Chapter Five
By sunset the rail had beaten me. Four hours of sanding by hand, because the rail had turns the power sander could not reach and I was apparently the kind of person who thought she would just do those by hand, real quick.
Now I sat on the bottom step with the block in my lap and my hands held out in front of me.
The palms were red. The fingers would not stop their small stupid tremble.
Somewhere in the last hour I had stopped being able to feel the grain.
The rail was smooth, at least. Raw, pale, waiting for stain. I hauled myself up.
Upstairs I went straight to the bathroom. I turned on the shower and got in while it was still cold. I hissed until the water went from cold to hot. Forehead to the tile, I let it run down my back until the day’s tension drained out of my muscles.
The second I left the shower, the cold was back. I dried off fast and hurried across the room to the bed, sliding between the sheets and pulling the pile of blankets up to my chin.
The mattress dipped down by my feet. I frowned, but kept my eyes closed as what felt like a hand settled over my foot.
The chill sank down through the blankets and came to rest against my bare skin.
A cool palm cupped my ankle, long fingers wrapping around like a shackle. I froze in place, barely breathing.
Then it began to move. Up the outside of my calf, so slow my skin woke ahead of it, a cool line drawn from my ankle to the hollow behind my knee. It paused again, and a shiver went through me.
The lamp was right there beside the bed. A quick movement, and I could put a stop to all of this. I didn’t.
Heat was pooling low in my belly. Want like I hadn’t felt in years. An ache I hadn’t felt in so long, I had almost forgotten how it felt.
“Sam,” I whispered.
The cool touch slid off my skin. And I was alone under my blankets again, with my heart pounding and the desire still aching.
I kept my eyes shut. Waited for the bed to dip again. It did not.
After a while I stretched my foot down to where the weight had been. The mattress had not quite returned to flat, and the dent was cool under my heel. I curled onto my side with my foot still pressed against it, waiting up for someone, and somewhere in the waiting I fell asleep.
Morning came gray and ordinary and landed on my face.
I was still on my side. My foot was still pressed against the dent at the bottom of the bed.
A low heat banked in me that the night had not burned off.
When I finally got up and caught myself in the bathroom mirror, I was wearing an expression I had not worn in a long time.
It took a second to place it.
I was pleased.
I dressed and went down and started the coffee.
Pete’s truck came grumbling up the long drive a little after seven, and the day swallowed me — the bathroom tile he wanted a decision on, the dust, the saw screaming behind the plastic.
Underneath all of it, some quiet part of me had stayed upstairs in the dark, turned toward the empty edge of the bed, waiting for the night to come back around.