Chapter 4 Willa
four
Willa
Another storm hits without much warning.
We spend the day and a half before the storm running properties — his crews on the roofs, me coordinating from the ground, tracking completion across a shared spreadsheet, and running communication between Atlas and the other tradespeople in town who've mobilised without being asked.
By the time the system rolls in Thursday night, I know the name of every property owner, every vulnerable section, every repair that might not hold.
The hotel has been turned into a community shelter for anyone who might be travelling through when the storm arrives hard from the northwest.
I’m curled up listening to the storm, thinking about his kiss with the woodstove going in the library wing, settled in for the night. It's past midnight when Atlas finds me.
I look up, surprised to see him.
“Atlas?” I breathe.
He gets right to business. "Danny's house," he says. "East tarp failed. He's there with his kids, his wife's in Kamloops."
"Then let's go," I say.
"It's going to be bad up there."
The sick feeling I get around heights has already arrived. I'm fully aware of it. "I know," I say. "Let's go."
The drive is four minutes in sheeting rain. From the street I can see the tarp lifting at the corner, beating against the soffit, the underlying section open to the storm. Danny's on the porch with a baby on his hip and the look of a man who's been fighting the urge to go up alone and losing.
"I've got it," Atlas tells him. "Get inside."
He's up the ladder before I've finished pulling on the work gloves he handed me from his truck. The wind is mean — the kind that gets under your jacket and tries to take your footing. I look at the ladder. Seven metres of it, moving slightly in the gusts.
"Willa." His voice from above, cutting through the rain. Not urgent. Just my name, specific and grounded. "Batten strips from the truck. Red bundle."
I get them. I come back to the base of the ladder and look up and he's a dark shape against the wet sky, completely steady, like the wind is happening to everything else and not to him.
"I need you up here," he says. "Second pair of hands on the tarp edge."
I start climbing.
I don't look down. I count rungs and count my own breathing and the rain is coming sideways and soaking through my jacket and by the time I reach the eave I'm thoroughly wet and my hands are shaking and none of that is going to stop me.
His hand comes down and catches my forearm. His grip is exact, fingers wrapping the inside of my wrist where he can feel my pulse, and for a second the fear and something else entirely are the same feeling and I can't tell them apart.
"Step onto the roof at the batten line," he says. Low, close, his mouth near my ear over the sound of the storm. "Weight downslope. Lean into the wind, don't fight it sideways."
I step onto the roof.
He keeps his hand on my arm until I've got my footing. Then he positions me at the tarp edge, puts my hands on the material, and I feel the wind trying to rip it away and I hold on.
"Keep the tension," he says. "I'll nail it off."
I hold. The wind fights me and I fight back.
Atlas moves along the edge with the efficiency of someone built for exactly this — every shot of the nailer precise, no wasted motion, his body low and balanced against the pitch.
He's in his element in a way I have never been in my element, not once, and I am watching him from a wet rooftop in a storm at midnight.
"You're doing fine," he says.
"I'm doing fine," I agree, through my teeth.
He looks at me sideways. Something in his face that has nothing to do with the instruction. "Actually doing fine," he says. "Not reassurance."
"I know," I say. "I can tell the difference."
We finish the section. He guides me back to the eave and I go down the ladder and stand on the ground and put my hands on my knees and breathe. He comes down behind me, steps off the last rung, and stands close. Not touching. Just close, the warmth of him cutting through the cold.
"Nice work," he says. "You were scared, and you went up anyway." His voice is even. "That's a specific thing worth saying."
I straighten up. My hands are still shaking a little. I look at him. He’s rain-soaked, with water running down his jaw, and he's looking at me with recognition. Like he knows exactly what just happened inside me on that roof and finds it the opposite of a weakness.
The lobby is quiet. Sconces low. Maple has given everyone rooms and most of the town is asleep.
I have a borrowed room on the second floor and when we reach the hallway, I stop outside the door.
I'm soaking wet and still running on adrenaline.
Atlas is right behind me and neither of us says anything.
He reaches around me and opens the door.
Inside, he turns me by the shoulder and peels my soaking jacket off. Sets it aside. His flannel is plastered to him, dark with rain, his chest rising and falling, and he's close and I'm wet and cold everywhere except where his hands are on my arms.
I look at him.
He reads whatever's on my face, I see my wet hair and wide eyes reflected in his own, and his mouth comes down to mine.
I grab his flannel, and he walks me back until my shoulders hit the wall and his hands slide under the wet hem of my shirt and up, his palms hot against my skin, and I make a sound into his mouth that surprises me with how little I care.
He gets my shirt over my head before the door is fully closed.
"Okay?" Against my jaw. Not stopping.
"Yes," I say. "Don't stop."
He doesn't stop.
His mouth goes to my throat and then lower and his hands are everywhere, learning — not rushed, not tentative, just thorough, the same way he does everything, like getting it right matters more than getting it fast. I get his flannel open and push it off his shoulders and he shrugs it away without looking and then his mouth is back on my collarbone and I stop thinking about anything above the neck.
He walks me to the bed. Sits me on the edge of it and drops to one knee and takes my wet boots off, one then the other, and sets them aside. Looks up at me.
I pull him toward me by his belt and lie back and he comes down over me. There's a moment where we're just looking at each other, both breathing hard, rain still in his hair, and the measuring we've been doing since day one is done. Just him. Fully here.
Another long moment passes, then his mouth is on my throat again and I stop being able to track the sequence of things.
He's good at this, He touches and licks me until I'm making sounds I didn't plan and my hands are in his hair and I've lost all professional composure and I don't want it back.
"There," I tell him. "Exactly there."
"You can be louder," he says, mouth against my shoulder.
"I'm aware."
"Just saying."
"I heard you," I say, and I stop managing the volume entirely.
He groans against my skin, low and aimed, and I feel it everywhere.
When he pushes his cock inside me, I exhale hard and grip his shoulders, my toes curling.
His hands are on my hips and he sets a pace that makes thinking difficult and I let it. I stop managing everything. I just let myself be here in the moment and it is extraordinarily good.
"Harder," I tell him.
He gives me harder.
His mouth is at my ear. "Tell me what you need."
"I need you to keep doing that," I say, "and I need your hand — yes, there, right there!"
He says good against my throat and gives me his hand where I asked for it.
I stop being able to form sentences. I stop being able to do anything except hold on and feel it build, his cock deep and his fingers exactly right, and when I come it takes me completely, my whole body arching up into him, his name out of my mouth before I know I'm saying it.
He follows me close — two more strokes and he groans low against my neck and his hips stutter and he says Willa like it's the only word he has left.
We lie there while the room comes back: the lamp, the rain on the window, our clothes on the floor.
His thumb moves slow circles on my hip. Outside the storm is easing.
The rain is lighter now. Somewhere below us the old floorboards creak under someone's feet.
"You noticed the batten pattern on my first tarp job," he says. Very dry.
"Second day in town," I confirm.
Something crosses his face — unmistakably the precursor to a smile — and this time it arrives. It changes his face entirely.
I file it. I'm going to be looking at that smile for a long time and I want the details right.