Chapter 25
The drive to Rover Court took eleven minutes, and I spent every one of them running the evidence procedure in my head like a checklist, because if I let myself think about anything else I was going to run a red light.
Footage backed up twice. Timestamps logged.
Files labeled for Owen if this ever sat in front of a judge.
I’d done all of it in the van, parked two streets over, hands steady, mind anywhere but steady, and only when the last file finished copying did I let myself drive the rest of the way to her building.
The gate was latched, which meant she’d locked it behind her and left it for me to work the code, which meant she wanted me to choose it, every step, rather than finding it open and telling myself it didn’t count as being let in.
I respected that more than I could have explained to her without sounding like I’d turned her security habits into something sacred.
Maybe I had. Her door, when I reached it, was unlocked exactly as promised, and I stood on the landing a second longer than I needed to, hand flat against the wood, feeling my pulse beat far too loudly for a doorknob I already had permission to turn.
Then I turned it, went inside, and shut the door behind me the way you close something you intend to keep closed.
She was in the kitchen, sitting on the counter with her knees pulled up, still in the yellow shirt from the gym, and the second she saw my face she stopped whatever joke she’d been about to make. I watched her decide not to make it.
“You okay?” she asked instead.
“He recognized you.” I said it plainly, because plain was the only register I trusted myself with right now. “In the crowd. I saw it happen.”
“I know. I felt it happen.” She didn’t flinch from it, didn’t soften it into something smaller than it was. “It’s fine, Caleb. I filmed four seconds of a cape. That’s it. That’s the whole crime.”
“I know what you filmed. I watched you do it.” I crossed the kitchen, not fast, but with a directness that made her uncross her ankles and let her knees fall open slightly, an answer before I’d asked a question.
“I watched a man who’s spent a month building his own downfall look at you like he was filing your face away for later, and I stood there and didn’t move, because moving would have meant explaining myself to forty strangers with camera phones. ”
“You did the right thing.”
“I know I did the right thing. That’s not the part I’m having trouble with.
” My hands found her hips, not gripping yet, just resting there, feeling the warmth of her through the cotton.
“The part I’m having trouble with is that I’ve spent twenty-nine days watching you through glass and lenses and locked doors, telling myself that was enough, that watching was the whole appetite, and tonight a man in a mask looked at you for one second and I understood exactly how much of a lie that was. ”
Her breath caught, quick and audible, and her hands came up to rest against my chest, not pushing, just there, feeling whatever my heart was doing under her palms. “How long, Caleb?”
“Since the first week on that street. I had a legitimate reason to be parked there, a job, a file with your neighbor’s name on it, and none of that stopped me from noticing you before I noticed anything I was supposed to be watching for.
” I let my hands tighten, just slightly, just enough that she’d feel the difference between resting and wanting.
“The job gave me the excuse. It never gave me the want. That showed up on its own and didn’t leave, and I’ve spent every day since telling myself I could keep it separate from the rest of my life. ”
“And now?”
“Now I can’t.” I dropped my forehead against hers, close enough that I could feel her exhale against my mouth. “I don’t want to watch you from a van anymore, Josie. I want to be inside the room.”
“You are inside the room.” Her voice had dropped, gone low and certain in the way I’d learned meant she was done circling something and ready to name it.
“You’re inside my kitchen, in my apartment, because I unlocked the door and told you to come find me.
That’s not you taking anything. I gave it to you.
I need you to hear the difference, because if you start talking about me like something you finally got your hands on instead of something I handed you, I’m going to stop this conversation right here and make you say it again until you get it right. ”
I pulled back enough to look at her properly, and something in her expression, steady, unflinching, daring me to argue, undid a knot I hadn’t realized I was still carrying.
“You’re not mine because I took you,” I said, slower now, choosing the words the way I’d choose evidence, for accuracy over instinct.
“You’re mine because you keep choosing to hand me things you don’t have to hand me, and I’m still learning how to take them without turning that into ownership. ”
“Better.” She smiled, small and real. “Now kiss me before you talk us both into a seminar.”
I did. Not gently, not at first, because gentle wasn’t what either of us had walked in carrying tonight.
She met it with the same intensity, hands sliding up into my hair, pulling me down to her height on the counter until I had to brace one hand flat against the cabinet behind her just to keep either of us upright.
She tasted like the overpriced concession candy she’d probably bought out of spite for the fifteen dollar ticket, and underneath that, something warmer, familiar, hers.
“Bedroom,” she said against my mouth, not a question.
“Say it again so I know I heard it right.”
“Bedroom, Caleb. Now. Before I climb you like a jungle gym in my own kitchen, which I will absolutely do, I have no shame left where you’re concerned.”
I lifted her off the counter, her legs coming around my waist without hesitation, and carried her down the hall, my mouth finding her throat, her collarbone, anywhere I could reach while still walking a straight line.
She laughed once, breathless, at the logistics of it, and the sound, still her, still unguarded even now, did something to me that felt dangerously close to falling.
Her bedroom was smaller than mine, warmer, lived in, and I set her down at the edge of the bed and stood there a full second just looking at her, cataloging her the way I cataloged a room I was clearing, except this time I let her watch me do it instead of hiding the accounting behind a windshield.
“You’re allowed to look,” she said. “I like being looked at by you. I’m handing you that because I choose to, and it costs me something.”
“I know what it costs you to say that.”
“Then show me you know.”
I peeled the yellow shirt over her head slowly. She reached for my belt with steady hands and undressed me with the same patience, until nothing remained between us to hide behind.
“Say what you want,” I told her, voice rough, hands finally where I’d wanted them for twenty-nine days. “All of it. I’m not going to guess, and I’m not going to assume.”
“I want you to stop being careful with me for exactly one night.” Her hazel eyes held mine, no jokes left in them now, only the truth she’d been circling since the parking lot.
“I want you possessive, out loud, without apologizing for it, as long as you remember I’m choosing this back.
Every time. Not just the first time you asked. ”
“Tell me if I get it wrong,” I said. “Not after. Then. While it’s happening.”
“I will. I always will.” She pulled me down. My mouth found her throat, my hand closed over her breast, and she arched into my palm. “There. Keep doing that.” I did, listening to every change in her breathing and every instruction she gave me.
I told her what I had never said aloud, my mouth against her skin between one confession and the next.
The hours spent waiting for her kitchen light.
The ache when her window went dark. The mornings I promised myself the wanting would pass.
Her hands tightened in my hair and her hips lifted into mine.
“Say it while you’re inside me,” she breathed.
When I was, her legs tightened around my hips and I braced on one forearm so I could watch her face.
I told her how long. When she asked for harder, I gave it; when she said slower, I made myself slow.
She directed every change until her body tightened around mine and my name broke out of her.
I followed with her name against her throat.
Afterward, her head rested on my chest and my hand moved slowly down her spine, neither of us ready to stop touching.
“So,” she said into the quiet, voice sleepy and satisfied. “We’re not really doing three dates and a trial run anymore, are we?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think we are.”
“Good. I hate pretending I don’t already know the answer to things.” She propped herself up on one elbow, looking down at me with an expression I recognized, the one that meant a new question was already loading. “So when do I get to see where you sleep?”
I felt it before I understood it, some old mechanism in my chest locking down hard and fast, the same reflex that had kept Patrick’s name out of every conversation I’d ever had with anyone who mattered to me.
My hand stopped moving against her back.
My jaw went tight enough that she felt it change under her palm.
“Caleb,” she said, carefully now, watching my face do whatever it was doing. “That was a normal question.” I didn’t answer. I didn’t know yet how.