Page 22

OUR VERY FIRST NIGHT

Dean

I sit on the edge of the couch with my head in my hands, rubbing my fingertips into my temples as the wax and wane of little girl shrieks pierce my eardrums. Lemmie and Mellie run around the ground floor of the house, chasing each other while competing with Ollie in her pack and play to see who can scream the loudest.

Spoiler alert: All three of them are winning.

“Alright, alright, you win. The churros were a terrible idea,” I groan, dropping my head between my knees. After dinner, Luke and I thought it would be nice to treat the kids to an ice cream cone as the cherry on top of our celebration.

It was nice, until I spotted a street vendor selling fried confections on the walk home and decided that foot-long churros should be the cherry on top of the cherry on top. I have incidentally created two and a half sugar monsters that, at this rate, may never sleep again.

“What? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the cinnamon sugar dusted shrills,” Luke says as he plops down on the couch next to me and nudges my shoulder.

“I said you were right and I was wrong.” I drop my face into Luke’s shoulder, squeezing my eyes shut and willing the headache blooming behind my eyes to go away.

We both changed out of our suits hours ago, and the worn, threadbare Redwoods t-shirt on Luke’s body feels cool and soft against my aching forehead.

“Twelve hours into this fake marriage and I already have you wrapped around my finger,” he says as he slides his arm around my shoulder and pulls me closer.

O h, honey, you have no idea.

Something shifted for me this morning. I can’t quite pinpoint the exact moment—whether it was the vows or the kiss, giving Lemmie and Mellie their bracelets or the look of my ring on Luke’s finger.

All I know is that there is nothing fake about the way I’ve been talking myself out of kissing Luke all day long.

When I slid the ring on his finger, when I watched him clean applesauce off Ollie's face with a baby wipe, when Lemmie tripped on the sidewalk and scraped her knee and he sprinkled imaginary fairy healing dust on her head to make her stop crying.

Each one of those little moments made me think that all of this could be real.

Less than a day into this fake marriage and I’m already in too deep, willing to throw out the rulebook just for a chance to taste my husband’s lips again.

That just won’t do. We need to focus, we need to secure our kids and solidify our family in the eyes of the court. Until then, there can be no hanky-panky thoughts or actions.

Even if the floral, freshly laundered scent of Luke’s t-shirt has me aching to nuzzle in closer to his neck and inhale, just to see if his skin smells just as sweet.

“How do we make them stop?” I grumble, and I feel Luke’s shoulder rise and fall with his chuckle.

“Hey chickadees, first one to the couch gets to pick the movie we watch!” he calls out, and the girls come running.

I feel them hop onto the couch and start bouncing on the cushions beside us.

I don’t feel like moving my head from its place on his shoulder, but in my mind, I marvel at Luke for his intuitive skills.

He tapped into Lem and Mel’s competitive side and ensured they’d race to the couch knowing that it didn’t matter which one of them “won”. We’ll be watching Encanto either way.

God, I could kiss him for his brilliance.

“What was that?” Luke asks.

Shit, did I say that out loud?

“Nothing,” I grumble, peeling myself away from Luke and settling back into the couch. “Fire up the TV, let’s see if Tío Bruno can lull these monsters to sleep.”

Two hours later, my headache is gone, the family Madrigal’s magic has been restored, and all three kids are finally sound asleep.

Luke put Ollie in her crib about halfway through the movie, and the twins fell asleep in a cuddle pile on the couch shortly after.

With the precision of a bomb squad leader defusing something nuclear, Luke lifts the sleeping girls off the couch and I follow him upstairs, watching from the doorway as he settles them into bed.

A thought passes briefly through my mind—how easily this could have been me in another life, tucking my kid into bed, but I shove it down. I don’t want to think about the past and the life I might have had.

I want to think about Ollie and Lemmie and Mellie and Luke, and the life we’re building together.

He tucks a blanket over the girls, who are curled into each other’s sides like they are the other’s lifeline, and softly brushes strands of hair out of their faces before pressing kisses to their foreheads.

Warmth settles in my belly like hot chocolate on a winter night at the sight.

I press a hand to my sternum, rubbing at my aching chest as I watch Luke fiddle with the nightlight until it’s on the perfect setting, emitting the soft pink glow and brown noise that Lemmie and Mellie love best.

The man across the room from me is a far cry away from the scared, grieving, heartbroken mess who lost his head over a broken picture after Gigi’s funeral.

Sure, he’s still scared, grieving, and heartbroken—so am I—but he’s come so far in the faith he has in himself to provide a good life for his girls.

He’s grown into his role as Lemmie, Mellie and Ollie’s caregiver.

None of us will ever stop grieving Gigi and the life she lost too soon, but I know that wherever she is, she’s watching with love and pride as Luke takes care of her girls for her .

Luke tiptoes towards the door, a finger pressed to his lips when he notices me standing there.

I walk backwards from the doorway and Luke follows, pulling the door until it’s only open a crack behind him.

He gestures down the hall towards his bedroom and I follow, happy and nervous to finally have a moment alone with my husband.

My. Husband.

Shit, we did it. We really freaking did it.

Luke and I are married. We’re married, and we kissed.

It was the best kiss of my life.

And I don’t think it will happen again anytime soon.

I follow Luke into his room and he shuts the door before sitting on the edge of his bed. I stride over to the dresser and lean against it, crossing my arms over my chest.

“What a fucking day, huh?” he asks, and I snort.

“Yeah. What a fucking day.”

I watch as Luke stares down at the ring I gave him on his finger, twisting it around and around.

“You’re going to wear your skin away if you keep messing with that thing,” I say.

Luke looks up at me, and my stomach drops when I see the tears brimming his beautiful brown eyes.

In a second, I’m crossing the room and on my knees in front of him.

I place my hands on his knees and give them a gentle squeeze.

“Corazón, what is it? Why are you crying and how can I make it better?”

Luke’s shoulders and chest rise and fall with his heavy breaths, and his soft sniffle is like a knife to my gut.

“It’s…overwhelming.” he says, and I slide my hands further up so I can run them over his thighs.

“What is, baby?” I ask, surprising myself with the ease in which ‘baby’ slipped from lips. I’ve always called Luke ‘babe’—it just comes naturally to me—but baby is new. So is corazón, but that’s another one that just keeps slipping out.

Apparently, I’m very heavy handed with the terms of endearment when it comes to my husband.

“It’s just…Dean. We did this huge thing today, and what if it’s not enough?

You are perfect. You’re sunshine personified, but what if us being married and trying to give these kids a family isn’t enough?

They could still take them from me. Lem, Mel, Ollie?

Those girls are my entire soul. They were everything to my sister, and they’re everything to me.

What if that doesn’t matter and they get taken away from us anyway? ”

Luke’s use of “us” doesn’t go unnoticed by me. Even in the middle of all his self-doubt, he sees this family as ours, not just his, and that is something I didn’t realize I needed so badly.

It wasn’t like this with Samantha. Even before everything went to hell, it was all about her. What she wanted, what she needed, how she was dealing with everything. My entire existence was an afterthought to her. It made losing her easier, but damn, it was a bitch when we were in the thick of it.

Luke sees me as a teammate. A partner. Dare I say, an equal? And that recognition means more to me than I care to admit.

“Luke, it’s going to be enough. It has to be.

I can’t sit here and say the next few months are going to be easy.

I can’t say that anything is going to be simple or perfect.

We’re probably going to have to fight like hell.

But at the end of the day, no judge in their right mind will be able to look at the love you have for your nieces and decide that they don’t belong to you. ”

A tear slips down Luke’s cheek, and I reach up to swipe it away from my thumb. It isn’t until a burst of salt slips past my lips that I realize I’ve started crying, too.

“Everything is so hard, Dean. When did it all get so hard? And when is it going to fucking stop?” He hiccups, his voice soft and broken, and it breaks a piece of me, too .

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know. But you’re not alone. I’m your husband, now. I can help you carry it all when it gets too heavy, okay?”

Luke sniffles, then pulls his t-shirt up to wipe his face. The action bares a sliver of his toned stomach and the smattering of dark hair below his belly button leading to the waistband of his sweats, and my mouth goes dry.

Fuck. As if it wasn’t already unfair enough that my husband is the best kisser I’ve ever had the pleasure of mashing mouths with, he’s also incredibly manly and sexy and goddammit, I want him to lie on top of me for awhile.