Chapter 23 #2
Daphne turns to me. “I love you, Mars, but not enough to be the big spoon, and especially not enough to wake up every thirty minutes and make sure your throat hasn’t closed up.”
I blink at her. “I’ll take the floor.”
She presses her hands together, pleading. “It’s the middle of the night, we’re both freezing, and there’s an obvious solution here.”
“But—”
“I’m not above begging, Mars. I can barely keep my eyes open.”
I glance over my shoulder at West. He’s leaning patiently against the open door with his arm draped over the top. He raises one eyebrow in a move that feels like a dare.
I exhale heavily. “Okay.”
Daphne pulls the blanket off my shoulders and pushes me toward West. “Don’t give me a reason to hate you,” she warns him.
“Another reason,” I remind her.
“Hmm?”
“You already hate him. You don’t need another reason.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t bite,” he says as I slide into the front seat. He rests his palm on the top of the doorframe and leans in so only I can hear him. “Hard.”
West shuts the door with an ominous thud. There’s no going back now. I inhale slowly as I buckle my seat belt, the scent inside the truck making my head swim. It smells like I crawled into West’s lap and stuck my face in his neck.
He turns the heat up, puts his hand on my headrest, and angles his body toward me as he backs up the car. “So, you really didn’t want to go home alone with me, huh?”
I’m in dangerous proximity to his forearm. “Not really.”
“Just so we’re clear, I was joking about biting.”
“So, it will be hard?”
I expect him to take a shot back, but his expression sobers. “I want you to feel comfortable tonight. It won’t be a repeat of last night.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s a very honorable speech, but it’s not you I don’t trust.”
“Oh?”
I squirm in my seat, suddenly on fire. I might not trust West with my feelings, but I fully trust him with my safety.
He wouldn’t do anything that I don’t want him to do.
The problem is, he might do some of the stuff I do want, and that’s not a good idea.
I press my knees together and crack the window open to get some cool air.
“Was that the woman who asked a bunch of awkward questions at my panel this afternoon?”
“Yep.”
“And she’s friends with Daphne?”
“Mm-hmm.”
Unbelievably, the corner of his mouth quirks up. “Got it.”
“It sounds insane when you say it out loud.”
“I wonder why that would be.”
I suppress a laugh. He’s not even mad. Daphne was right; I have no future in revenge.
I shift toward him and lean against the headrest, staring shamelessly.
The silence settles, and I suddenly have the alarming thought that I could stay like this for the rest of the night, breathing his air and watching the way streetlights create shadows on his crooked nose, his sharp jaw.
I can’t get enough of him. It feels like making up for lost time.
In lieu of the last ten years, I’ll accept a few stolen minutes in a dark car.
His fingers flex on the steering wheel. “You know how to make a guy self-conscious, Darling.” His hoarse voice makes my blood hum.
“I won’t mess with you anymore,” I say.
He throws me a cautious glance. “Why not?”
I shrug. “I’m not very good at it.”
He laughs loud enough to indicate his agreement.
“Even so,” I continue, the words pulled out of me by the late hour and the small space, “it was petty. And it doesn’t feel right now that I know what I know. I’m sorry.”
“Now that you know I used to be a tragic, insecure loser who was scared of your success?” he asks.
I don’t know if he’s being sarcastic or serious, so I let the comment drop.
It’s too late to relitigate the past tonight, and I want to stay a little longer in this bubble with him, pretending that a small but very vocal group of chronically online Torchers wouldn’t find it outrageous that I’m on my way to sleep at his house.
“I didn’t mind when you were messing with me,” he says after a long stretch of silence, and I wonder if he’s as sleep-deprived as I am. Maybe he’s delirious.
“How quickly you’ve forgotten that you showed up to the bar last night in my book merch.”
“I like knowing that you’re thinking about me.”
“What else is new?” He’s never going to let me forget that I was once so obsessed with him it inspired a half-billion-dollar franchise.
West turns off the main road into a neighborhood with charming tree-lined streets. We pass Whitman, then Elmwood, then Burns. He turns onto Poe Street and pulls into the driveway of a redbrick mid-century modern home with a black front door.
“Tell me the truth. Did you buy this house because it’s on Poe Street?” I ask.
West turns the car off. “Welcome to Poet’s Square.”
I laugh, no longer sleepy. I haven’t pulled an all-nighter since I was on deadline for my second book, but I’m feeling the same lightness in my chest that used to hit around this time. “That’s cute. Did you come up with that?” Regrettably, I love it.
He laughs. “It’s the name of the neighborhood, but I won’t pretend it wasn’t a contributing factor toward purchasing this home. C’mon. Let’s go inside.”
“Full moon tonight?” I ask as we walk up the stone path to his door.
“I think so, why?”
I pause, hands on my hips. “Have you done the thing?”
“What thing?”
“West!” I gasp, grabbing his arms. “You have to do the thing!” I tip my head back and howl at the moon. When I lower my chin, West is watching me in awe.
“I haven’t thought about that in so long.”
“Your turn.” I squeeze his biceps, and his pupils double in size. We howl together, too loud and too silly. By the time he unlocks the door and I’m lurching inside, tears of laughter are streaming down my cheeks.
The hall is dark, illuminated only by moonlight, and the door clicking shut lands like an anvil in my ears. West crosses his arms, lifts one foot, and presses it against the door, staring at me intently.
My throat goes dry. I hear nothing but my own shallow breaths.
His soft shirt clings to his body, his sweatpants low on his hips in a way that makes it hard to look anywhere else. I want to curl his eyelashes around my finger and trace the shape of his nose. I want to run my thumb over his lips, then follow it with my tongue.
“So, this is it, huh?” I ask, breaking eye contact. “I wonder where you stash the typewriters.”
He flips on a light and leads me into the kitchen. In the bright overhead light, I remember that I’m braless, in pajamas, with smoke in my hair and clinging to my skin.
“Can I get you anything?” he asks as he pours a glass of water and sets it on the counter in front of me.
I drag my fingertip over the rim of the cup. “Just somewhere to sleep, and then you can pretend I’m not here.”
“Not possible,” he says in a low voice that stirs something inside me. “My bedroom is this way.” He points down a long hall just off the kitchen.
“Your bedroom?” I ask sharply, my pulse jumping to wild conclusions.
He scratches the back of his neck, looking nervous. “It’s the only bed in the house. I’ll show you.” He leads me down the hall to a room that is clearly his office. It’s empty with the exception of a small desk, a laptop, an open notebook, and a handful of blue ink pens.
“Were you writing when I called?”
He confirms, thus quashing my daydream of him jumping shirtless out of bed.
The next room contains a set of weights and half a dozen moving boxes pushed against the wall. I look at him with a raised eyebrow.
“I haven’t been here that long,” he says defensively.
“Where are you going to sleep?” I ask dubiously. “A couch?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t fit. I’m too big.
” His words hang in the silence between us as we make eye contact for a bit too long.
I slap my hand over my mouth to suppress more giggles.
“Get your mind out of the gutter,” he scolds.
But when he turns away, I don’t miss the smirk he’s trying to hide.
“I’m too tall, and it’s murder on my back. I’ll blow up an air mattress in here.”
“Oh, I can take that.”
“Not happening.” He motions for me to follow him.
We stop at the open door of West’s bedroom.
I survey the large bed with white sheets and a dove-gray comforter.
The room is tidy but lived-in, a jacket draped over the back of a reading chair in the corner, a water bottle by the bed, a stack of books on the floor.
I put the back of my hand to my forehead and pretend to swoon against the doorframe.
“I forgot that you get a little weird when you’re tired,” West says.
“You have a headboard! And pillowcases!”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“I once hooked up with a guy who kept a bottle under his bed that he would pee in when he was too lazy to get up.”
West looks deeply disturbed.
“I was in a situationship for nine weeks with another guy who had a mushroom growing in his shower the whole time.” I double over, giggling at the disgusting memory. “And then he ghosted me!”
“Fucking hell, Mars!”
“What? I’m giving you a compliment! You should learn to take it!” I shove him lightly on the shoulder.
His eyes follow the path of the hand that touched him. “Why would you settle for that? Surely you know that you’re—” He snaps his jaw shut. The muscle works. “You deserve better than a condemned building,” he says somewhat lamely.
“I know. That’s why you don’t see me with any of them now.
But the city, my job—it’s lonely.” I shrug as the words tumble unexamined from my lips.
“And most of the guys who ask me out still act like boys. But look at you.” I gesture to the room, the house, him.
“You have your shit together. You’re an adult. A man.”
Heat crawls up my spine. What the hell was that? I meant it as a general acknowledgment of the passage of time, but one look at West’s gobsmacked expression tells me that my diatribe sounds as bad as I fear. Like I’m measuring West against the people I date, and he comes out on top.
Trouble left the station a long time ago. I am well and truly fucked.
“I don’t know why I said that,” I say in a quick breath.
West’s eyes darken as the air between us shifts, stretching taut, pulling us together—though we don’t move.
My slaphappy mood sobers, and desire melts through me, dripping slowly, pooling, gathering, simmering until I’m molten.
Want reaches every part of my body. Tightening my chest and gathering between my thighs and making my toes curl.
I worry my bottom lip between my teeth and suddenly remember West’s words.
I don’t bite. Hard. Another flush of my skin, and impossibly, his gaze grows hungrier.
His intent is familiar, but the intensity is new.
I glance over my shoulder at the bed, and when I meet his eyes again, all the corded muscles in his neck and arms are visible. His hand flexes on the doorknob for the length of time it takes to build an empire and watch it collapse.
“If you don’t say something right now, I’ll walk to Jazz’s house and take my chances with the cats,” I say in a voice much huskier than I intended.
His expression is tortured, and I can’t tell if my outburst has horrified or intrigued him.
I take half a step toward him at the exact moment West tears his eyes away.
The tension defuses. He clears his throat and points toward the connecting bathroom.
“You’ll find clean towels in the linen closet. T-shirts are in my dresser.”
Horrified, then. Good to know.
I blink at him, unsure how I misread the situation so astronomically.
“I, uh, assume you want to get out of your smoky clothes.”
“Thanks.” I don’t trust myself to say more.
“If you leave your clothes in the hall, I’ll wash them so you have something to wear in the morning.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“But I will,” he says, leaving no room for debate. I nod once.
West stands in the space between the hall and the bedroom for another minute, looking like a man desperate to confess his deepest secrets, but with a final clench of his jaw, he says, “Night, Darling,” and backs slowly away.
I watch him retreat to the room across the hall and pretend the feeling in my gut isn’t disappointment.
For a few heart-stopping seconds, I thought he’d finally found the words he promised me a decade ago.
The right ones, whatever that means. Logically, however, I know I’m better off with his silence.
The right words no longer exist between West and me.
Showering in West’s bathroom is as weird and wonderful as I expected.
I can’t help but pick up and inspect everything: his razor, his shaving cream, shampoo, conditioner, bodywash.
I huff them all until I get high off the scent of him for old time’s sake, letting myself do what twenty-year-old Mars could only dream of.
I’ve been tiptoeing into dangerous territory all night, but now I fling myself in headfirst.
I wear one of his soft T-shirts, which hangs to my knees. No underwear. His shirt feels indecent as I slide the cotton over my skin. The hem brushes against my bare thighs, and I have a hunch that I’m going to feel the imprint of the soft stitches for a long time.
I approach West’s bed on cautious tiptoe, though I’m not sure what I’m scared of.
I kneel on the floor and inspect the stack of books.
I’ve only read a few of them. My heart thunders as I slowly slide open his bedside drawer.
The scrape of wood is as loud as church bells.
I hold my breath and wait to be caught snooping, but the house is quiet, and I resume my excavation.
The drawer is nearly empty, aside from a handful of condoms and a small stack of papers.
I make a promise to myself that I won’t read anything as I pick up the stack and thumb through it quickly.
There are a few cards. A letter. West’s passport and birth certificate.
What looks like the closing documents for this house.
Sticking out of a corner near the bottom of the pile is a piece of bright blue paper that catches my eye.
I flip to it, and there’s a brief moment of confusion as I stare at my own signature below a scrawled note that says Margot Darling’s #1 Fan.
A joke I made in another lifetime. A throwaway moment that I haven’t thought about since.
Quiet footsteps pass the door. I dump everything back in the drawer and jump to my feet, heart pounding recklessly in my chest. By the time I slide between West’s sheets, I’m wide-awake, vibrating with sensory overload, unsure I’ll survive the night.