Chapter 42
He led me down a short hallway I hadn’t been in yet, past a bathroom with the door open and a spare room stacked with the same unopened case boxes I’d seen in the living room, and stopped in front of a plain door at the end.
“This one,” he said, and pushed it open, and stood back so I could go in first. This was the room I’d asked for at the window, the one he’d said he wasn’t ready to show me, and now here he was, holding the door for it like it cost him nothing, though I could tell it did.
The room was ordinary in a way that felt almost defiant after everything else tonight.
A made bed, dark blue quilt, corners tucked with the kind of precision that told me he probably remade it every morning out of habit rather than vanity.
A dresser. A window with the curtain pulled all the way open, same as every other window in the house, the streetlight outside throwing a pale stripe across the floor.
“This is it,” he said, from just inside the doorway, not crowding me, letting me look. “This is where I sleep. There’s no version of it I dressed up for you.”
“I can tell.” I turned to face him, and something in his posture, the stillness he wore like armor in every other room of his life, had gone loose here, uncertain in a way I’d never seen on him. “Come here.”
He came. I reached up and put both hands flat against his chest, feeling his heart going fast under my palms, and understood, standing there, that this was the whole shape of the offer. Not just the room. The rest of it too, whatever I wanted to do with it.
“I want to set the pace tonight,” I said. “Not because I don’t trust you to. Because I’ve spent my whole life being watched by people who wanted something from it, and I want to know what it feels like to watch you and want nothing except to see you.”
“Okay.”
“Say it like you mean it, not like you’re agreeing to a rule.”
His jaw shifted, and he brought his hand up to rest over mine where it lay against his chest, pressing it flatter, like he wanted me to feel exactly how hard his heart was working.
“I mean it,” he said. “Whatever you want, however slow you want it. I’m not going to take the lead back from you halfway through, even if it gets hard for me to sit still. Especially then.”
I kissed him first, and kept it slower than either of us was used to, learning the give of his mouth without rushing toward anything, and felt him hold himself there, patient, letting me set the rhythm as if I were driving a road he knew by heart.
When I finally pulled his shirt up over his head he lifted his arms for me without hesitation, and I ran my hands down his chest, over the old thin scar along his ribs I’d never asked about, feeling him watch my face rather than close his eyes as most people did.
“You’re not looking away.”
“You told me to let you watch. I don’t know how to do that with my eyes shut.” His voice had an edge in it, like the admission cost him something to make plainly instead of folding it into something drier.
I undid his belt slowly, watching his jaw tighten, watching him hold still under my hands instead of taking over, his fingers curling into the quilt at his sides like he needed somewhere to put the effort of not reaching for me first. When I finally got him out of his jeans and pushed him back toward the bed, he went down onto it the way you’d go down for someone you trusted with something breakable.
I undressed myself standing over him, unhurried, because I wanted him to have to wait for it the way I’d made him wait at that window weeks ago, except this time there was no glass and no distance, only the one rule I hadn’t given him permission to break yet.
“Touch me.” His hands came to my hips, thumbs pressing into my skin as I climbed over him. His grip firmed, and I let it.
For once he let his head fall back against the pillow instead of tracking every angle of the room, let his eyes close for one long second when my mouth found his throat, and I watched the effort it took him not to reach for control of the moment, watched him catch himself doing it and stop, hands staying at my hips instead of steering.
“Tell me what you want,” I said against his skin.
“You. However you want to give it to me.” A breath, ragged. “I keep wanting to do something with my hands. Move you, guide you. I’m not going to. I just need you to know I want to.”
“I know. Stay there.” I wrapped my hand around him and felt him go rigid, a low sound breaking from his chest. I moved slowly, watching every change in his face because he was letting me.
“Josie.” My name came out of him wrecked, one hand sliding up my spine, the other tightening on my hip, gripping harder than before, not steering, just holding on, like he needed something solid while I took him apart on my own schedule.
“I’ve got you,” I said, and meant it in every direction the words could go.
I rode him slow, felt the exact moment his hips wanted to move against mine and didn’t yet, felt him hold that back too, waiting for me, and when I finally let the pace climb he met it like something breaking loose after being dammed too long, hips rising to mine without asking permission anymore, and I let him have that, gave it back to him with my own hips, harder, until neither of us was keeping count of who was leading.
“I love you,” he said, low, hands tightening on my hips. This time I watched the words happen across his unguarded face.
“Say it again.”
“I love you.” Clearer, deliberate. “I love you, Josie. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t say it, and I’m not going to stop.”
I came apart with his name in my mouth and his hands holding me steady through it, and felt him follow a moment later, my name breaking out of him rough and open, no performance left in it at all, just the plain fact of wanting me and being allowed, finally, to show it without flinching.
I collapsed against his chest after, both of us breathing hard, his hand tracing slow lines down my back, unhurried, nothing testing in it anymore. Just his palm flat against my skin, holding on.
“That was different,” I said, into the quiet, once my heart had slowed enough to talk.
“Different how?”
“You let me see you. The whole time. You didn’t go somewhere else in your head.”
“I didn’t want to go anywhere else.” He pressed a kiss into my hair. “I’ve spent my whole life going somewhere else in my head the second something got to be too much. Tonight it got to be too much about four different times, and I stayed anyway.”
“Which four times?”
“When you undressed standing over me. When you told me to touch you. When you said my name the first time. And right now, actually, telling you about the other three.”
I laughed, quiet, and felt him laugh under me, low and easy, some of the old stillness creeping back into his face now that the urgency had passed, though it looked different now, softer at the edges.
“Ask me something ordinary,” I said.
“What?”
I traced one finger over his wrist until his breathing settled. “Tell me something ordinary. I want to know what a boring conversation with you sounds like.”
He thought about it, actually thought, the way he thought about everything. “What’s your favorite thing to eat that you’d never admit to a client?”
“Cereal for dinner. Any kind. I have a whole cabinet of it I pretend is for guests.”
“I don’t believe you have guests who eat cereal.”
“I don’t. It’s all for me.” I traced a finger along his collarbone. “Your turn, but a real one. What does a day off actually look like for you? Not the version you’d give Rachel.”
“I run in the morning because if I don’t my head gets loud. I fix something in the house that doesn’t need fixing. I eat the same three things on rotation because deciding what to eat feels like one more decision I don’t want to make after a week of them. Owen calls it sad. I call it efficient.”
“Has Rachel ever been in this house?”
“Twice. She reorganized my spice rack both times without asking and I let her because arguing about it wasn’t worth it.” He shifted, pulling me closer against his side. “Your turn. What’s the worst thing you’ve ever built into a room, that didn’t work, that you had to rip out?”
“A trapdoor. Cheap hinges, first year, before I knew what I was doing. It dropped a guy four inches farther than it was supposed to and he sprained his ankle. I cried in the storage room for twenty minutes and then Dani made me rebuild it that same night so I wouldn’t spiral.”
“That sounds like Dani.”
I yawned, unable to help it, the whole day finally landing on me at once. He noticed, the way he noticed everything, and pulled the quilt up over both of us without making a production of it.
“Stay,” he said, quiet, not a question exactly, more like he was testing whether he was allowed to want it out loud.
“I’m staying. I decided that back on your porch, before you even opened the door.” I settled my head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow toward something steadier.
I woke once in the night to find his hand resting flat against my back, not moving, just there, and I laced my fingers through his and went back under, and when morning actually came it arrived plain and gray-gold through the open curtain, no alarm, no rush, his arm heavy across my waist.
I got up before he did, careful not to wake him, and on my way back from the bathroom I noticed the dresser drawer standing open a few inches.
I looked inside without thinking much of it, the same old habit of noticing things, and found the top half empty.
Not messy-empty. Cleared, deliberately, evenly, like he’d taken the time to fold what was left into the back half so the front sat open and ready.
I stood there a moment, understanding exactly what it was and exactly what it wasn’t. He hadn’t asked. He hadn’t left a note about it. He’d just cleared space, quietly, before he knew whether I’d ever need it.
“You’re up early,” he said from the doorway, voice still rough with sleep.
I turned around, gesturing at the drawer. “This.”
He looked at it like he’d forgotten it was visible from the hallway, and for a second something almost sheepish crossed his face. “I did that a few nights ago. I wasn’t going to say anything about it. I didn’t want it to feel like pressure.”
“It doesn’t feel like pressure.” I crossed the room and stood in front of it, running my fingers along the empty wood. “It feels like the first thing you’ve ever given me that you didn’t wait to see if I’d earn.”
“You didn’t have to earn any of it,” he said, quiet. “I think that’s the whole thing I’m still learning.”
I looked at the empty drawer a moment longer, at the space he’d made without knowing if it would ever hold anything of mine, and didn’t put a single thing in it yet. I just left it open, the way he had, and let that be answer enough for this morning.