9. Emily #2
That hits hard. He’s right, and I hate that he’s right, and I hate even more how badly I want to believe him.
“You make it sound easy,” I say.
“It is easy. Other people made it hard for you.” He shrugs like it’s obvious. “That’s on them, not you.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. “Before I agree to anything, I need to ask you something. And I need a straight answer.”
“Ask.”
“Do you live with anyone? A wife? Girlfriend?”
“I’m single.” He says it looking dead into my eyes, unhurried and deliberate, like there’s a whole sentence underneath the two words he’s not saying out loud. I’m single, and I want you to know it.
And there it is. He wants me. It’s right there on his face, no hiding it, no playing it cool, his eyes dropping to my mouth and staying there.
And God help me, I want him too. I’ve wanted him all weekend, probably since I was seventeen and he first started calling me sunshine.
My heart is going so hard I’m sure he can hear it.
“You’re staring,” I say. It comes out lower than I mean it to.
“I know.” He doesn’t look away. If anything he gets worse about it, his gaze moving over my face slow and unhurried, like he’s got all the time in the world and intends to use it. “You want me to stop?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No,” he says, and there’s a smile pulling at his mouth now, “you didn’t.”
Neither of us moves for a second. The air goes thick and quiet.
His gaze comes back up to my eyes, asking, and I don’t look away, which is its own kind of answer.
He shifts an inch closer. I shift an inch closer.
The space between us shrinks to nothing by degrees, slow, both of us giving the other every chance to stop.
Neither of us stops.
We lean in at the same time. There’s no almost about it this time, no drunk classmates, no railing.
His mouth finds mine and it’s soft for about half a second before it isn’t, before it goes deep and certain and a little desperate.
His hand comes up to cradle my jaw, and I’m gripping the front of his shirt to drag him closer.
He tastes like the coffee from the mixer, and ten years of wondering finally, finally gets its answer.
And it is so much better than I let myself imagine.
He kisses me slow at first, then deeper, one hand sliding into my hair and the other spreading warm and firm against my lower back to pull me in.
His thumb strokes along my jaw, tilting my head exactly where he wants it, and I feel it everywhere, down my spine, low in my stomach, in places I’d written off after Henry.
I make a sound into his mouth I’d be embarrassed about if I had any room left to be embarrassed.
Nothing with Henry ever felt like this. Not once.
That thought is what finally pulls me back, the reminder that I am, technically, still married, and we are, technically, in public, and I am coming apart in the arms of a man I hadn’t seen in eight years until two days ago.
When we break apart we’re both breathing hard. His forehead drops to mine.
“We should head back,” I whisper, because if we don’t I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop, and that scares the hell out of me more than anything Henry screamed at me this morning.
“Yeah,” he says, not moving, his thumb still tracing slow over my cheekbone. “We should.”
Neither of us moves for a long moment. I want more.
That’s the dangerous part, the part I’m going to have to deal with later, alone, when my heart isn’t slamming and his mouth isn’t an inch from mine.
I want so much more, and I have wanted it for so long, and that combination is exactly the thing smart women talk themselves out of.
I make myself stand up. Brush the grass off my jeans. Give him a hand up that turns into us standing too close again, his thumb stroking once over my knuckles before he lets go, and I feel that small touch all the way up my arm.
“Think about the job,” he says.
“I’ll think about it.” I’m already walking, because looking at him is dangerous. “I’m not promising anything.”
But the whole way back to the cabin, my mouth still humming, my heart going double-time, I already know I’m going to say yes.
To the job, anyway. The job I can frame as practical, as a fresh start, as a smart woman accepting a real opportunity from an old friend.
The job is the part I can explain to myself.
The rest of it, the kiss, how completely it wrecked me, the fact that I’m already wondering what his cabin looks like and hating myself a little for wondering, that part I have no idea what to do with.
I’ve been out of my marriage for approximately three days.
I do not get to want someone this much this fast. That’s not how recovery is supposed to work.
That’s not how any of this is supposed to work.
Smart, careful, freshly-burned women do not throw their wedding ring in a lake on Friday and melt into a near-stranger’s hands by Sunday.
And yet here I am, walking back to my cabin with grass stains on my jeans and a heartbeat I can’t talk down, having done exactly that.
I let myself into the cabin and Tara takes one look at my face, at the flush I can still feel burning across it, and her eyebrows shoot up.
“Emily Anderson.” She sets down her book very slowly. “What did you do?”