16. Holland #3
I had first seen the tattoo at the Stillwater cabin. The flowers had haunted my curiosity ever since. Now I understood: his mother’s name for him, the password, the final charge in her letter. Every meaning had been carried on his skin while he pretended the flowers belonged nowhere.
He stopped beneath my hand.
I remembered the café, the same sudden withdrawal when I touched the flowers. This time he covered my hand with his, holding my palm over his heart. The beat there was strong and a little too fast.
We stayed that way until he moved again.
He kissed the inside of my wrist, then the hollow of my throat, then the slope of my breast, his mouth warm and unhurried.
I arched into the contact, my fingers sliding into his hair.
He traced the line of my ribs, the curve of my waist, the place where my thigh met my hip, always keeping his hands where I could see them.
When his fingers slipped between my legs I was already ready for him, heat gathering there, a slow, inevitable answering.
He stroked me with the same care he had given the letter, learning the rhythm that made my breath catch, that made my hips lift toward him.
I reached down and closed my hand around him. He was hard, the skin silk-smooth over that heat, and he made a low sound against my collarbone when I stroked him once, twice. He caught my wrist gently and brought it back to his chest, over the flowers.
“Let me,” he said.
He settled between my thighs, the weight of him a welcome pressure.
He kept his eyes on mine as he guided himself to me and pressed inside, inch by careful inch.
The stretch was familiar and new at once—deeper because of everything we had just laid bare.
I exhaled and opened to him, my legs coming around his hips.
When he was fully seated he held still, forehead resting against mine, giving both of us time to feel the joining.
Then he began to move.
The rhythm was unhurried, almost ceremonial.
Each withdrawal left me aching; each return filled me completely.
The cheap mattress creaked in time. I could hear the television through the wall, a laugh track that belonged to some other life.
Sweat gathered again at my hairline, at the small of his back where my hands had found purchase.
I mapped the muscles there, the way they flexed with every measured thrust. He kissed me through it—slow, open-mouthed, as if the kiss itself were another way of staying inside me.
Near the end my face tucked against his throat, his breathing lost its practiced measure. The coil low in my belly tightened, bright and inevitable. I spoke into the hollow above his collarbone, the words leaving me without calculation.
“I love you.”
I had made the same declaration once before during a fight, flinging the words across a kitchen as if love were evidence, as if proof could force him to admit the conclusion. Tonight was different. I gave him the words without argument, while he was still moving in me, while we were still joined.
Cal went still for a heartbeat. His forehead rested against mine. Then he thrust again, deeper, and the sound he made was almost a prayer.
“I love you too.”
He answered plainly. No condition attached, no escape route hidden in the sentence.
The words undid us both. I came first, the release rolling through me in long, shuddering waves that made me clench around him.
He followed a moment later, his hips pressing flush, his breath breaking against my mouth as he spilled inside me.
We stayed locked together while the aftershocks faded, his weight a comfort rather than a burden.
The HVAC shuddered through another cycle.
Beyond the gap in the curtains, the mountains disappeared into night.
His mother’s letter remained open on the desk, close enough to reach.
We had not escaped the day. We were still caught within those hours.
Afterward he eased out of me with the same care he had used entering, then drew me against his chest. I lay there listening as his heartbeat slowed.
The urge to talk returned on schedule. I could have asked what the file changed or what he planned to do in the morning.
I could have turned the night into an interview simply because questions were the surest way I knew to keep fear from catching me.
Instead, I let the questions pass.
His hand rested between my shoulder blades, fingers splayed as if he meant to keep me from drifting. There was no need to perform a goodnight or polish the moment into meaning. I fell asleep against him in a chain motel in Missoula, on the worst, most honest day we had ever shared.
I woke once to the dim red numbers of the clock. Cal’s hand was still on my back. His breathing had deepened against my hair. I could feel his full weight in sleep.
Later, I would learn that he had not slept through a night in three years.
The laptop sat closed on the desk. Beside the laptop lay Rosemary’s letter. The small velvet box remained unopened.
Morning would require an answer from him.
For the remaining hours of darkness, the answer could wait.