8. Nolan #2
Rhys blinked. His eyes were wet, glassy under the candlelight. "You don't know what it costs." He swallowed. His free hand gripped the chair harder. "You don't know what's in this house."
Silence. Soleil's hand tightened on mine under the table.
Then the grin returned — sudden, bright, snapped into place like a mask retrieved from the floor. "But you make it worth it, Sol. Happy birthday."
Glasses raised. Applause. Soleil was smiling, clapping, her eyes bright. She squeezed my hand under the table and leaned into my shoulder.
I reached into my jacket pocket. "I have something for you."
She turned. Her eyes dropped to the small wrapped box in my hand. It was flat, rectangular, and no bigger than a playing card. She took it, peeled the paper carefully, and opened the lid.
Inside, a silver bracelet. Thin, delicate, with a single charm — a tiny sprig of rosemary, cast in sterling, the leaves so fine they looked real. I'd had it made by a jeweler in Tribeca who specialized in botanical pieces. It took a week.
Her fingers hovered over it. She didn't touch it right away. Her lips parted. Her eyes went glassy.
"Nolan." Her voice was barely there. She picked up the bracelet and held it in her palm, the rosemary charm resting against her lifeline. She looked at me. "How did you — "
"You told me about the windowsill. The pots your mother kept."
She pressed her lips together. Blinked fast. She held out her wrist, and I clasped it for her, my fingers brushing the inside of her wrist where the skin was thinnest. She turned her hand over and looked at the charm against her pulse.
She leaned in. Her lips brushed my ear. Her breath was warm, and when she spoke, her voice was low enough that only I could hear it.
"I want to show you my room." Her fingers trailed down my tie, slow, deliberate. "And then I want you to lock the door behind us."
My hand tightened on my glass. The champagne trembled. I set it down before I cracked the stem.
She pulled back, her eyes holding mine, dark and direct with a dare underneath the warmth. She took my hand and stood. I followed her through the crowd, up the staircase, down a hallway where the noise softened to a hum. She pushed open the last door and pulled me inside.
The room was hers. Every inch of it. Paintings covered the walls, bold and uneven in a teenager's brushwork, learning its own language.
Books stacked on every surface, spines cracked, Post-it notes bristling from the pages like tiny flags.
A window seat overlooked the garden, the glass cold when I brushed it with my knuckles.
Art supplies cluttered a desk in the corner — tubes of paint, jars of brushes, a palette smeared with colors that had dried years ago.
I was mapping the room, checking proximity to Hugh's study and the second staircase at the hall's end, when my eyes found the mirror above her dresser.
A letter was taped to the glass. Small, lined paper. Yellowed edges. A child's handwriting, the letters climbing uphill, the i's dotted with circles.
Dear Santa, I don't want any toys this year. Can you please bring my mommy back? I promise I've been very good. Love, Soleil, age 12.
I read it twice. My hand hung at my side.
Photographs surrounded the mirror. Soleil at six, missing her front teeth. Soleil at ten, paint-smeared, holding a canvas half her size. Soleil and a woman with the same dark curls, standing in a garden where rosemary bushes climbed to their waists.
"My family loves you." She was behind me. Her chin on my shoulder, her arms around my waist. "I can tell."
"They don't know me."
She turned me around, her hands flat on my chest. "You're doing that thing. Where you say something that sounds modest but feels like a warning."
"Maybe it's both."
She studied me, shook her head, rose on her toes, and kissed me.
My hands found her waist. Her back found the door.
The gold fabric was thin beneath my fingers, the curve of her hips warm through it.
She pulled my shirt free from my waistband.
Her fingers found bare skin, and the contact jolted through my spine.
I pressed her harder against the door. My mouth moved to her neck, the spot below her ear.
She gasped. Her fingers dug into my back.
Her thigh rose against my hip. I caught it.
My hand slid beneath the fabric of her dress, fingers on the bare skin of her outer thigh, and she arched into me.
My mouth found hers again — deep, her tongue against mine, my hand climbing, her body pressing forward.
The map of the house in my head was dissolving.
The study, the hallway, the locked cabinet — static beneath the heat of her skin and the sound of my name leaving her mouth.
"Soleil!" Hugh's voice from downstairs. "They're bringing out the cake!"
We froze. Foreheads together. Her breathing came fast against my lips. My hand was still on her thigh. Her fingers were still beneath my shirt, pressed flat against my ribs.
She laughed. Low, breathless. "His timing is terrible."
"Criminal."
She kissed me once more — quick, firm — and ducked under my arm. She smoothed her dress, fixed her hair in the mirror, and pointed at me. "Fix your shirt."
I tucked it in. She disappeared down the hallway. I stood in her bedroom, surrounded by her paintings, her books and the letter to Santa taped to her mirror, waiting for my breathing to return.
Downstairs. The cake was lit. Forty-five people singing. Soleil blew out the candles, and her eyes found mine across the room. Her lips spread into the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.
She deserves every good thing in this room.
I blinked. I looked at her across the room — laughing, her hand on Rhys's arm. The rosemary charm glinted on her wrist.
What the hell was that?