19. Calder #2
We reached the loft ladder without breaking apart cleanly enough to pretend dignity.
The rungs were narrow; my shoulders were too broad for the opening.
Holland's heel caught in the hem of her pants.
She kicked free, nearly striking me in the chin.
Her hands grabbed the loft floor to keep her from falling backward.
For a second we stared at each other.
Her mouth twitched. Mine did too.
Then she hauled herself up, leaving me to follow.
The loft was colder than the room below. Heat rose through the hatch while frost silvered the lower corners of the window. Holland crawled beneath the wool blanket her mother had mailed from Wisconsin, then pulled me after her.
She sat up long enough to draw the sweatshirt over her head.
I followed the line of her spine, the pale skin of her back, the way the cold raised fine hairs along her arms. I pulled my own henley off.
Her fingers found the tattoo at once, tracing each of the four flowers with the same attention she gave a document that mattered. She did not speak. She did not need to.
I eased her back down. The blanket settled over us.
Her pants came away with mine. Skin met skin.
The loft air was sharp against my shoulders; her body was warm wherever we touched.
I kissed the hollow of her throat, the place where her pulse beat, then lower, across the slope of her breast, until her breath changed.
Holland had no use for coyness. She told me what she wanted in plain words, using the same precision she brought to evidence or a bad citation. I listened. My replies were quiet, spare because I had never learned ornamental language for intimacy. I distrusted such language from other men.
"Look at me."
She did.
I settled between her thighs. She guided me with one hand, the other at the back of my neck.
I entered her slowly, feeling the heat of her close around me, the exact give of her body as she took me in.
Lamplight reached us through the open hatch, enough to hold her gaze.
Neither of us looked away. I moved with care at first, then deeper when her hips rose to meet me.
The loft creaked. Her breath shortened against my mouth.
Pleasure gathered in her the way weather gathers along a ridge: first a change in the air, then the full weight of it.
Her fingers tightened on my shoulder, then my forearm.
She said my name once, roughened past its usual shape.
I felt her contract around me, the long, involuntary pull of her climax, her body lifting and holding.
At the height of it I pressed my forehead to her temple and stopped every movement, remaining fully inside her while she shook.
My breath left me with the shape of her name but none of its sound.
I stayed there after stillness became possible.
Usually I was planning the next movement before the present one ended.
Even in bed, some part of me kept watch: door, window, weather, hour.
With Holland beneath me while her hand rested at the back of my neck, I had nowhere else to be.
The secret I had carried for twelve years sat outside this loft.
In here there was only the press of her thighs against my hips, the damp heat where we were joined, the steady return of her breathing.
We eased apart. We lay under the blanket.
She had spent much of her life filling silence before someone else could turn the quiet against her. Now she let this silence remain. Her breathing lengthened beside me. Downstairs, the furnace shut off with a metal tick; the cabin gave a few cooling pops.
After a while, I touched her again.
This time the need began with me. I took my time because only one night remained between telling Ridge, then facing the crew. I wanted to inhabit every minute. The long route was attention, not delay.
My hands rested at her hips. She liked the whole width of a palm, firm enough to reassure her but never tight enough to pin.
I kissed down the center of her body, over the slight rise of her belly, then lower.
I spent ten minutes on what could have been rushed through in two: the inner skin of her thighs, the place where she was still slick from before, the slow, exact pressure of my mouth until her hips lifted again and her hand found my hair.
She understood. I knew when her body changed beneath my hands, when she stopped anticipating, began to answer, when a second climax moved through her more quietly than the first, a deep tremor she tried and failed to contain.
Then she returned the pace to me.
She drew me up and over onto my back. The mattress took my weight.
Her mouth moved over my skin with the same patience I had given her: collarbone, the line of my ribs, the place just below my navel.
Her hands followed, unhurried, exact. When she took me into her mouth the warmth of it pulled a sound from my chest I had not meant to make.
She had learned my language without either of us admitting a lesson had taken place.
I went quiet. My shoulders lowered until the mattress took their full weight.
Receiving care had always felt more dangerous than giving care. Giving preserved my usefulness, my control. Receiving required only permission. Permission was harder. Holland waited without asking, her hand resting against my ribs while her mouth worked over me, slow and sure.
I let her continue.
She rose over me after a time and took me inside her again, settling down until I was seated as deep as I could go.
We stayed that way a moment, joined, looking at each other in the thin light.
Then she began to move. Near the end her sentences broke down.
Her hands stayed behind my neck, holding rather than guiding.
My name came from her one syllable at a time, meant for no room beyond this one.
I listened to every repetition.
Another word pressed behind my teeth, but I kept the word there. I would not spend the word under cover of darkness or let pleasure speak for me. That word belonged to daylight, to her porch, to coffee cooling in my hand while I looked straight at her.
I held the word for then.
When I came it was with my forehead against hers, her body still moving over mine, the two of us locked together in the narrow bed as if the loft itself had contracted around us.
I felt the last of the day's tension leave me in a long, helpless wave.
She held me through it, her mouth at my temple, her breath warm.
Afterward, we didn't talk.
The bed was too small for distance. Holland tucked herself against my side with my arm across her back; the arrangement happened without negotiation.
I could still feel the faint pulse where we had been joined.
The furnace fired again below us with a dull whomp.
Wind combed loose snow against the glass.
Sleep came before I had time to prepare.
I woke sometime before dawn. The loft window had begun to pale, though no edge of sun showed above the ridge.
My hand was holding hers.
I studied our joined hands in the gray light. At some point during sleep, I'd reached across the narrow space to find her. I had no memory of the movement.
For most of my adult life, I'd slept alone. Even unconscious, I kept to my side of the bed while waking at unfamiliar sounds. Yet my hand had gone looking for Holland while the guarded part of me was absent.
My hand stayed where the sleeping part of me had placed it.
She slept facing me, her hair across her cheek; one bare foot rested outside the blanket.
Her breathing remained deep, even. Beneath my palm, her hand was warm.
The tattoo on my chest lay against her shoulder.
Four flowers. Four names. And now this: the simple fact of her skin under my hand, the knowledge that I would tell the crew the truth in a few hours and then come back here, to this loft, to her.
In a few hours I would stand before the crew. I would tell them my father's name, Wyatt's name, the truth about Rattlesnake Gulch. I couldn't control what followed. Their anger, questions, and suspicion belonged to them.
But I knew who would be waiting when the meeting ended.
I closed my eyes, still holding Holland's hand, then slept until morning.