private between a man and his emotions.

Something I wasn't sure I was meant to see.

But I had seen it anyway.

And something had clicked inside me.
Uncurled from a knot I hadn't aware had been created inside me. I stood there before him with all my defences lowered and my heart in my eyes.
And I believe, he stood before me the same way.

A strange vulnerability to his gaze as he had stared back at me.

I turn now to look at him as he drives us back home and I see that he wore his usual mask of control.

"Did you have fun?" I ask.

A smile spreads his lips, "I did." He says.

I grin, then scowl, "I think my parents like you more than they like me."

His smile turns smug as if I couldn't have said a thing better that I just had and my smile returns because I don't think it's possible to see such child-like pleasure in such a grown man.

Love spills further into me and I didn't think it were possible to love him more.

It stays with me the whole time. The whole time he opens the car door then the door to our home...

I stop walking the path, when a need fits into me so perfectly that I can no longer see through it. My husband—who had taken a few steps without me—turns to look at me.

"I've dreamt of you." I tell him.

His expression doesn't change, except for a minuscule tilt of his head.

I simmer in his gaze, the glory of having revealed my biggest truth, my greatest influence, a rush in my veins.

As if I had just jumped a cliff.

"For years." I say.

Now that I've started I find I cannot stop. And suddenly it's the easiest thing I can say.

Of course it is. With this man, with whom I can say anything, have said anything and with whom even silence is easy conversation and even conversation is as comfortable as our silence...of course it's easy. And the words come out perfectly articulate.

As if all my life was built to this very moment that I form the words that perfectly explain what I've tried all my life, to explain through my books and my words, and to find around me.

"I believe I've seen into our past lives." I'm saying, "I don't see everything. But I think I see what I need to see. And I've seen enough to know you anywhere. No matter what eyes, or skin, or name you wear."

"I've seen us for centuries, in love. And every time I see something, I wonder...how the next memory can be greater, better, more exquisite than this...but it is. Each and every one is more exquisite than the previous. And I keep wondering why and I keep thinking how it's possible."

I drag in a deep breath.

"And I walked down that aisle that day and understood why each memory is better than the last and it's because of one single damn thing. And that's you." I confess, my throat closing, my voice breaking, but I can't stop, "Because the single most fantastic thing in my life stood before me and threw my life that was falling apart around me into the most beautiful light and brought me back to my senses and at the same time sent me into a trance—"

I only stop talking when I see him move. Through my whole monologue, I had seen his eyes spiral into swirls and his jaw clench and his eyes glow so bright I almost couldn't look into them. But suddenly, he moves. Long legged strides eating up the distance between us.

Before I can breathe, he has my face cupped between his palms and his lips on mine. He tilts his head aligning our lips as I gasp into his mouth. My hands fly to his arms as my eyes sting even as my husband catches each tear that begins to fall the moment they do, as if even with his eyes closed and his lips on mine, he knew every thing happening with me.

My sob catches in my throat as my lips move under my husband's. One hand drops to my lower back to draw me closer as he draws my lower lip into his mouth. My heart rate spikes and my lashes flutter. My fingers spasm when his teeth drop over my lip in a sharp bite.

That's all it takes for me to explode.

Then, our sensual kiss turns into a voracious one.

We're all teeth and bite and hands pulling at one another's hair and angry angry love. He took and I gave and when he gave I grabbed. He caught every single sound I made and I shivered at the possessive grasp of his hand along my jaw when he tilts my head up to suit his want. Our open mouth kisses and the rough stubble of his skin were almost unbearably pleasurable. I clench my fingers in his soft hair and tug. He bites in response. And my heart stutters and I shiver in his hold.

I sink my teeth into his lip and for the first time a sound leaves his lips. It rumbles from his chest into mine and nothing stops me from wanting to press impossibly closer to him.

Unable to breathe, even if the interruption felt as if it would kill me, I pull away.

My breath dances over his face as I look up at him.

My heart crashes and soars and tries its best to rip its way out of my chest and to him.

Slowly, I see the swirls in my husband's eyes slow to a stop and his arm around me loosens and he takes a single step away. I sway mildly, drawing in air, my gaze rapt on his face.

Emotions flickered in his eyes even as his face remains wiped clean of emotion. His own gaze dances over my face, taking in my swollen lips, dishevelled hair and the stubble burn I knew was there.

With each proof of our kiss he sees, he takes a step back.

I stand right where I am, because I know I needed to.

He needed the distance as much as I needed his presence.

He walks away still facing me, turning at the very last minute to push through the revolving panel and disappearing behind it.

I stand there for a few minutes, trying to catch my breath and rein in my hormones.

"That was rude."

I blink and stare up at the house.

"It's been a quarter of an hour since you entered. No one even said hi to me."

I roll my eyes.