12. Holland #2
He kissed me again, deeper now, unhurried.
His hands mapped me with deliberate care: the curve of my waist, the weight of my breasts, thumbs circling until my nipples tightened.
A small sound escaped against his mouth.
I touched him in return, tracing the line of his spine, the taut muscle of his hips, then wrapping my hand around the hard, hot length of him.
He exhaled sharply, a tremor running through him.
“Holland,” he said again, half warning, half plea.
I guided him between my legs. He paused there, the blunt head of him pressing against me where I was already slick, ready. He looked at me, waiting, giving me the choice even now. I nodded before lifting my hips.
He pushed in slowly, so slowly I felt every inch. The stretch, the fullness, the way my body opened to take him. I breathed out, a sound that was half sigh, half his name. He filled me completely before holding still, forehead against mine, giving us both time to absorb the sensation.
Then he began to move.
Long, deep strokes, unhurried. Each one a question followed by an answer.
I wrapped my legs around his hips, pulling him closer, wanting him deeper still.
His hand slid under my back, lifting me into him.
The other cupped my face, thumb stroking my cheek as he watched me.
The cabin’s cold receded; only the heat of him inside me remained, along with the slide of skin, the shared breath.
Halfway through, my mind produced the sentence I’m going to remember this.
The thought was an occupational hazard, the reflex to stand outside an event while recording the scene as the moment unfolded.
I dismissed the observation, returning to his mouth, his hands, the way he felt moving within me, the rough cotton of the pillow twisted beneath my fist. This was not a scene I was covering.
This was us choosing each other in the only language we both trusted right now.
I kept talking, at first. “Yes. Like that. Don’t stop. Cal—”
He answered with his body, with the press of his lips to my throat, my shoulder, the place over my heart.
The rhythm built, still slow but deeper, more insistent.
Pleasure gathered low in my belly, coiling tighter with every thrust. I met him, rising to take him, our bodies finding a shared cadence that felt like conversation after days of silence.
Near the end, language deserted me by degrees. Full sentences became instructions, then fragments, finally his name, broken apart, repeated as the pleasure sharpened.
He changed the angle slightly. I came apart, the climax rolling through me in long waves, my body tightening around him, pulling him with me. He followed a moment later, groaning my name as he pulsed inside me, his hips stuttering, then stilling as he spilled himself deep.
He rested his forehead against my temple. For a moment, he made no sound at all. Then he said my name back, quieter, like a secret we now shared.
We stayed joined, breathing together, the cold of the room forgotten. This closeness, this deliberate joining, felt like drawing a circle around the two of us. The rest of the world—the story, the names on the plaque, the file waiting on my computer—could not immediately enter.
Smoke sighed from the doorway before dropping onto the threshold with the long-suffering air of a chaperone whose warnings had been ignored.
I almost laughed. I planned to tell Cal why later.
I never did.
Afterward, he stayed close. He slipped from me carefully, then gathered me against him, my head on his chest, his arm heavy yet certain across my back. I could hear his heartbeat, still a little fast.
I had spent three days imagining every possible shape his rejection might take.
None of those imagined scenes had prepared me for the simple fact of his arm across my back or the way he had looked at me while he was inside me, as if the rest of the world had receded into a question we could decide later, together.
He didn’t withdraw into his side of the bed or offer a practical reason to get up. He lay beside me while the fire ticked itself cooler in the other room.
The silence invited interference.
I could make a joke about Smoke. Ask about the tattoo. Mention the cradle, his mother’s picture, or the closed guitar case. I had collected enough questions in ten minutes to occupy us until dawn.
Instead, I listened to the branch scraping the roof.
At Stillwater, keeping quiet had felt like holding a heavy door shut.
Here, silence required less force. When the urge to speak returned, I let the impulse pass without obeying.
This choosing of each other in the dark felt like its own kind of answer.
Not a solution. A beginning we were writing together, even if the pages after this one remained unwritten.
Cal’s hand remained between my shoulder blades.
The unresolved pieces remained. The crew knew him as Brennan.
The case continued without consulting either of us.
An encrypted file waited on my computer.
Beside the file sat a contract for a book whose advance I had already spent.
My byline could not be separated from the investigation, the file, or the book merely because I wanted clean hands.
I had told him the journalistic decision remained unmade because the question was still unresolved.
Love didn’t settle the question. Love made the cost of every answer easier to see.
This—his body still warm against mine, the evidence of our joining still between my thighs—made the cost sharper, the choice more ours.
His fingers shifted against my back, spreading once before going still again.
No problem had been solved. In the morning, the file would remain encrypted, the book contracted, the investigation active. Cal still hadn’t said he loved me.
But he had crossed the room. He had come to me. He had stayed.
Smoke snored softly from the doorway. The window leaked cold along the sill. Somewhere beyond the wall, the river moved beneath its new skin of ice.
I stayed awake long enough to hear Cal’s breathing deepen. Then I covered his hand with mine.