“I want you to stop treating yourself like a loaded gun,” I said.
Jonah didn’t move. His breath was warm against my wrist, but his shoulders remained stiff, locked under the weight of an old habit he had practiced for more than a decade.
“Claire, you don’t have to prove anything to me,” he said softly. “You don’t have to pretend you aren’t overwhelmed just to make me feel better.”
“I’m not pretending,” I said. I slid my hand from his jaw to the back of his neck, curling my fingers into the short hair at his collar. “I don’t want space between us on that bed. I don’t want you sitting six feet away because you think you’re a danger to have around. I want you to hold me. Properly.”
He blinked, his mouth slightly parted. For a man who stood nearly seven feet tall, he looked utterly disarmed.
“Just hold you?” he asked.
“Just hold me,” I repeated. “And maybe that cake you promised.”
The tension in his forehead broke, replaced by the faint crease of a real smile. He reached out with both hands, moving with deliberate slowness, and wrapped his arms around my waist. Then, without any sudden force, he pulled me against his chest.
I let my full weight sink into him. His frame was solid and warm, smelling of cedar and the citrus cologne I had bought him for our anniversary. For hours, everyone in the ballroom downstairs had spoken about his size as if it were an obstacle I had to endure. In reality, sitting on the floor of room 412, it felt like the safest shelter in the world.
Jonah buried his face in my hair and let out a long, shuddering breath. I could feel the thrum of his heartbeat through his dress shirt, steady and unhurried.
“My dad meant well,” Jonah murmured into my shoulder. “He was scared for Luke. But after that night in the garage, every time I stood up in a room, I felt like an elephant walking through an antique store. I thought if I ever relaxed, someone would get hurt.”
“Your dad was trying to protect your brother,” I said gently, pressing my cheek against his collarbone. “He didn’t realize he was putting you in a cage.”
We stayed on the floor for several minutes until my knees began to ache against the hard floorboards beneath the carpet.
Jonah pulled back just enough to look at me. “Come on. Let’s get you out of that dress before the zipper ruins the night completely.”
He stood up in one fluid motion, then reached down and lifted me by the elbows as easily as if I were a child’s coat. He turned me around and patiently unlooped the dozens of tiny silk buttons concealing the dress’s long zipper, easing the runner down without snagging. His fingers were blunt and calloused, yet he handled the delicate lace without tearing a single stitch.
When the gown pooled at my feet, I stepped into the oversized flannel pajama pants and cotton shirt I had packed in my duffel bag. Jonah stripped off his tuxedo jacket, threw his bow tie onto the desk chair, and pulled on a pair of worn gray sweatpants.
He looked over at the mini-fridge in the corner of the suite. On top of it sat a white cardboard bakery box tied with a gold ribbon. The caterer had boxed up two giant slices of our almond-vanilla cake before we left the country club.
“Opposite sides of the bed?” Jonah asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Don’t push your luck,” I said.
He carried the box over, along with two plastic forks from the hospitality tray. We climbed onto the mattress, propping four oversized pillows against the headboard. Jonah sat with his legs stretched out toward the footboard, taking up nearly two-thirds of the mattress, but he didn’t pull away when I leaned my hip directly against his thigh.
We opened the box between us. The frosting had smeared slightly against the cardboard during the car ride, but neither of us cared.
“My mother told me to call her room,” I said, cutting off a corner of the sponge with my plastic fork.
Jonah chewed thoughtfully. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her the reception was lovely,” I replied. “I didn’t tell her that her sister spent twenty minutes telling everyone at table four that I’d be black and blue by Sunday morning.”
Jonah stopped mid-bite. A quiet, heavy shadow crossed his expression, the familiar reflex of retreating inward.
“Hey,” I said, tapping his knee with the flat of my fork. “Look at me.”
He looked up.
“They don’t know you,” I said. “They see your height, they see your shoulders, and they make up a cartoon character in their heads. But they haven’t watched you carry a stray cat out of a rainstorm. They haven’t seen you spend three hours rewiring my sister’s porch light so she wouldn’t have to walk up the steps in the dark.”
Jonah swallowed his bite of cake. “It’s still hard to hear.”
“It’s ignorant,” I said flatly. “And we are not letting their noise decide how we start our life together.”
He looked down at the half-eaten cake, then at my hand resting on his knee. He set his fork down on the cardboard lid, shifted his weight, and opened his left arm.
I didn’t hesitate. I slid under his arm, resting my head against his bicep. He brought his arm down over my shoulders, not hovering or leaving space this time, but drawing me firmly into his side.
After seven long hours since the priest had pronounced us husband and wife, the nervous hum in my chest finally went completely quiet. The ballroom, the bad toasts, the intrusive smirks from distant relatives—all of it faded into background static that couldn’t reach us up here on the fourth floor.
“You know,” Jonah said, his tone dry and quiet, “Luke actually called me right before the rehearsal dinner yesterday.”
I tilted my head up. “What did he say?”
“He told me to stop walking around like I was made of glass,” Jonah said with a soft chuckle. “He said, ‘Jonah, you broke my ribs twelve years ago. If you don’t let that go, I’m going to tackle you into another workbench just to prove I can take it.’”
I laughed, the sound muffled against his cotton shirt. “Luke is smarter than your dad gave him credit for.”
“He is,” Jonah admitted. He rested his chin on the crown of my head. “I guess I just needed to hear it from you, too.”
The digital clock on the bedside table flipped from 11:59 to 12:00. The date changed, marking the official end of our wedding day and the beginning of our first ordinary morning as husband and wife.
The hallway outside the suite was silent. Down on the street, an occasional car drove past the hotel, throwing faint lines of yellow light across the sheer window curtains.
Jonah reached over, picked up the white bakery box, and set it on the nightstand next to the phone. He reached up and clicked off the brass lamp, plunging the room into soft gray shadows.
In the dim light, he pulled the heavy hotel duvet up over both of us, tucking the corners around my shoulders with steady, careful hands. Then he settled back against the mattress, keeping his arm looped securely around my waist.
I closed my eyes, listening to the slow, rhythmic beat of his heart against my ear, and fell asleep with my hand resting flat over his chest.
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