Chapter 17 I Took Everything #2
"Completely. No more joint accounts. No more shared debt. No more Kirk."
She finishes putting on her coat slowly. Then she walks around her desk and takes both my hands.
"How do you feel?"
"I feel like I got everything back. Everything he took. Everything I gave away. All of it. I feel like I took everything."
"You did. You took everything that was yours. And that's not revenge, Brook. That's justice."
She squeezes my hands and lets go. "Go home. Go see Ross. Tell him the news. Celebrate. You deserve it."
I drive to Ross's apartment. He opens the door and I step inside and I wrap my arms around him and hold on. He holds me back. Steady and warm and present. He doesn't ask what happened. He just waits.
"It's done," I say against his shoulder. "All of it. Every last financial connection. Gone."
He pulls back and looks at my face. "How do you feel?"
"Free. Really free. For the first time."
He smiles. That quiet warm smile that I fell in love with months ago in a preservation tent at a history festival. "Good. I made dinner. Are you hungry?"
"Starving."
We eat at his kitchen table. Roasted chicken and vegetables and warm bread that he baked himself because apparently he's been practicing baking despite claiming to hate it.
"I thought you said baking requires too much precision," I say, tearing off a piece of bread that is actually quite good.
"It does. But someone I care about told me she loves baking because the precision is satisfying. So I figured I should learn to appreciate it."
"You started baking because I said I liked it?"
"I started baking because I wanted to understand something you love. That's what people do when they care about each other. They try."
"How many loaves did it take before you got one that was edible?"
"Seven. The first three were bricks. The fourth was somehow both raw and burnt at the same time. My dad tried the fifth one and told me it had character which is what he says when something is terrible but he doesn't want to hurt your feelings."
"And the sixth?"
"The sixth was decent. The seventh was this one. I'm calling it a success."
"It is a success. It's really good, Ross."
"Thank you. I'm never doing it again."
I laugh. The sound fills his small apartment and he smiles at me across the table and for a moment everything feels exactly right.
The food. The company. The warm light. The bread that took seven attempts because he wanted to understand something I love.
Kirk never tried to understand anything I loved.
He tolerated my interests when they were convenient and ignored them when they weren't. He never once asked me to teach him something or show him something or explain why something mattered to me.
Ross asks constantly. What are you reading?
What did you find in the archives today?
How does deacidification work? Why is this particular document significant?
He asks because he wants to know. Not because he's making conversation.
Not because he's performing interest. Because he is genuinely curious about the things that make me who I am.
I look at him across the small table in his small kitchen. The candles are lit. The bread is warm. The chicken is perfectly roasted. This man learned to bake bread because I mentioned once that I enjoy baking. Kirk couldn't remember how I took my coffee after nine years.
After dinner we move to the couch. He puts on music. Something soft. Acoustic guitar and a woman's voice singing something I don't recognize. We sit close together and I lean my head against his shoulder.
"Ross."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you. For being patient with me. For not rushing. For letting me figure things out at my own pace."
"You didn't need rushing. You just needed space. And time. And someone who wasn't going to disappear."
"You never disappeared."
"I never will."
He turns his head and kisses my temple. Then my cheek.
Then the corner of my mouth. Then my mouth.
The kiss starts soft but it doesn't stay soft.
His hand comes up to the back of my neck and his fingers slide into my hair and he tilts my head and deepens it.
I taste coffee and bread and him. My hands find his face and I hold him there and kiss him back with everything I've been holding in all day.
The relief. The freedom. The gratitude. The love that I finally said out loud and that he said back.
He pulls me onto his lap on the couch. My knees land on either side of his hips and I settle against him. His hands go to my waist and grip. I can feel him underneath me. Already hard. Already wanting. I roll my hips once and he groans into my mouth.
"Stay tonight," he says against my lips.
"I was planning on it."
He stands up with me still wrapped around him. My legs lock behind his back and he carries me down the narrow hallway to his bedroom. He's stronger than his quiet demeanor suggests. He sets me on the bed and pulls his shirt over his head and I reach for his belt before he can do it himself.
"Impatient," he says.
"Motivated."
He laughs. Then he pushes me gently onto my back and climbs over me.
The bed is narrow and the bookshelves loom on both sides and the lamp on the nightstand fills the room with amber light.
He kneels between my legs and pulls my shirt up slowly.
I lift my arms and he takes it off and drops it on the floor.
His eyes move over my body. My stomach. My chest. The black bra I put on this morning without thinking about who might see it tonight.
He bends down and kisses the skin just above the waistband of my jeans.
My stomach muscles tighten. He undoes the button.
Then the zipper. He works the jeans down my hips and I lift up to help him and then I'm lying beneath him in nothing but my underwear and my bra and his gaze feels warm on my skin.
He unclasps my bra. His fingers are practiced and sure.
I shrug it off and he lowers himself against me and the feeling of his bare chest against mine pulls a sound from my throat that surprises both of us.
He is warm and solid and the weight of him is grounding in a way I've been craving all day without knowing it.