23. Elise
— ? —
Elise
Saturday arrives wrapped in autumn sunlight.
I spend the morning cleaning an apartment that’s already clean, rearranging throw pillows, changing my outfit three times. The nervous energy running through me has no outlet, so I channel it into scrubbing counters that don’t need scrubbing and folding laundry that’s already folded.
Rowan is coming. To my space. My new life.
I catch myself in the bathroom mirror and barely recognize the woman staring back.
Three weeks ago, I was hollow-eyed and exhausted, running on adrenaline and grief.
Now there’s color in my cheeks. My hair is clean and shining.
I look like someone who sleeps through the night, who eats regular meals, who has started to remember what it feels like to inhabit her own skin.
The buzzer sounds at exactly two o’clock. Not early, not late. Punctual in a way that Simon never was. Simon, who showed up when he felt like it, treated my time as infinitely flexible while guarding his own like a miser.
I press the button to let Rowan in and count the seconds until his knock.
Forty-seven. He must have taken the stairs two at a time.
I open the door, and there he is.
He looks good. Better than good, though there’s a yellow-green shadow along one cheekbone, almost healed now, that I don’t remember from the cabin.
He’s wearing jeans and a soft gray sweater that makes his eyes seem darker, warmer.
His hair is slightly windswept, like he walked part of the way instead of driving.
There’s a paper bag in one hand and an expression on his face that I can only describe as carefully hopeful, like he’s bracing for disappointment while desperately wanting to believe he won’t get it.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
We stand there for a moment, neither of us sure how to bridge the gap that three weeks of silence has created. The air between us feels charged, electric with everything we’re not saying.
Then he holds up the paper bag. “I brought croissants. From that place you mentioned once. The one with the purple awning and the surly owner.”
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything about you.” He says it simply, without drama. Like it’s not a declaration but just a fact of the universe, as unremarkable as gravity.
Something in my chest loosens.
“Your face.” I reach up before I’ve decided to, touch the fading bruise along his cheekbone. “What happened?”
“Your husband. Outside a bar, a couple of weeks ago.” He says it lightly, like it costs nothing. “He got one in. I let him have it.”
“You let him.”
“He needed it more than I needed to duck.” His mouth tilts. “It’s the most useful thing he’s done all year.”
I don’t laugh, quite. But something in me eases another notch, because he’s telling me the truth about something small when he could have shrugged it off, and after the year I’ve had that lands harder than he knows.
I step back to let him in.
He walks through my apartment slowly, taking it all in with an attention that makes me see my own space through fresh eyes.
The secondhand couch I found at an estate sale, its bones good beneath the worn upholstery.
I spent an entire weekend reupholstering it in a deep blue velvet that reminds me of the ocean at dusk.
The bookshelves I assembled myself with YouTube tutorials and too much wine, slightly crooked but standing.
The kitchen window where a small herb garden is just starting to sprout: basil and rosemary and thyme, the first things I’ve grown since I was a child helping my grandmother in her garden.
“You did all this yourself?” he asks, running his fingers along the spine of a book.
“Every bit of it.”
“It’s beautiful.” He turns to face me. “You’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.” The words come out easy, and that’s new too.
He moves closer, and I can smell him now, that clean scent I’ve missed more than I want to admit, mixed with something underneath that’s just him. “And it’s true,” he says. “You look different. Lighter. Like something that was weighing you down is finally gone.”
“Maybe it is.”
We’re standing close now, close enough that I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. Close enough that I can see the faint shadows under his eyes, evidence of his own sleepless nights.
“I wasn’t sure you’d call,” he says quietly. “Every day that went by, I wondered if I’d pushed too hard. Asked for too much. Scared you away with everything I said at the cabin.”
“You didn’t scare me. I scared myself.” I reach up, touch his face, feel the slight rasp of stubble against my palm. “I wasn’t sure I could trust my own feelings. Wasn’t sure if what I felt for you was real or just a reaction to trauma. A lifeboat I was clinging to because the ship was sinking.”
“And now?”
“Now I’ve had three weeks to think about it. Three weeks alone, with no one else’s voice in my head. No crisis to react to. No drama to distract me.” I hold his gaze. “And I still want you. Even without the flood. Even without Simon’s betrayals. Even without any of it. I want this.”
Something moves behind his eyes. Hope, maybe. Or relief. Or the particular vulnerability of someone who’s been holding their breath for a very long time.
“What does that mean?” he asks. “For us?”
“It means I’m ready to try. Really try.” I take a breath, feeling the words form carefully in my mouth. “Not just sleeping together when emotions run high. Not just leaning on you because I’m broken and you’re there. Actually building something. Together. On purpose.”
“I want that.” His voice is rough. “I’ve wanted that for so long.”
“I know.” I smile. “I’m sorry it took me so long to catch up.”
He kisses me.
It’s different from every kiss that came before. Not desperate like the cabin, fueled by crisis and proximity. Not tentative like our goodbye, shadowed by uncertainty. This is something new, confident and sure, two people who’ve chosen each other with clear eyes and open hearts.
When we break apart, we’re both breathing hard.
“The croissants are getting cold,” I say.
“I don’t care about the croissants.”
“Neither do I.”
I take his hand and lead him to my bedroom.
Sunlight cuts across the bed in bright stripes through the half-open blinds. The door clicks shut behind us and for the first time there’s no one else in the building, no hallway, no storm, no Simon.
He turns me to face him and starts undressing me like he has all day.
His hands are slow. He takes the bottom of my shirt and peels it up, kissing the skin as he uncovers it.
A press of his mouth just under my ribs.
Another at the center of my chest when the shirt clears my head.
He reaches behind me and unclasps my bra, sliding the straps down my arms instead of letting them drop.
He kisses the place where the strap had been pressing into the shoulder, then the top of my breast, then lower, until he takes one nipple into his mouth and sucks gently for a long moment.
I lift my hands to his hair out of habit, trying to pull him up, but he catches both wrists and lowers them.
“Let me,” he says quietly.
He sinks to his knees in front of me. His fingers hook into the waistband of my jeans and he drags them down along with my underwear in one steady pull, kissing the front of my thigh as he goes.
I step out of them and he stays there, looking up at me.
Then he leans in and presses his mouth right to my pussy, slow and warm and open.
I suck in a breath when his tongue slides through me.
He doesn’t rush. He licks me in long, unhurried strokes, like he’s learning the taste of me now that no one can walk in.
One hand grips the back of my thigh, the other slides up to spread me wider for his mouth.
He seals his lips over my clit and sucks softly, then lets his tongue flick in steady circles until my knees start to shake.
I try to stay quiet. I try to keep my hips still. Old instinct. Control. I keep one hand on his shoulder, not pushing him away but not fully leaning into it either.
He pulls back just enough to look up at me, mouth wet.
“You’re still holding back,” he says, voice low against my skin. “Still trying to control it.”
I shake my head once, but he’s already right. He always is.
“You’re safe here,” he says, and kisses the inside of my thigh. “No one’s coming. Nothing’s going to break. Let go. I want all of you.”
He lowers his mouth again and stops being gentle.
His tongue works me in harder, filthier strokes.
He pushes two fingers inside me at the same time, curling them deep while he sucks on my clit.
The wet sounds are loud in the quiet room.
I can’t stop the way my hips start rolling against his face.
The pressure builds fast and thick and I can feel myself starting to crack.
“Come on,” he murmurs against me. “Let me have it.”
It hits hard. My cunt clamps down around his fingers and I come with a broken sound I don’t recognize.
The tears hit at the same time. Not the ugly, furious kind from before.
These are hot and sudden, sliding down my face because I finally stopped bracing for something to go wrong.
My thighs shake around his head and I sob once, quiet and raw, while my pussy pulses against his tongue.
Rowan keeps licking me through all of it, slow and thorough until the aftershocks fade. When I go limp he kisses the top of my thigh again and rises to his feet.
“That’s what I wanted,” he says against my mouth, kissing the tear tracks on my face. “All of you.”
I pull at his shirt until he lets me strip it off him.
My hands go to his belt next. I get him naked and push him back toward the bed.
I climb over him, reach for his jeans on the floor, and dig the condom out of his pocket.
He watches my face while I tear the packet open and roll it down his cock, slow and deliberate, squeezing him once at the base before I let go.