13. Theo
— ? —
Theo
I find out about Brielle’s visit from my car window.
I’ve been parked down the road from Nora’s cottage since the party ended, watching the clock crawl toward the midnight she gave me, unable to stop thinking about the way Adrian screamed at her in front of everyone.
So I saw Brielle cross the lawn from the main house in her robe, half-running. Saw her pound on the door. Saw the light go on in the cottage and stay on for too long.
Now Brielle is stumbling back toward the dark house, and Nora is still inside, and I’m out of my car before I consciously decide to move.
Every step across that lawn is a step I shouldn’t take. Her husband’s windows are dark above me. His grass under my shoes. His wife behind that cottage door, except she was never his, not really, not in any way that survived the river.
She opens the door before I can knock.
“Theo.” Her voice is rough. Tired. “When I said midnight, I didn’t know it came with an opening act.”
“What happened? What did she want?”
“Come in.”
The cottage is small and warm, and Nora looks like she’s been through a war. Her face is pale, her hands unsteady as she pours us both a drink.
“She suspects,” she says simply. “She came here to attack and she left terrified. I gave her rivers and headlights and let her imagination do the rest.”
“You didn’t tell her-”
“I didn’t tell her anything. That’s the beauty of it.
” Nora hands me a glass, and her hand isn’t steady.
“She can’t warn Adrian without explaining what frightened her.
She can’t say the word river out loud without the whole night coming with it.
I’ve locked her in a room with her own guilt, Theo, and I don’t even know yet what she’s guilty of. ”
“And that’s what’s eating you.”
“That’s what’s eating me.” Her voice goes bitter. “Whatever happened on that bank - she knows. It’s living behind her eyes. I watched it move.”
I cross the room in three steps and pull her into my arms.
She resists for a moment - her body stiff, her hands pressed against my chest - and then she breaks. Two years of carrying this alone, two years of pretending to be dead, two years of watching her daughter call another woman Mom - it all comes pouring out in a single, devastating sob.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur against her hair. “I’ve got you. You’re not alone anymore.”
“I’ve been alone for so long.” Her voice is muffled against my chest. “I’d forgotten what it felt like. Having someone-”
“I’m here.” I pull back just enough to see her face. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She looks at me with those eyes - a stranger’s shape, a stranger’s setting, but the same fierce intelligence underneath, and I see the moment something shifts.
“Theo.”
“Yes?”
“I need-” She stops. Starts again. “I need you to say my name. My real name. I need to hear it.”
“Nora.”
Her breath catches.
“Again.”
“Nora.” I press my forehead to hers. “Nora. Nora.”
She kisses me.
It’s not gentle. Her hands fist in my shirt hard enough to tear seams, and I taste salt where her tears have reached her mouth, and neither of us slows down. Her mouth opens against mine. And I stop thinking about anything except this - her, alive, real, here.
“Tell me to stop,” I manage, barely pulling back enough to speak. “If you need me to stop-”
“Don’t you dare.”
I carry her to the bed, and she watches me the whole way, her eyes wide and dark. I understand that neither of us is going to pretend this is comfort anymore.
Her husband’s house glows through the curtain. My best friend’s wife. The thought arrives right on schedule, wearing all its old guilt, and for ten years it was enough to keep my hands in my pockets.
It puts my mouth on her throat instead.
“Theo.” She breathes it more than says it, and her fingers are already working my shirt open, ripping the buttons with a desperation that makes my blood roar. “We shouldn’t. Brielle was just here. If anyone looks out that window…”
“Then they’ll see the light on in the nanny’s cottage.” I find the zipper at her spine and draw it down slowly, one tooth at a time, the sound a sharp rasp in the silence. I watch her pupils swallow the iris. “Tell me to stop and I stop.”
“Don’t… I want you.”
The dress pools at her feet, leaving her bare and trembling in the dim light.
I don’t touch her with my hands yet; I use my eyes, tracing the curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts, the dip of her stomach.
She is a stranger’s body in some places, scarred in others, and I lean in to kiss every inch of the map like I’m relearning a country I lost the deed to.
I linger on the slope of her hip, my lips grazing the skin, memorizing the exact texture of her, terrified that if I blink, she’ll vanish back into the two years of silence.
When my mouth finds the birthmark on her forearm, she makes a sound that breaks somewhere in the middle. I suck the skin there, tasting her, knowing he used to do this, and knowing I do it differently. The difference is the point.
“Say it again,” she whispers.
“Nora.” Against her wrist. “Nora.” Her collarbone. “Nora.” The soft skin below her ear, where her pulse is hammering against my lips like a trapped bird.
I slide my hands down her sides, my palms molding to her curves, squeezing the flesh of her ass to pull her flush against me. I want to absorb her. I want to overwrite every memory of another man with the weight of my own body.
I sink to my knees, my breath hot against her inner thigh.
She gasps, her legs parting instinctively.
I trace the line of her thigh with my tongue, moving upward, savoring the scent of her - salt and heat and two years of waiting.
When I reach the center of her, the dampness is already there, glistening.
Nora reaches down, her fingers trembling as she grabs my hand. She brings my fingers to her lips, licking the pads of my fingertips with a slow, wet swipe before guiding my hand downward. She presses my middle finger against her clit, then slides it deep into her soaking wet entrance.
“Right there,” she whimpers. “Theo, please.”
I replace my fingers with my tongue. I lap at her, long, slow strokes that start at the bottom and swirl upward, circling her clit until she arches her back.
She begins to move her hips, grinding her pussy against my mouth, seeking the friction.
Her fingers dive into my hair, gripping tight, pulling my head closer as she lets out a jagged moan.
“Please… I can’t… I need you inside me,” she begs, her voice breaking. “Theo, fuck me. Now. Please.”
I rise, my cock throbbing and leaking, straining against my pants. My pants come off in a blur, and I move between her legs. I press the head of my cock against her opening, teasing her, letting her feel the size of me. Her face gives it away - lips parting, a shudder rolling through her.
I slide in slowly, an inch at a time. I want to feel every ridge of her, every clench of her muscles welcoming me in. A groan escapes as I bury my face in the crook of her neck, savoring the tightness, the heat, the absolute wrongness and rightness of it.
Stop, some last decent man in me insists. His wife. His house is glowing through that curtain. You buried her together, you and him, side by side at the grave-
Ten years I stood at his dinner table and shook his hand and drove home alone. His wife. His widow. Mine now - every inch under my hands is mine now, and I will spend the rest of my life collecting the decade he wasted.
“You’re so tight,” I groan against her throat. “So perfect. You’re mine, Nora. Ten years overdue - you’re mine.”
I begin to move, slow and rhythmic, pulling almost all the way out before sinking back in deep. I watch her eyes roll back, her hands clutching my shoulders, her nails digging into my skin.
The pace quickens as the yearning turns into a fever. I stop being careful. I drive into her, hard and deep, the sound of our skin slapping together filling the small room.
I fuck her with a desperation that borders on violence, trying to push myself into her very soul, erasing the years, erasing the husband, erasing everything but this.
She screams my name, her body tightening around me in a violent series of contractions. I feel her climax ripple through her, and it triggers my own. I let out a guttural shout, thrusting one last time, burying myself as deep as possible as I cum inside her, the heat of it flooding her.
After, the silence returns, and for once it isn’t asking me anything.
I don’t pull away immediately. I collapse beside her, pulling her small, shaking body against mine, then roll her onto her side, spooning her, my chest pressed to her back, our legs tangled.
We are both naked, bare and exposed in the dim light of the cottage.
I wrap my arm around her waist, pulling her flush against me, my hand resting on her stomach. I press a final, lingering kiss to the back of her neck.
“You’re here,” I whisper against her skin. “You’re really here.”
“I’m here.”
“And you’re not going back.” I lift my head to look at her. “To being dead. To being invisible. You’re not-”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
I pull her closer. Feel her heart beating against my chest - alive, alive, alive.
She’s tracing patterns on my chest, her leg thrown over mine, both of us wrecked and neither of us willing to sleep and waste this.
“Ask it,” she says.
“Ask what?”
“Whatever you’ve been holding since the car. You get this line between your eyebrows.” She presses her thumb there, smoothing it. “So, just ask me.”
I catch her hand and hold it against my heart, because if I’m doing this I want her to feel what it costs.
“The perfume,” I say.
She goes still against me.