Chapter 42 Adela #2
He sits beside me when he’s satisfied with it, and then he pulls me in. My back rests against his chest, his arms are around me, and his chin finds the space at my temple like muscle memory.
I look at the fire, feeling the width of him. He’s big and wide, but not like Theo.
I cut that thought loose completely, swallowing it down.
"Remember the first time you came here?" he says.
That’s something that’ll get rid of the thought. "Yes. Your dad made that terrible risotto."
"It was not terrible."
"It was." I smile, remembering that night as if it were yesterday.
"He was nervous."
"Judge Ravenshaw does not get nervous."
"He was nervous about you." His arms tighten slightly. "So was I."
I turn to look at him. "You were nervous about me?"
"You were the mayor's daughter." He looks at me with admiration. "And you were the most composed person I'd ever met, and I had no idea what you actually thought of me."
"I thought you were the most beautiful person I'd ever seen," I say. "Which annoyed me."
He smiles. "Yeah?"
I nod, flicking my eyebrow up. My lips fall into a smirk. "Deeply."
He leans down and kisses me.
His hand comes up to my jaw, tilting my face toward his, the familiar press of his mouth that I have known for two years. I kiss him back. I do. I put my hand against his chest, and I kiss him back like I’ve missed him because I have.
He pulls back a fraction and looks at my face. This time there’s heat. I know exactly what he’s thinking.
He kisses me again, harder this time.
It’s a bit aggressive, the way his mouth devours mine like he’s starving. I hesitate, and I hate myself for it because he feels it. My half-second delay makes his hand still in my hair.
He pulls back, and when his eyes meet mine, they’re not angry –– thankfully. But his eyes move across my face the way they moved across it at the hospital — cataloguing, reading, looking for the thing underneath the surface.
"Hey," I say softly, trying to bring him back to me.
"Hey." His voice is even. "Where'd you go?"
"I'm right here."
"Adela."
I put my hand against his face. "I'm right here. I'm just—" I search for the word that is true and safe simultaneously. "Overwhelmed. In a good way. This is a lot after everything."
He looks at me.
I look back.
His hand, which had stilled, moves again — back into my hair, slower this time. He turns my face back toward his and kisses me again, and this time, there is something different in it. Something that isn't asking.
I feel the shift.
The way he holds me after changes by degrees — the same arms, the same position, but something in the pressure of it. Something that is reminding me of a fact rather than expressing a feeling.
You are mine.
You are here.
You are mine.
I pull back gently. "Cody."
His arms don't loosen. I feel his body against mine, and my pulse picks up.
“Cody,” I say again, trying to get him to stop whatever he’s doing.
He holds onto me, and I start to panic, but he finally releases me, and I inhale as I sit up.
“I should go,” I say quickly.
"Don’t," he whispers.
"I have a shift tomorrow morning." I move to stand, and his hands find my waist.
"Adela."
"Cody, I really—"
"I have one more surprise." He says it quietly. The warmth back in his voice, the edge underneath it gone or buried, and he's looking at me with the expression that has always been the hardest one to say no to — not demanding, just wanting. Just Cody wanting something and making sure I know it.
"What surprise," I say softly.
He stands and takes my hand.
"Come with me."
I take his hand, trying to end the way I’m trembling. I keep telling myself that he’s my boyfriend, that he won’t hurt me, and that he misses me.
He leads me upstairs.
I know every step of this staircase. The third one that creaks is the landing where his father's young portrait hangs, the turn at the top that leads to his wing of the house.
I have walked this route a hundred times.
My hand in his, his thumb moving across my knuckles, the familiar geography of a house that used to feel like a second home.
His room is the same.
Dark walls, the desk in the corner, the bookshelf that is more trophy shelf than bookshelf, the window that looks out over the back garden. His bed is against the far wall.
He's set something up.
Laptop on the bed, propped against the pillows. A bowl of the popcorn I like — the white cheddar, the kind he used to pretend he didn't like, and then he’d eat half of it. The string lights he bought for his dorm freshman year that somehow migrated here.
I look at all of it.
"You planned this," I say, looking around.
"Yeah."
"Dinner and a movie?"
"The dinner was because I missed you." He squeezes my hand. "The movie is because I'm not ready for you to leave."
I look at this boy who built a fire, set up string lights, bought the right popcorn, and kissed me in a way that noticed when I wasn't fully there and held on anyway. Who loves me in the only way he knows how.
"What are we watching?" I ask.
He smiles. “I’ll show you.”
We settle on the bed — me against the headboard, him beside me, the popcorn between us, the laptop open to something I barely register because I am too aware of every point of contact. His shoulder against mine. His hand finding mine in the popcorn bowl.
The string lights make the room amber and soft.
I watch the screen and feel his thumb move across my knuckles and breathe slowly and think about nothing I'm supposed to be thinking about.
"This is nice," he says quietly.
"Yeah," I say.
"We can do this all the time now. You don’t need to ask your parents’ permission to leave the house anymore. And I'm getting healthier every day." He looks at the screen. "Everything's going to be better now that you’re at UW."
I look at the amber light on the wall. I try to keep my voice even as I agree, “Yeah.” That’s what I wanted, right?
His hand tightens on mine.
The movie plays.
I stay.