5. Maple
five
Maple
The boiler is fine. I checked.
I'm standing at the kitchen window in my vintage nightgown, looking at the mountain and thinking about Monday.
He said Monday. It's been four days since Troy left and four days since Nash stood in my doorway and said you're not almost out of options like it was the simplest fact in the world, and I have been waiting with a patience I fundamentally do not possess.
He kissed me in the back parlour and I stepped away like a coward. I have been regretting it in a very specific and physical way ever since.
I pick up my phone. Put it down. Look at the mountain for thirty seconds like it's going to offer an opinion.
Pick it back up.
He answers on the second ring.
"Brennan."
"It's Maple." A pause. "I think there's something wrong with the boiler."
Silence. Then: "What's it doing?"
"Making a sound."
Another pause. Longer.
"Twenty minutes," he says. And hangs up.
I have two mugs on the counter and the kettle just off the boil when the knock comes.
I open the door.
He's in his coveralls and cap, toolbag in hand, and when he sees me — the silk, the nightgown at the hem, my hair loose at three in the morning — he goes very still in the doorway.
He looks at me for a long moment. Then: "How's the boiler?"
"Perfect," I say. "Absolutely fine."
He sets the toolbag down.
"Maple."
"Nash."
The corner of his mouth moves. That restrained, private almost-smile that I have been thinking about for four days. "You want to tell me why you actually called?"
I close the distance and kiss him, and that's the end of the conversation.
He pulls me in by the front of his coveralls and walks me backward until the counter hits my hips and then he turns me around, his mouth at the back of my neck, his hands sliding the silk up over my thighs.
I brace against the counter and let the last four days of waiting become entirely irrelevant.
His hand slides between my thighs and I'm already wet and he makes a low sound against my neck when he finds out.
"Christ, Maple."
"I told you," I say. "I plan ahead."
He laughs, dark and low, and strokes into me with two fingers and I grip the counter edge and stop being clever about anything.
He's not tentative — direct and certain, curling his fingers in a way that makes my knees buckle, watching our reflection in the dark kitchen window and using what he sees.
My head drops back against his chest. His thumb finds my clit and works it in slow deliberate circles and I push back against his hand and make a sound that would carry through every room in this house and find I don't care even slightly.
"That's it," he says, low against my ear. "Let me hear you."
I do. His arm locks around my waist when my legs start to go and he works me through it without slowing — two fingers deep and his thumb relentless and his mouth at my throat — and I come hard and loud with his name wrecked in my throat, shaking against him.
He holds me through it. Then his hand is gone and I hear his belt, his zip, and I reach back and get my hand around him and feel him thick and hard in my palm and his breath goes sharp against my neck.
"Maple." Strained. Like he's been holding that back too.
"Now," I say. "Nash. Right now."
He pushes inside me in one slow deliberate stroke and we both go still.
Full. The particular stillness of something that has been building for weeks finally arriving.
His hands grip my hips and I'm braced on the counter and the dark kitchen window shows us both exactly what this looks like: his size against me, his hands on my hips, my silk nightgown rucked up around my waist, and I watch it and I don't look away.
He fucks me. Deep and unhurried at first, each stroke full and certain, and I push back to meet him and he makes a rough sound and grips me harder.
"Harder," I say. "Nash. Fuck me harder."
He growls against the back of my neck and gives me exactly what I asked for.
"Like that," I say. "Right there, don't stop—"
"I'm not stopping." His mouth is at my ear. "You feel so fucking good."
His hand slides around to the front and his fingers find my clit and I cry out. He doesn't slow, doesn't ease up — driving into me hard while his fingers work in tight circles and I brace against the counter and take it and ask for more.
"Nash—"
"I know." His fingers press harder. "Come for me again."
I do. I clench around him and say his name and keep saying it and he groans against my neck and drives deeper and harder and I feel him lose the rhythm, feel the control go, and then his hands grip me so tight it's almost too much and he buries himself deep and shudders.
Warmth fills me. His whole body pressing me into the counter, hips stuttering, my name torn out of him like he had no choice about it.
Then still. Both of us breathing hard. His forehead on my shoulder.
After a moment his chin drops to rest there. The silk is crumpled around my hips, and neither of us moves to fix it. The kitchen is warm and lit and the mountain sits dark through the window and the house holds, solid and quiet, the radiators ticking.
Rivet trots in from the hall and sits on Nash's boot with the serene satisfaction of a dog whose plan has come together exactly on schedule.
"Our dog," he says, before I can say a word.
I look at our reflection in the dark window. His arms around me, my hair loose, the kitchen warm and lit at three in the morning.
"Tea," I say.
"Yeah," he says. Neither of us moves.
Wrench appears in the doorway, takes one look, and folds himself across both our feet with a long exhale.
Penny doesn't come downstairs.
Penny has decided, correctly, that her work here is done.