Chapter 18 #2
I take her free hand, turn it over, and run my thumb along her knuckles, the same ones Lenny kissed, like I'm taking them back.
"How much longer do I have you?" I ask.
She looks down at the table, almost shy. “All night.” She picks at one of the tenders. "The kids are at their grandma's house."
My grip on her hand tightens before I can stop it.
It lands harder than it should.
Holy shitake mushrooms.
My brain short-circuits for a second because there's no way this day just got better. It was already too good to be true that she's here in Harlow. And all night? I already know what's on her mind...
I keep my thumb moving over her hand.
"Can I ask you something?"
"That depends entirely on what you're about to say."
"Have you ever had sex in a public restroom?"
"What—" she sputters. The glass nearly goes over. She catches it, both hands, doe eyes huge. "Oh my gosh. No. Of course not. Is that—is that really what you're thinking about right now?"
"How could I not be, doll face." I lean in closer. "I've been hard for you since you told me you were in the stands."
"You have not."
I take her laced hand and slide it under the table, onto my thigh, then up. Let her feel for half a second exactly how much I haven't been lying.
She yanks it back, completely scandalized and glowing. "Asher."
"Just answering the question."
"Won't Lenny be offended if we leave already?"
"Don't worry about Lenny." I tip her chin up with one finger so she's looking at me and not at the table. "What do you want?"
I watch her decide to be brave. Watch her claim what she wants. It's my favorite thing now. The pink comes back up her neck, her eyes holding mine. And then she says it.
"You."
I'm out of the booth, pulling cash from my wallet before she's done saying it.
I drop bills on the table, more than the food and the free drink call for, and she frowns at it.
"Lenny gives us too many drinks on the house," I tell her. "I try to even it out."
She slides out and takes my hand, looking up at me with the umbrella in her other fist.
"You really are a charmer, huh?"
"I keep telling people. The guys just flip me off."
She laughs again. I throw a wave to Lenny on the way out, hat back down, glasses back on, and the night air hits cool and wet off the lake as the door swings shut behind us.
I scan the keycard, hear the beep, and push the door open, letting her walk in first. She's quiet—she always is—but I want to know what's going through that mind of hers.
I drop her bag on the floor. Watch her turn around in the space.
She looks small in here. Not out of place—just…too right. Like she belongs in a way nothing else in this place ever has.
She loops her arms around my neck and kisses me.
I take that as a good sign.
"What do you think?" I ask when I come up for air.
"This place is huge," she breathes against my lips.
"You like it?"
"Does it matter? It's yours."
I pull back, just enough to see her face. The city moves behind her through the glass, lights stacked along the far shore, breaking apart across the black water. They catch in her hair and along the side of her throat.
"Yeah. It matters." I mean it more than I know how to say, standing here holding her. "I always want to know what you think."
She looks past me, taking it in. The wall of windows. The lake. The one painting I drove three hours to buy because I couldn't bring it home on the team bus.
"It's very grand," she says.
"That's not what I asked."
Her eyes come back to me. Something gives in her face.
"Yes," she says, softly. "I like it very much." Her voice goes even softer.
"But I like the man inside it a lot more."
There it is.
The thing I've been swallowing since the car climbs all the way up into my throat, and I almost say it, almost finally let it out.
I think I'm in love with you.
But I don't—because she's not ready—and I'd rather show her than scare her. For now.
I carry her across the threshold of my bedroom, setting her feet at the edge of the bed and taking her face in both hands.
"I like you more than this place too, doll."
Then I kiss her like I told her the bigger truth. If I can't say it, maybe she can still feel it.
There's no script tonight. No costume. No pirate patch, no marshal's badge, no line of dialogue from some play to hide inside. No kids down the hall. No dead man's house standing around her. Nothing to manage.
Just her shirt coming up over her head and her hands shaking a little at my belt, the lamp throwing everything gold and low.
I take it slow on purpose.
I lay her back across the bed and follow her down.
Blow cool air on the spot under her ear that makes her breath catch, and kiss the curve where her neck meets her shoulder, going lower.
Her fingers thread into my hair. When I look up the length of her body, she's already watching me, propped on one elbow, lip between her teeth.
"What is it?" she whispers.
I want to tell her, but I bury the urge. "It's nothing." I stop the lie. I can give her something. "I'm just really happy you're here."
She smiles, gently. "Me too."
"I know." I press a kiss to her chest, right over the place I can feel her heart going. Then I go down.
I take my time getting her there with my mouth, both her hands fisted in the sheet, her thighs trembling against my shoulders, and when she comes, it's quiet and astonished, her whole body curling up off the bed, my name half-finished on an exhale.
I crawl up over her while she's still shaking.
"Asher—" Her hands find my face. "Come here."
I settle between her thighs and pause, braced over her, our faces close, her breath unsteady against my mouth.
"Look at me," I say, memorizing those doe eyes.
I need them to haunt me when she's not here.
She does.
I push in slow, watching her the whole way, her lips parting, eyes going wide and then soft. I hold there, all the way in, just to feel her around me, watching what it does to her face with nothing in the world hidden between us.
"Audrey," I breathe.
She makes a sound that isn't quite a word and pulls me down by the back of the neck until there's no space left.
I move slow, deep and unhurried, the bed barely making a sound.
Her breath catches on every stroke, her ankles crossing at the small of my back.
Her hands move over my shoulders, my jaw, my hair, like she's trying to touch all of me at once.
I keep my eyes open. Every time hers start to flutter shut I slow down until they come back to me.
"Stay with me," I murmur.
"I'm here." Her nails press into my back. "I'm right here."
When she goes over the second time, she takes me with her, my groan buried in her hair, her arms locked around my neck, both of us shaking, ripples of city lights bouncing off the water outside and neither of us looking at any of it.
After, the room is dark and quiet. Her head is on my chest.
I've got one arm around her, my hand spread on her bare back, tracing nothing. Her leg is thrown over mine. Outside, a boat horn sounds way out on the water, low and far off, and fades.
I think I could stay exactly like this until the sun comes up and consider it a life well spent.
Her finger draws a slow line down the center of my chest.
"Can I ask you something?" she says.
"That depends entirely on what you're about to say."
I feel her smile against my skin. Then she goes still—the air changes—and I know whatever's coming she's been carrying it a while.
"Would you be okay meeting the kids?" she asks. "Really meeting them? Not—not the way you did at the barbecue." She takes a deep breath. "Properly."
Everything in me goes still.
I stare at the dark ceiling and feel my heartbeat under her cheek pick up. I'm grateful she can't see my face because I don't have it under control.
She's offering it to me.
Not just her.
Her kids. Her mornings. The life she’s kept carefully out of reach from me until now.
The part of her world I’ve only ever left from, never entered. A way to see her in the light of day. A reason to use the front door and stay. She's reaching across the wide distance she's kept between us, handing me a key, and she has no idea her voice is shaking while she does it.
"Yeah," I say. My voice isn't steady either. I clear it. "Yeah, doll. I'd love to."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I would."
She exhales, long and relieved, and settles deeper into my chest. Within minutes, her breathing goes slow and even, and she's asleep on me, trusting, heavy, warm.
I keep staring at the ceiling.
I’ve charmed rooms I had no business being in. Cops who pulled me over. Every camera, every stranger, every woman who ever decided too fast that I was a good time. I’ve never once in my life walked into a room and failed to win it.
A little boy who lost his father.
A wary daughter who keeps careful watch over her mom. Even I could see that last summer.
My hand on her back stills.
I have absolutely no idea how to do this.
And it's the first thing in years I'm afraid to get wrong.