Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Njal
The drywall dust is still in my hair when I get home, and I don't shower it out right away.
I stand in my kitchen with the dust and the paint smell on me, and I think about her on that ladder.
All afternoon she was up there, paint to her elbows, Dasha holding the legs and Meghan hollering that they were losing the light.
Sophie kept cutting clean lines along the ceiling steady-handed, sure of the one thing nobody could take.
I watched her be part of something today.
Watched the knot she drove in with come loose by inches over the course of an afternoon. Her being part of it pulled at something low in my chest, hard enough I had to drag my eyes off her and back to the wall I was supposed to be painting.
She follows me over an hour later, the way I knew she would.
I hear her truck, her screen door, her feet on the grass, and then Hoagie's nails on my porch boards ahead of her, because that dog has decided my house is his house now.
I open the door before she knocks.
"You're filthy," she says.
"I know it." I step back to let her in. "You hungry?"
She stops just inside the door, arms folding up over her chest like a door closing.
"You don't have to cook for me, Njal."
"I didn't ask if I had to. I asked if you were hungry."
She doesn't have an answer ready for that, so I take her quiet for a yes and turn for the kitchen, and after a second I hear her bare feet follow me across the floor.
I cook.
Not my mother's food this time, brought over in foil and reheated.
My own hands, my own pan, chicken, rice, and green beans I keep in the house because a man on my kind of schedule learns to feed himself or he doesn't eat.
She sits at my table with Hoagie collapsed across her feet and watches me work, and I let her watch.
It's a small thing, cooking for a woman. Men do it every day and don't think twice.
I think twice.
I think about the fact that I’m the only person in this town who knows her, and she’s the only person in this town who knows me, and how it can either be a cage or the opposite of one depending on who's standing in it with you.
I plate it, set it in front of her, and sit down across from her with my own.
"This is good," she says, surprised, halfway through.
"Don't sound so shocked."
"I'm not—" She catches the corner of my mouth and stops. "Okay. I'm a little shocked."
She eats like she did last night, like somebody who forgot food was a thing that happened to her today until it was in front of her.
And while she eats, while the light goes down gold and then gray through my windows, the thing Esperanza said this afternoon turns over once in the back of my head.
This is a lot of effort for a small-town spat.
Somebody went to real trouble here.
I've had the same thought since I laid those pages out on this table—multiple tools, used in the right order, aimed at the one soft place that takes a woman down quietest.
I know what that costs to build. I know it isn't gossip.
And I know, sitting here watching her clean her plate, that the reason for it is a problem I’m going to have to take apart soon, in the cold way I take everything apart.
But not tonight.
Tonight, she's at my table, and the dust is in my hair, and the day was good. Everything else can wait until morning.
I put it back where I keep it, and I get up to clear the plates.
She helps me with the dishes even though I tell her not to.
We stand at my sink, her washing and me drying because she won't let me do both, and our arms keep brushing, neither of us moving away from it.
The water shuts off.
She sets the last plate in the rack and doesn't turn around.
Her hands grip the edge of the counter, knuckles going pale, and I watch her shoulders rise and set like she's deciding something.
"Njal." She says it to the window over the sink, not to me.
I hang the towel on the oven door. "Yeah?"
Her thumb works a slow circle against the counter's edge. "Last night, you stopped."
I turn to face her back. "I did."
"Why?"
"Because grateful isn't you saying you were ready.
" I take a step toward her. "And I wanted you, Sophie.
Last night, in that rain, soaked through and shaking on my floor.
I wanted you so bad it kept me up half the night.
But I wasn't going to be one more person who took something from you while you were too wrecked to know what you were giving away. "
She turns around then.
The kitchen light's behind her, and I can't read all of her face, but I can read the set of her jaw, the thing she does when she's about to say a sentence she's rehearsed.
"I'm not crying now," she says.
"No."
"And I'm not grateful. I mean, I am, but that's not—" She presses her lips together. "That's not what this is."
"Then tell me what it is." I keep my voice low and even, the way I keep it for skittish things. "Use the words, Sophie. I'm not going to guess for you. I'm not going to decide for you. You've had a whole life of people deciding what you're allowed to want."
Her chest moves.
"I want this," she says. "You. I want—I want to feel good, Njal.
For one night, I want to feel good and not think about any of it.
The school, the leave, my name, all of it just gone for a little while.
" Her eyes come up to mine. "I want you to be the thing I think about instead.
Is that—am I allowed to want it like that? Just to feel good?"
Just to feel good.
I hear the distraction in it. I hear a woman with her life on fire reaching for the one warm thing in reach.
And I'm not too proud to be reached for.
But I'm not letting her walk out of my bed tomorrow thinking that's all it was, either.
"You're allowed," I tell her. "And yeah, I'll make you feel good. I'll make you forget your own name for a while if that's what you need tonight."
I close the space between us and get a hand into her hair, tilting her face up to mine.
"But don't you dare tell yourself in the morning it was only that. Because it isn't only that for me. You hear me?"
Her breath catches.
"Okay," she whispers.
"Say it back."
"It isn't only that."
"Good girl. Bedroom," I murmur against her mouth, the words a warm breath that lingers between us.
I take her hand, my fingers interlacing with hers, and lead her back through the quiet, dark house.
I can hear the soft, rhythmic patter of her bare feet following close behind me.
Hoagie stays wisely in the kitchen, leaving us to the silence.
I feel that settling thing again—the heavy, beautiful weight of her trust.
She lets me lead, trusting me to know the way when she feels lost.
Once we reach the bedroom, I move with deliberate slowness.
I want to savor every inch of her.
As I begin to peel the clothes from her body, her hands flutter up, rushing me, trying to even the scales by doing for me what I’m doing for her.
I catch her wrists gently, pinning them back, my gaze locking onto hers.
"No," I tell her, my voice low and steady. "Same as last night. You take. I'll get my turn."
I lay her back onto the bed, the sheets cool beneath her skin, and I just look at her.
I let the sight of her sink in, and it hits me all over again—the sheer, breathtaking reality of her.
I take her apart slowly, refusing to let her hide from any of it.
I want her to feel every single touch.
I mark her, my mouth pressing into the sensitive curve of her throat, the sharp line of her collarbone, and the tender, soft skin on the inside of her thigh.
I’m not hard with her. I don't want to hurt her.
I just want to leave a map of my possession—marks that she'll find in the mirror tomorrow, reminders that last night wasn't a dream, that this is real, and that she finally has one good thing.
"Mine," I whisper against her skin, the word a vow every time my lips touch her. "Say it."
"Yours," she breathes.
"Again."
"Yours."
When I finally slide into her, I go slowly.
I keep my eyes locked on her face, searching for the slightest flinch or a flicker of fear, watching for the exact moment the pleasure tips into something too much.
It happens once.
I stop instantly, buried deep inside her, holding myself perfectly still.
I lean forward, pressing my forehead against hers, our breaths mingling.
"Breathe," I command softly. "I've got you. We don't move until you're ready."
She takes a breath, and I feel her body begin to open for me by degrees.
I feel the exact vibration in her muscles when the fear finally lets go, replaced by a desperate, aching need.
"Okay," she whispers, her voice trembling. "Okay—Njal—more."
And I give her more.
I pour every careful, possessive, and tender thing I possess into her.
I whisper "mine" into the strands of her hair and murmur "good girl" against her mouth.
"That's it, that's my girl, let me," I urge as I feel her start to climb toward the edge.
I can sense the old terror—the ghost of being caught wanting something—trying to seize her one last time.
"Don't hold back," I tell her, my voice thick with emotion. "Not here. Here, you're allowed."
That’s the key. Just like last night.
* * *
My phone buzzes on the nightstand a little after midnight.
I reach for it slowly, careful not to wake her, and turn the screen away from her face.
Dag.
Dag:
Spoke to Runes tonight. He needed to know, given who's asking and who you are. He's read in now. The whole table is.
I look at the message for a long while.
There's a second one under it.
Dag:
He wants a word with you. Tomorrow. You knew he would.
I did know he would if he found out about everything.
I set the phone face-down on the nightstand and lie back, and the woman on my chest doesn't stir.
The club's in it now.
That's what I wanted, I suppose—Dag, the law, the… help.
I knew the second I made that call from the porch that it wouldn't stay between me and two attorneys.
Nothing in my family stays small.
Dag tells Runes. Runes tells the table.
That's how it works, that's how it's always worked, and I called Dag anyway with my eyes wide open.
But Runes wanting a word means Runes wanting to know.
And Runes doesn't ask a question he already knows unless he wants to watch your face when you answer it.
He's going to ask me who she is to me.
And I'm going to have to tell him the truth, out loud, to my president, with no patch, and a woman asleep on my chest who I've known for two weeks and already said she’s mine.
I look down at her in the dark.
The cold thing I put away at dinner is back, and I let it sit there now, level and clear, because she's asleep, and there's nothing left tonight to protect her from.
Tomorrow, I answer to Runes.
Tonight, I pull the blanket up over her shoulder, and I keep my hand where I can feel her breathing.
I stay awake a while longer just to savor this feeling.
This peace.