Ex wants reconciliation, but I'm already married

The sheets were soaked through.

Edward had one hand braced beside my hip, the other curled under my knee, and his mouth was somewhere along my collarbone, leaving heat that felt like small bites of summer. My back arched off the mattress without me asking it to.

"Stay with me, Fiona," he murmured, low, near my ear. "Don't go anywhere."

"I'm right here."

His laugh was rough, pleased. He shifted, and the bed shifted with him, and for a second I forgot the name of every street outside this penthouse. That was the thing with Edward. He made the world a smaller, simpler place — just skin, just breath, just the flex of his shoulders under my palms.

I liked that about him. He never asked for more than what was happening right now.

My phone buzzed against the nightstand.

I reached for it before I thought, the way you swat a fly. Edward caught my wrist mid-air, smiling.

"Ignore it."

"One second." I twisted under him, laughing a little, breathless. "Could be the gallery."

"The gallery can wait until I'm done with my wife."

That word — *wife* — still landed in my chest like a small, warm stone, even after a year. I lifted the phone without checking the screen and pressed it to my ear.

"Hello?"

A pause. Static. Then a breath I knew before I knew anything else.

"Fiona."

The room tilted half an inch.

"It's Joe."

I didn't move. Edward's mouth was still on my throat, slow now, unhurried, and somewhere very far away from the voice in my ear. The voice that used to call me from a dorm room in Boston, from a rented car in Chicago, from the side of a road where his bike had broken down. The voice that, three years ago, had told me *I'm not ready for that, Fiona, don't push me.*

"I'm back," Joe said. "I flew in this morning."

My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth.

"Listen to me. I've been thinking — three years, I've been thinking — and I'm done running from it. I want to marry you. Let's do it. Let's get married, Fi."

The ceiling fan turned once. Twice.

I hung up.

I didn't say a single word. I just took the phone away from my ear, tapped the red circle, and dropped it face-down on the nightstand. The screen knocked against the wood with a small, final click.

Edward lifted his head. His hair was damp at the temples. His eyes, dark and a little narrowed, searched my face in that careful way he had — the way that always made me feel like I was being read, page by page.

"Hey." His thumb brushed my cheekbone. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Who was that?"

"Spam." The word came out steady. I was almost surprised. "One of those scam calls. The car warranty thing."

He watched me a beat longer.

I felt my own pulse in my throat, fast and uneven, and I wondered if he could feel it under his thumb. He could. He had to. But Edward, bless him, only tilted his head and smiled, and let it go.

"Come here," he said, and pulled me into his chest.

I went. I curled into the space under his arm where I always fit, and pressed my forehead against the warm flat of his sternum, and listened to his heart, which was slowing now, steady as a clock. His hand moved up and down my back in long, lazy strokes.

"You're tense."

"I'm tired."

"Then sleep."

"Mm."

"I've got you."

He said it half-asleep already, the way men say things when their bodies are giving up on the day. Within a few minutes his breathing dropped into that deep, even rhythm I'd come to know better than my own. His arm grew heavy across my waist.

I didn't sleep.

I lay there with my eyes open in the half-dark, staring at a thin band of city light along the curtain rod, and let my hands shake where he couldn't see them.

*I want to marry you.*

Three years ago, I had said, *Joe, please. Just sign the paper. Just be my husband to help me.* And Joe with his beautiful jaw and his brilliant future— had looked at me like I'd suggested setting his life on fire.

*I'm twenty-six, Fiona. I'm not ready for that. Don't put this on me.*

He'd left for the airport the next morning. For his freedom.

And now, three years later, with Edward Smith's arm across my hip, Edward Smith whose family owned half the skyline outside this window — Joe wanted to *marry* me.

A laugh climbed up my throat. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to stop it.

The taste of copper bloomed on my tongue. My eyes burned, but nothing fell. I felt the flutter behind my ribs that wasn't sadness, exactly, and wasn't anger, exactly — it was the thin, sharp thing that happens when something you mourned for a thousand nights shows up at your door, late, holding flowers, and expects you to be grateful.

*Too late, Joe.*

A year ago, I had become Fiona Smith.

Edward shifted in his sleep and pulled me tighter. His nose pressed into my hair. He made a soft, contented sound, the kind a big animal makes when it's safe.

I closed my eyes.

The phone on the nightstand lit up again. Face-down, the glow leaked around the edges of the screen, soft and blue, painting a thin halo on the wood. It buzzed once. Twice. A third time, longer — a voicemail landing.

I didn't reach for it. I didn't have to.

I already knew what the next message would say, and the one after that, and the one after that. Joe had always been a man who kept calling until someone picked up. It was the only kind of patience he had.

The phone buzzed a fourth time. A text, this one. The screen flared brighter through the wood grain, then dimmed, then flared again.

Edward stirred against my shoulder.

"Mmh," he muttered, eyes still shut. "Your spam is very persistent, baby."

"I'll silence it."

"Good girl."

I reached across him, slow so I wouldn't wake him fully, and turned the phone over in my palm.