Chapter 8
Carrie
Total dark. The kind that makes you check whether your eyes are open.
The dog started whining, then barking, that panicked pitch of an animal whose world had just disappeared without explanation. Matt's voice came from somewhere to my left.
"Hey. You're okay, buddy."
Light cut through the black. His phone, the flashlight carving him out of the dark from below, all jaw and cheekbones and shadow. He dropped to the dog's level and ran a slow hand down its back, and the whining eased into something manageable.
"Is it just us?" I said.
He went to the window, pulled back the curtain. The dog followed him like a deputy.
"Whole block. Maybe the neighborhood. I can't see a light anywhere."
Wonderful. A power outage, added to the evening's growing portfolio of disasters. A twisted ankle, a confidential breach, and a man I could not stop kissing. Now packaged together in total darkness, in my apartment, with no estimated time of restoration.
And in the dark, without warning, the hallway came back. His hands on my waist. His mouth. The sound I'd made. All of it arriving with the full clarity of a memory I had spent the entire day filing under Do Not Reopen.
The darkness, it turns out, does not respect your filing system.
"I should find candles," I said, and my voice came out lower than I'd planned.
I crutched to the kitchen and felt through the drawers until I found the emergency stash. Candles I'd bought for birthdays nobody came to and dinners I never had. My fingers closed around the wax and I was grateful, briefly, for the disappointing social calendar that had kept them unopened.
Matt appeared beside me with the phone light.
I jumped.
"Sorry," he said. "Didn't mean to—"
"You didn't scare me."
He had. Not the appearing. The proximity. Having him this close in the dark made my whole nervous system decide this was an emergency and assign all available resources to tracking his breathing. His warmth. The memory of what his hands had felt like, which I did not need re-entered into evidence.
I fumbled the matches. Dropped them. He picked them up and our fingers brushed, and the contact went straight up my arm and I pulled back too fast.
"I've got it."
I lit three. One on the kitchen counter, one on the coffee table, one on the bookshelf by the window.
The warm glow pushed the dark back just far enough to turn my apartment into something it had no business being.
Soft. Golden. The kind of light that made a room look curated for intimacy, like somebody had art-directed the whole thing and forgotten to tell me.
Exactly the staging I did not need.
Matt helped me back to the couch, hand at my elbow, steady and careful. The dog settled at our feet with a sigh that said everything in his world was now exactly right.
We sat in the candlelight. Not quite looking at each other.
Not quite looking away. Both aware of the gap between us on the cushion.
Both aware that we were alone, that the rain had no plans, that the power had no timeline, and that we had already kissed once and the fact of it was sitting between us like a guest nobody had introduced.
I could hear him breathing. Could feel the heat coming off him without contact. The silence was not uncomfortable. It was loaded.
"Are you going to be spending the night?"
It left my mouth before I'd approved the draft.
Matt looked at me.
"Do you want me to?"
"The rain isn't stopping. The power's out. You can't drive in this."
"That's not what I asked."
My heart was doing something unhelpful.
What did I want? I wanted him to leave so I could stop thinking about his mouth. I wanted him to stay so I wouldn't be alone in the dark. I wanted to push him out the door and pull him closer at the same time, which was not a position paper I was equipped to write.
"I'll leave as soon as the rain stops," he said, when I didn't answer.
"Okay."
"And I won't touch you."
"What?"
"If that's what you're worried about. What happened at the gas station. I won't. I promise."
He said it like a vow. Like an oath. Like he genuinely believed that was the thing I needed to hear.
And maybe part of me did need it. The sensible part, the one that knew this was a catastrophically bad idea and remembered I worked for the team he'd just spent ten minutes cursing.
But there was another part. Louder. Less interested in strategic outcomes.
"What if I want you to touch me?"
The words rolled out before my communications department had been consulted.
Matt's eyes went wide.
"What?"
Oh no. Oh, that was not a recoverable statement. That was the kind of thing you say and then immediately check whether the room has a window you could fit through.
"I didn't—I mean, that's not—"
"Carrie—"
"Just forget I said—"
"Carrie—"
"Seriously, pretend I didn't—"
But he was already moving. Already standing.
Already crossing the small space between us with a look on his face I hadn't seen before.
Quiet. Almost shy. It made him look younger, lighter, less a man under three seasons of losing and more like someone who had just heard the one thing he'd been waiting to hear.
"I was just—" I tried. "I didn't mean—"
He stepped forward. Reached down. Cupped my face in both hands.
His palms were warm against my cheeks. Rough. Calloused. His thumb moved across my cheekbone once, slowly, and I shivered.
And he kissed me.
Not the hallway kind. Not fast, not desperate, not like time was running out.
This was slower, more deliberate, like he'd cleared the whole schedule and planned to spend every second learning the shape of my mouth.
My hands went to his shoulders and pulled, and he made a low sound against my lips, almost a groan, and deepened the kiss.
His tongue found mine and I opened for him without hesitation. Let him in. Let myself fall the rest of the way into whatever this was.
Coffee. Rain. Something under both that was just him, and I already knew I wouldn't forget it.
My fingers went into his hair. His hands dropped to my waist. The gentleness burned off, degree by degree, into something hungrier, and my toes curled, and my heartbeat relocated to several places at once, and the sensible part of my brain stood up, put on its coat, and quietly left the building.
Damn.
It felt even better than the first time.