Chapter 12 #2
"Okay so I just saw THE most iconic reel, like genuinely the dream, this woman trained her golden retriever to bring her wine from the fridge and the dog just, like, trots over with a bottle of Sancerre in its mouth and I need that energy in my life.
" She drops into the chair between us and reaches for the coffee pot without looking.
"Tripp, my butterbeer creamer is in witness protection behind the half-and-half. AGAIN."
"I rotated."
"You retaliated." But she's already up and moving to the fridge, still talking, her voice filling every corner of the room. The kitchen feels smaller when Darcy's in it. Warmer. Like the walls lean in to listen.
Remy reaches across the table for the sugar bowl. His forearm flexes.
Heat floods my stomach so fast I have to set my mug down.
The ceramic clicks against the table. I curl my fingers around the edge because I need something solid to hold onto, and I watch his fingers close around the glass bowl and lift it and all I can think about is those same fingers against the inside of my thigh.
My pulse is in my throat now, thick and obvious, and I swallow it down with coffee.
"Evie, tell him about the creamer thing. Tell him normal people have flavored creamer. Tell him about the butterbeer creamer that changed your LIFE."
"It was very good butterbeer creamer."
My voice comes out easy, slightly amused.
The smile lands where it's supposed to. The posture follows.
It's muscle memory, all of it, trained back when I was old enough to stand next to my father at a podium.
I learned this from him. How to hold a room while holding a secret.
How to make your face a gift people accept without checking what's inside.
"SEE? Evie gets it. Evie understands that coffee is supposed to be an experience, not a, a punishment."
Remy's mouth twitches. "You're welcome to buy whatever you want for the fridge, Darce."
"I literally already did, but you put it back there on purpose, don't lie."
I laugh, a real one, surprised out of me again. And Darcy is radiant in her certainty that this kitchen is safe, that the people in it are who she thinks they are.
I finish my cup. Rise and rinse the mug. Set it in the rack beside the sink.
"I've got calls this morning." I smooth my expression into something useful. "The Foundation board wants preliminary numbers by Thursday."
Darcy waves me off. "I'll save you a croissant. There's a bakery on Chestnut that does this almond thing that's life-altering, Evie, I swear."
I walk out of the kitchen with my back straight and my smile intact and the bruise the only thing on me telling the truth.
The closet is small. Walk-in by San Francisco guest room standards, which means I can stand in the center and touch both walls if I stretch my arms. The light overhead is a single bulb that turns everything golden.
My work clothes now hang on the left. The sundresses I packed for a trip I told myself would last two weeks occupy the right, still there because two weeks became three became five became whatever this is.
The camisole is folded in the bottom drawer, tissue paper still wrapped around it. Champagne silk, thin straps, the kind of fabric that moves when you breathe. Darcy talked me into it at a boutique on Magazine Street, and she would have noticed if I'd left it behind.
I sleep in his shirts. The t-shirt I took from his laundry the second week, the blue button-down Darcy raided from his closet. But tonight I unfold the tissue paper.
The silk slides between my fingers, cool and liquid. The weight is almost nothing. Lighter than cotton. Lighter than the t-shirt. Lighter than what I'm deciding.
Call Darcy. Tell Remy you know. Leave.
The playbook runs one final time. Identify the problem. Assess the risk. Determine the appropriate response.
The appropriate response is horror, confrontation, departure, a conversation with Darcy that would require words I can't form because Darcy trusts this house and her brother and she would look at me with those blue eyes and I would have to watch the trust leave them, and that's not protection.
That's me taking her brother from her. A brother she'd have to mourn.
I'm not running the playbook because I'm considering it. I'm running it because some part of me wants to set it down for good.
I pull my blouse over my head. Unhook my bra. The air hits my bare skin and my nipples tighten and I haven't put the camisole on, and already my body knows what I'm doing. I step out of my pants. My underwear.
I stand naked in the small golden closet and I can see all of it. The thin white lines on my inner thighs, the ones I've carried for half my life. The whole map of me, everything I did to myself and everything he's done.
I should be afraid. I'm not.
The camisole slides over my head and settles against me.
The silk is so thin the air passes through it.
The straps barely there on my shoulders, the hem stopping just below my navel.
I pull on the shorts, the black cotton ones from a bodega near Union Square, too short for anything but sleeping, and the fabric rides up my thighs and doesn't cover the scars.
The mirror on the back of the closet door shows me someone I don't recognize.
She has dark wet hair from the evening shower and flushed cheeks and eyes that are steady and belong to someone new.
Her mouth is soft, her shoulders bare, the silk pulling light across her breasts.
She looks like someone who's just learning to want.
I turn off the light. Cross the room in the dark, four steps from closet to bed, bare feet silent on the carpet.
The door is closed. I put my hand on the knob and my heartbeat is loud in my ears.
I have known the sound of this house for weeks now, every creak and shift in the dark.
I turn it and pull. Not two inches, not the polite crack that lets air circulate.
Wide. All the way open, the dark hallway stretching out in front of me and the house breathing through the gap.
I get into bed. The sheets are cool against my bare legs and the silk rides up when I settle against the pillow and I don't pull it down.
The air from the hallway moves across my skin, a draft so faint I wouldn't feel it if I weren't paying attention to everything now.
Every shift in the dark, every sound, every nerve ending the silk isn't covering.
I'm wet. I've been wet since the closet, when I unfolded the tissue paper. My blood beats slow and heavy between my legs and I press my thighs together once, just once, and my breath stalls and my eyes close and I hold still.
I open them. I stare at the ceiling. The house settles around me in its nighttime language of pipes and wood and the distant hum of the refrigerator two floors down, and I listen to all of it and through all of it for the one sound that matters.
The third step from the landing creaks if you put weight on the left side. I know that now.