The Partner

Chapter Fifteen, "Again"

"You know, I've heard that if you stare at it hard enough, it just might ring," a familiar voice murmurs from behind me.

The squeal from my lips only lasts until Harry presses a kiss to them, falling onto the couch beside me right after.

"I was wondering when you were going to get home," my reply comes as I snuggle up to him, enjoying the warmth his arm around me brings. It quickly fills the cracks of what I'd been missing all day - his presence, his comfort, his smell, and kisses to the top of my head.

"I'm sorry I'm late. I wanted to pick up some dinner. I'm getting sick of leftovers."

Laughing with him had started to feel foreign again over the last few days, and so I was more than glad for its return.

"Thanks."

His nod is immediate, as is his gaze climbing down my body, making me lift a brow.

"This looks nice on you."

"You mean your sweatpants and hoodie didn't look good on me for the last few days?" I crack, letting the self-deprecating joke free to the air, knowing I shouldn't have gone there. It wasn't something we usually did but it was a good way to ease the tension between us and to say the unsaid.

"Well, of course, but you know what I mean, bug," even though he rarely guzzled down as much coffee as he used to, the whispered words against my temple still smell of the nearly pitch black cups that adorn his desk. I like seeing you back in your normal clothes, I knew he meant but didn't know how to say. It means you're getting better. Or does it?

All I could muster myself was a warm smile in return, one that understood what he was trying to say and accepted it. Harry's endless green eyes had begun to droop after another nine hour day at the firm. Now, they drifted away and to my phone where the same document from earlier sat open, the blinking cursor impatient.

"What are you staring at that for?" his joke comes but it misses the laugh from me.

Shrugging my shoulders, an answer doesn't come as I tip my head to rest on his shoulder.

"I don't know. I keep feeling like I should be working on it, that there's something to do," I answer, hearing his hum of acknowledgment amidst his hand in my hair. That I should be doing something instead of crying, I want to say. He'd been home for only a minute and he was playing with it. It must have been a new record. "It still feels so far away. I don't want to have to wait four months to become your wife," I whine, cocking my head to meet his eyes that fall onto mine.

"Then let's not."

"What?" my question is immediate, springing off my tongue once Harry's words sink in. My eyes are quicker and I find his holding a knowing glint. Suddenly, I'm hyper aware of the feeling of his engagement ring on his ring finger and the one on mine. "You're serious?"

His lips sputter a laugh and I swear it's the deepest I've seen his dimples in a while. It had only been four days and yet it felt like a short lifetime, but that was something we'd both realized painfully. We both knew too acutely how short and long four months could feel.

"Why not? We can still keep the big plans we have for the wedding, but we could have a little civil ceremony, just us," his thoughts send blooms into the air, knitting a picture together in my mind. "I'm tired of waiting for you to become my wife, seeing as everything else besides a paper says you're just that to me."

"Our parents will have our heads if we get married without them, Harry," the first real laugh I've spent in weeks comes off my lips, as if laughs were a currency that you had to save up and choose when to use.