5. Grace
five
Grace
His cabin is not what I expected.
I don't know what I expected — something sparse, maybe, the bachelor version of deep-woods practicality: a couch, a gun rack, dishes for one.
What I find when he opens the door at nine o'clock is a house someone has been living in and caring for.
Bookshelves built into the wall. A kitchen that's clearly used, copper-bottom pans hanging on hooks, a wooden cutting board worn to smooth in the center.
The floors are hardwood, wide-plank, aged to a color like dark honey.
"You built these shelves?”
"Two winters ago."
I run a hand along the edge of the nearest one. The joinery is tight and clean, dovetailed corners, no gaps. "You always said you wanted to learn carpentry."
"Turns out these long winters are good for something."
He gets two glasses of water. We stand at the kitchen counter and drink them and the air in the room is doing something charged and careful at the same time, like both of us know what we're here for and neither of us is interested in pretending otherwise, but also — neither of us wants to rush past this.
Being here. In his space. The ten years of distance shrinking to this warm kitchen and his hands around a glass.
"I thought about you," I say. "I want you to know that. It wasn't that I stopped."
Owen sets his glass down. "Vancouver's not that far. You didn't reach out. Neither did I. That's a different thing from forgetting."
He's right. We both chose the silence. I told myself it was cleaner — a clean break, a real one, no half-measures. What it actually was: self-protection. If I didn't reach out I couldn't be told there was nothing left to reach for.
He comes around the counter.
When he cups my face in his hands the way he did at the festival the breath goes out of me in a specific way. My body knows this. It's been a decade and it knows this.
"Tell me to stop," he says, "and I will."
"If I wanted you to stop," I say, "I would have stayed at my mother's house."
He's got the flannel off me before I've got both arms out of my jacket, and I laugh — actually laugh, right against his mouth — because ten years and the man still can't wait for a zipper.
"You're impatient," I say.
"I've been patient for a decade." He gets my jacket off, drops it wherever. "That's used up."
We hit the bedroom wall before we hit the bed.
His hand at the back of my neck, his mouth hard on mine, teeth catching my lower lip in a way that used to be his signature and apparently still is.
I get his belt open while he works my jeans down my hips, and then we're both fighting the rest of our clothes off in the kind of graceless hurry that has nothing to do with the patience he was just bragging about.
He steps back far enough to look. Ten years of a body he doesn't have a map for anymore.
I look back. Heavier through the chest than he used to be.
A burn scar along one forearm, pale and old.
His cock is already hard against his stomach, thick, flushed, and I remember the exact weight of it in a way that makes my mouth go dry.
"Get on the bed," he says.
I do. He kneels between my legs and doesn't waste time being reverent about it. His mouth finds my inner thigh first, works up slow, and then his tongue is flat against my clit before I've even finished getting comfortable against the pillows. I grab a fistful of the sheet.
"Owen—"
"I know." He doesn't stop.
Two fingers push into me, curling up on every stroke, while his tongue circles slow and deliberate, and I'm not twenty-three anymore but my body files this away like no time passed at all — every place he used to go, and he finds all of them without asking, like his hands remember the map even when the rest of him had to relearn my face.
He adds a third finger when I start rocking against his hand, and the stretch of it, combined with his mouth working exactly the right pressure, has my thighs shaking around his shoulders inside a minute.
I come against his mouth, hips jerking, his name breaking in half in my throat. He doesn't let up until I push at his head, oversensitive, laughing and swearing at the same time.
He comes up over me before I've caught my breath, settling his weight between my legs, and I get a hand around his cock — hot, thick, the head already slick — and stroke, root to tip, twice, until he swears against my ear, low and wrecked.
"Now," I say.
"Not done being patient." He's lying. He lines himself up, drags the head of his cock through how wet I am, once, just to watch my face do something, and then pushes in — slow, one long relentless stroke that has both of us groaning at the same time.
He's bigger than I remember, or I've just forgotten, and either way I feel every inch of the slide, the stretch, the fullness of him bottoming out.
For a second neither of us moves. Ten years condensed into one held breath and his forehead dropped against mine.
"Okay?"
"Move."
He does. Hard, deep, unhurried strokes that have his hips snapping against mine, one hand braced by my head and the other gripping my hip hard enough to leave marks, holding me exactly where he wants me while he fucks me the way I remember he can when he stops holding back — full-body, deliberate, nothing careful about it.
I dig my nails into his shoulder blade. He groans against my throat, a sound I feel more than hear.
"Look at me," he says. "Want to watch you."
I do. His jaw is tight, sweat gathering at his hairline, and when he shifts his angle so every thrust drags against the spot that makes my whole body clench, I go over again — sudden, hard, my back arching off the bed, his name torn out of me.
He follows a few strokes later, hips stuttering, a rough broken sound against my neck as he comes deep inside me and stays there, both of us shaking, his weight braced on his forearms so he doesn't crush me.
He doesn't pull out right away. Presses his mouth to my temple, breathing like he ran here.
"Ten years," he says. “And you’re more perfect than ever.”