1. Jade #2
Not loud. Doesn't need to be. His voice settles over the room like weather and nobody argues because there's nothing to argue with. Just like that, it's done.
He cuts his bread—those hands, the roughness of them, knuckles a little thick from years of physical work—and I'm holding my wine glass too tight. I stop pretending I'm not looking.
It's not just that he's attractive, though he obviously is.
Two years of Sunday dinners and I have never once seen him reach for something he didn't get.
Tonight Killian was already setting up to push at Ryan, and Cormac shut it down with five words.
Everyone in this room settled. My body has been settling for two years. I just hadn't said so.
Ryan had a little of that, early on. I thought it would grow.
I'm reaching for the bread basket when Cormac's gaze drops.
My thighs. Just for a second. Warm and direct, like a hand, and then it's gone and he's back to his plate like nothing happened.
The heat of it lands between my legs and stays.
Across the table, Killian has gone very still—watching his father's face, focused, taking inventory.
His hand around his still-empty glass goes tight.
When I glance at him, he's already looking at me. He saw it land.
Something there I've been pretending not to notice for two years. Something that has nothing to do with Ryan and everything to do with those eyes and that jaw and the way he watched me come through that doorway tonight like he'd been waiting too.
I press my thighs together under the table and reach for my wine.
Ryan is cutting his food into very small pieces.
I have another glass of wine I shouldn't, because the casserole is extraordinary, because the kitchen is warm, because every time Cormac shifts in his chair I feel it on my skin.
I miss this. The sound of these two brothers taking shots at each other.
The low register of Cormac's voice when he settles something.
I miss him. I haven't let myself say that until right now, into my wine glass.
"That Pinot from the east rows last year," I say. "I still think about it."
Cormac looks at me. "I know," he says. Quiet. Like he's been keeping track.
"Do you still have any bottles left?"
"A few."
"I'd love one. If you ever?—"
"You can take one when you go."
He says it like that's been decided too—same as the table, same as the dinner, same as the extra place setting, same as all of it.
Like me leaving with a bottle of his wine was obviously happening before I ever knocked on the door.
The pulse low in my stomach does something embarrassing. I look at my plate.
Ryan helps clear after. He stacks plates without being asked, moving around the kitchen quietly, like helpfulness might eventually add up to something. Killian doesn't help. He stays at the table with both elbows down and his hands loose around his empty glass and he just looks at me.
Not a glance. Not a passing thing. He leans forward slightly and looks at me the way he hasn't been letting himself look at me for two years—that coiled quality right at the surface.
His jaw is still. His eyes aren't. The green is darker than I've seen it.
His mouth is parted just slightly. The full lower lip catches the light, and he doesn't say what he was about to say.
Heat moves up my chest. My nipples have tightened against the inside of my shirt and I could not tell you when that started.
I should look away.
I don't.
It goes on long enough that Ryan notices and goes very focused on the dishes, and then Killian pushes back from the table and heads upstairs without a word. His boots on the stairs. Gone.
I've been holding my breath.
"You okay?" Ryan says, low, from the sink.
"Yeah," I say. "I'm fine."
He nods. His jaw works once. He turns back to the sink.
I stand up and start to say something about the boxes—it's late, I should really?—
"The guest room's made up."
Cormac's at the counter with his back half-turned. He says it the same way he said the drainage specs and the Thursday rain. Simply true.
"I was just going to grab the?—"
"Guest room's made up, Jade."
I should say no. I have a bag in my car packed for the drive home.
"Okay," I say.
He nods. Doesn't look at me.
I take my wine glass to the counter. He reaches over and takes it from me, sets it in the sink, and our fingers brush—just the backs of them, just a second—and I get a lungful of him up close. Oak and warm skin and something deeper underneath.
It goes everywhere it can go.
The base of my throat. My breasts, heavy under my shirt, full in a way they weren't ten minutes ago. Low between my legs, the slow pull of something tightening. The palms of my hands. Everywhere a body keeps the things it doesn't say out loud.
He doesn't move his hand for half a second longer than he needs to. I feel that too.
"Goodnight," I say.
"Goodnight."
The guest room is at the end of the hall.
I've slept here before—a few times, early on with Ryan, when this house felt like somewhere I was being welcomed. Before things went quiet. Before February.
My boxes are in the corner. Both sealed. Jade—kitchen. Jade—books. I labeled them myself. I stand there and look at them for a moment.
He set a place for me before I arrived. He made the braise, put out the good napkins, had the wine ready. He decided all of it before I knocked on the door—probably the moment he saw that text on Ryan's phone and went to the kitchen and started the braise.
I turn off the light and get into the bed that was already made for me. The sheets have been changed since the last time I slept here. Softer than they used to be. He chose them.
I lie in the dark and my body keeps its hands on the table.
His weight in the doorframe. His voice settling something.
The heat of his palm on my fingers two doors down the hall.
I think about him on top of me. I think about his hands moving the way they move when he reaches for a wine bottle—deliberate, warm, only on me, only on my hips.
I think about him deciding inside me the way he decides about everything: without negotiation, without taking it back.
I think about him bare. I think about the sound he would make when he came and the fact that I would feel every part of it.
I have spent two years not feeling a man finish.
I want to feel this one. I want it inside me. I want him to keep it there.
My thighs are already pressed together. I leave them.
His room is two doors down the hall.