“What?” he asked with this slow grin forming. He sat on the edge of the bed and took my hand in his, bringing my knuckles to his mouth to give me light kisses.
“Nothing,” I whispered. “I just love you so much.”
He groaned softly and tunneled a hand in what was no doubt my rat’s nest of unwashed hair, pulled me in close, and kissed me until I was lost in all the sensations that Braxton conjured in me.
“Not nearly as much as I love you,” he murmured against my lips. “Never as much as I love you.” He pulled back, and for long seconds, he did nothing but stare at me. “You take my breath away, even more so after all these years.”
“I love you,” I whispered again.
“I love you too, baby.”
Over the last several years, we built our life together in the most wonderfully imaginable way. I still played piano occasionally at the church, but I also got an advanced degree in music and opened a small school to teach others how to play.
Braxton was still a firefighter and the hardest working person I’d ever met. He was a simple man in the things he desired out of life. And that was taking care of me and the children, being a good husband and father, and loving us unconditionally. All his words. And all the things he excelled at.
He was mine, and I was irrevocably his. I loved this man and the family we were creating, and there was really nothing else that made a person whole.
The End