Chapter 21 #3
“That’s slander,” I said, “and I’ll be docking a further half point,” and Matt Hartford laughed with his whole chest, head back, both hands flat on the table.
Dinner went long. We didn’t hurry. He told me about the academy, and I told him about the year the maze flooded, and at some point, I stopped keeping track of the conversation and just let it happen.
When I finally got up to wash my hands, I took the long way back, because his house was warm and I was in no rush to be anywhere.
On my way back from the bathroom, I passed an open door and slowed, because I am nosy and a cracked door is a personal invitation.
“Becca’s room, historically,” Matt said from the kitchen, reading my pause through the wall the man has no right to read me through.
“She used to stay here sometimes, off and on, back before Levi. Hasn’t needed it in a good long while.
” A beat, and then, drier, “You can rate the hospital corners if you want. I know you want to.”
“Nine,” I called back. “Improper pillow technique.” But I stood there one more second before I moved on, my hand on the doorframe, because it was such a him room—kept ready, kept warm, for somebody who was happy now and didn’t need it—and something about it made me want to walk back into the kitchen and get my arms around him and not explain why.
So that’s what I did. He was at the sink, and I came up behind him and wrapped my arms around his warm, solid back and pressed my face between his shoulder blades, and he went still, and then he put one wet hand over both of mine and held on, and neither of us explained anything, and the water ran.
“Hi,” he said, finally, amused, a little rough.
“Hi. I’m helping with the dishes.”
“Is that what this is?”
“I’m extremely helpful.”
We did the dishes. It should not be worth making a memory out of, such a simple thing.
But I knew I’d remember it the rest of my life—him washing, me drying, hips bumping.
The window over his sink looked out at his backyard, dark and mowed and empty except for a small garden off to the side, and I thought about the pumpkin I was going to sneak onto his porch.
The kitchen was warm, and the radio he’d turned on low was playing something soft and slow, and I was so happy it felt like a held breath of anticipation.
He shut the water off. And in the new quiet he stood there a second, drying his hands slowly, deciding something. I watched him decide it.
“Ask me,” he said.
“Ask you what?”
“You know what.” He turned around and leaned back against the counter, arms folded, all that steady attention pointed straight at me, nothing between us but a dish towel and about a foot of air that had gotten warm all of a sudden.
“You asked me once. At the wedding. Champagne, porch rail, your hair down like it is right now. You asked me like it was small talk and then you went back inside and left me on that porch a ruined man, because I stood there and realized I didn’t have an answer.
Not one. A whole life, and I couldn’t tell you a single thing I wanted.
” His jaw worked. “I’ve been chewing on that question since the night you asked it, Elizabeth. Ask me again.”
The kitchen was very quiet. The music played low, and I put down my dish towel and asked him.
“What do you want, Matt?”
“You.” No wind-up. The word was out of him before I’d even finished the question.
“You. That’s my answer. I know it now.” He unfolded his arms and closed the foot of air between us, slow, giving me every chance to back up that I did not take, and his hands came up and framed my face.
“I want you.” His thumb traced my cheekbone, and his voice dropped, rough and certain at the same time.
“First thing I ever wanted that was mine. And it turns out I want it so much I can hardly see straight.”
“Matt.” My hands had found his chest, his heart going like a hammer under my palm. “That’s the best answer. Ten out of ten.”
“I’ve had time to practice.”
“Do you want to know what I want?”
His eyes went dark. “Yes.”
I went up on my toes and told him with no words at all.
He made a sound low in his chest and then his arms were around me and the kiss went from warm to serious in about a breath and a half, his hands in my hair, my fingers finding the hem of that unforgivable Henley, the counter at my back and then not, because he’d lifted me clean off the floor and I wrapped myself around him, and we were laughing into it and then we weren’t laughing at all.
He walked me backward down the hallway, slow, sure, his mouth never leaving mine, past the guest room with its warm lamp, past the bare walls I was already hoping to fill, all the way to the last door, the one standing open to a dark room I’d never seen.
And there he stopped. Set me down soft. Pulled back just far enough to look at me, both of us breathing like we’d run a mile, and he didn’t say anything; he just asked with his eyes, one hand open between us, palm up. An offer. A door, held.
“Yes,” I said, and put my hand in his, and we walked through together.