14. Monique
Monique
The first thing I'm aware of is warmth.
This is the warmth of a person, all along my back, and there's an arm over my waist, heavy and still.
I lie there for a full three seconds without moving. His arm is over my waist, his breathing slow and even against my hair.
Get up, I think.
We slept very late, and now it’s almost a couple hours before sunset.
Lifting his arm slowly, one careful inch at a time, I slide out from under it and sit on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor. His arm settles back onto the mattress where I was.
Then I find my shoes and go to the kitchen.
Iris is already there.
She's sitting at the small table with a mug in both hands and her camera in front of her. Her eyes are less red than last night. She's wearing Weston's jacket, enormous on her, the sleeves past her knuckles. Her feet are bare.
When I come in, she looks up. "Coffee's fresh."
I pour a mug and sit across from her, and we're quiet for a moment. Just two people in a kitchen.
Iris looks at her mug, then at me. She grins. "So."
"So," I say.
"You stayed."
"I did."
She nods like this confirms something. "He's been lonely for a long time," she says. "Not in a guilt-trip way. Just…he doesn't let people in. He hasn't since our parents died." She wraps her hands tighter around the mug. "He let you in. That's not a small thing."
I stir my coffee.
"He talks about you too," she says. Casual, like she’s mentioning the weather. "The property. The way you see things. He says you're the sharpest person on that build."
My hands stay around the mug. "He's being generous."
"He's really not." She tilts her head. "Weston doesn't do generous with professional assessments. He does accurate. That's what makes people want to work for him." She watches me. "You don't believe it."
"I believe he means it."
"But you don't believe it's true."
I look at her. She's younger than me, but she has a direct, patient gaze. I think about what it would cost to just let the sentence land. To not pivot or deflect and just sit with it.
"Thank you," I say. “And I mean it.”
Iris looks at me for a moment, then something in her face relaxes, like I passed an exam without knowing I was being tested.
"About last night," I say. "With Beckett."
Her hands shift on the mug.
"I'm not trying to tell you what to do," I say. "But the things I noticed, the way he speaks over you sometimes, the conversations redirect toward what he wants…I grew up watching my dad do that. I know what it looks like from the outside."
Iris is looking at the table.
"I'm not saying he's…"
"I know what you mean." Her voice is flat in a controlled way. "You're saying he's like your father."
"I'm saying the pattern looks familiar to me. That's all."
"You've met him only a few times." She looks up.
Her jaw is set. "You're taking something that happened to you and putting it over my relationship, and that's — " She stops.
Her hands press together around the mug.
"Whatever happened to you, I'm sorry, I genuinely am, but I'm not you.
And Beckett's not him. And I need you to let me figure this out for myself. "
"Iris…"
The door opens.
Weston is in the doorway. His eyes move from Iris to me and back to Iris, and the set of his jaw tells me he heard enough and has already decided.
Don't, I think. Not like this.
"Iris," he says.
"Weston, please don't — "
"You're not seeing Beckett anymore."
The kitchen goes quiet.
Iris's expression fractures. Just for a second, shock breaks through. Her chair scrapes back hard, and she's on her feet, looking at him.
"That’s not your decision to make." Her voice is shaking.
"Neither of you get to do this. I'm not a child.
" She grabs her camera off the table, eyeing me.
"I thought you were different from him," she says, and it comes out quieter.
"But you're both doing the same thing. You're just doing it together. "
She walks out. The door closes behind her.
The kitchen holds its quiet. The mugs are on the table.
Weston is still in the doorway with his hands at his sides, while I'm sitting at the table, looking at the chair Iris was in. The coffee is still warm, and neither of us says anything for a long moment.
"You pushed too hard," I say.
"I know."
"She wasn't there yet."
"I had to do something." He comes and sits down beside me, his forearms on the table.
"She was thirteen when they died." He looks at his hands.
"I went to school to pick her up, standing outside the principal's office.
" His hands press flat on the table. "I made her a promise that day.
That I would keep her whole. That nothing else was going to take her apart the way losing them did.
" He stops. "I don't know how to protect her without that being part of it.
I've been trying to figure that out for six years. "
I look at his hands on the table and put mine over his.
He turns his hand over and his fingers close around mine.
We sit like that for a while.
I try Iris four times over the next five hours, once every hour. Four calls, each going to voicemail, and I leave one message. Just her name and call me when you're ready and nothing else. Anything more would be the wrong pressure, and I've already applied enough wrong pressure this late afternoon.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I look at the window and the flat gray water beyond it. I think about what she said, You're doing the same thing.
I turn it over, set it aside, then pull it back toward me. I can't decide if she was right or if I just want her to be.
I should go. The sentence arrives before I've fully decided, already moving.
Weston appears in the doorway.
"Come outside," he says. "Just for a bit."
"I should get back."
"I know." He just looks at me from the doorway and says, "Come outside first."
I go outside.
We walk to the back of the property where the land runs down through low scrub to the break before the beach.
The wind is soft. The water is the flat gray of a coast, still deciding on its weather. We sit on the rough stone of what will eventually be a retaining wall. The air is cold and clean, and the house and everything inside it sits behind us.
"She'll come back," I say.
He looks at the water. "Did she say anything? Before I came in."
"She said the work is hers. That she needs to get there herself." I pause. "She's not wrong."
He's quiet.
"And she knows more than you think she does about Beckett. She just…when someone makes it a choice between them and something else, she'll choose the person every time. Because that's what people do when you ask them to give up the only thing that makes them feel chosen."
He looks at me. "How do you know that?"
I look at the water. "Because I watched my mother do it for eighteen years. Choosing him over and over, and I couldn't understand it. Then one day, I did, and understanding it was worse." I stop. "I pushed too fast with Iris. I know."
"No," he says. "I was the one who pushed her too fast. You told her the truth. I just…I reacted before I thought."
His hand moves on the stone between us. He turns it over, palm up.
I look at it for a moment and put my hand in his.
His thumb moves once across my knuckles. We sit there with the water in front of us.
Then he turns toward me, and I follow. Placing his hand to my jaw, he kisses me. This time, it's slow, slower than before. His other hand comes to my waist, and I lean into it. His mouth is warm, and the stone is cold under my hand.
I think distantly, I'm not leaving.
After a moment, he pulls back just enough. His thumb is on my cheekbone.
"Okay?" he asks.
"Yes," I say.
We go inside.
The room at the back of the house has two windows facing the water, the light coming through them now softer than I expected. He closes the door.
We stand there, looking at each other, and it would be awkward except that it isn't.
He reaches for me slowly, both hands at my face, his thumbs at my jaw, tilting it up. I let my eyes close. His mouth finds mine, and it's different from the kitchen — slower still, more deliberate, and patient.
I wait for the tightening.
My chest stays open.
I'm standing here with his hands at my face and his mouth warm against mine. He pulls back. His eyes are on mine.
"Hey," he says. Low. "Still okay?"
My hands are at his collar. My face is warm. I look at the window for a second because it's easier than looking at him for what I'm about to say. "I haven't…" I stop. I try again. "I haven't done this before."
He goes still. "We can stop if you like," he says. His voice has dropped into the half-register he keeps for things that require care. "We don't have to." He looks at me for a long moment like I matter.
"I want to." The sentence comes out before I've decided to say it, and I notice there's no apology after it. Three words standing in the room without an exit built in. "I just wanted you to know."
He presses his mouth to my forehead and holds it there, his hands still on my face, and something in my chest opens so quietly I almost don't notice it's happening.
"I've got you," he says against my hair, barely above a breath. "Okay? I've got you."
What follows is slow. My hands move to his collar and then his shoulders. He makes a sound low in his throat when I do. I feel that sound more than hear it.
He moves closer, and I move with him. The light strikes through the windows. At some point, my arms are wrapped around his shoulders. My eyes close, and there's the warmth of him.
The room narrows until there's only him.
His forehead rests against mine. His hand tightens at my waist. I hear my name in his voice, rougher now, and something inside me finally gives way.
For a moment, neither of us moves.
Then his breath catches with mine.
The feeling hits all at once, carrying us with it. I feel it in the way he holds me, in the way his eyes close, in the way we stay suspended there together for a single, impossible second before the world settles back into place.
When it passes, he presses his face into my hair and lets out a shaky breath.
I rest my forehead against his shoulder and breathe.
Nobody is coming through the door.
There's nothing to brace for.
I breathe again, slower, letting the quiet be what it is, and I stay.