Chapter 17 #2
They went down the hall together. The bedroom door stood open at the end of it, and she let Wren go in ahead of her.
The bedside lamp was on, the bed made, and the closet shut.
Above the headboard hung the photograph of Eleanor on the porch at the coast, caught mid-laugh at thirty-two.
Wren took it all in with one pass, and Cordelia was grateful that she didn’t ask about the photo or remark on the room at all.
She turned back to Cordelia, who had stopped just inside the door and couldn't make herself go any further because now her hands were shaking, a fine tremor she couldn't stop, and her breath had gone shallow and uneven.
None of it would have been visible to anyone normally, but Wren crossed the small space and took Cordelia's hands and stilled them between her own.
She didn't ask if Cordelia was all right and didn't step back to give her room.
She stayed close. She was the one, tonight, who slowed everything down.
Cordelia, who never let anyone else lead, let her.
Wren held Cordelia's hands for a long time, long enough that the tremor faded into something she could breathe around, the way a boat finds its mooring.
Wren's thumbs traced slow arcs across the backs of her knuckles, and Cordelia watched them move, watched the worn leather band of the watch shift on Wren's wrist with each small rotation.
She could feel the warmth of Wren's palms, the dry steadiness of them, and underneath that steadiness, there was something else—a held breath, a carefulness that went deeper than simple courtesy.
Wren was being gentle like she was expecting Cordelia to break apart and shatter.
Cordelia hated that. She hated being the fragile thing in anyone's mind.
"Come here," Wren said.
Cordelia came closer to her. One step, then two.
Wren brought Cordelia's hands to her own mouth and pressed her lips to the knuckles, first the right hand, then the left, unhurried, her breath warm.
It was the kind of gesture that should have felt ceremonial, and instead it felt like being learned.
Like Wren was reading something in the texture of her skin, the ridge of each tendon, the slight swelling at the base of her left thumb where she'd sprained it years ago and it had never quite gone down.
Wren released her hands and reached for the top button of Cordelia's blouse, at the small button, cream against white cotton.
She undid it without fumbling and moved on to the second one, then the third.
Cordelia watched her face—the concentration, her hazel eyes lowered, the way Wren's mouth was set not in a smile but in something more private, a kind of attention that made Cordelia's chest ache.
No one had undressed her like this, not this slowly with this level of patience.
Not as if the act of uncovering her was the whole point and not a means to something else.
The blouse fell open. Wren pushed it off Cordelia's shoulders and let it drop behind her on the floor. Cordelia stood in her bra, and Wren looked at her, her eyes roving around her body just as slowly. Cordelia could feel her gaze as if Wren were caressing her with her hands.
Wren's fingers went to the bra clasp at the front. She undid it with one hand, the gesture practiced, and the cups separated. Wren drew the straps down Cordelia's arms, and the bra joined the blouse on the floor, leaving Cordelia now bare from the waist up.
Wren put her hands on Cordelia's ribs, resting them there, her fingers spread and palms flat.
Cordelia felt the contact land in her body like something she'd been bracing against for years, a pressure she hadn't known she was holding.
Her shoulders dropped a fraction, and her jaw muscles unclenched.
"Okay," Wren said. She guided Cordelia backward, one hand at her hip, until the backs of Cordelia's knees met the edge of the bed. Cordelia sat. The mattress gave under her weight with a familiar sound, and the familiarity of it was almost unbearable—the same sheets, the same give of the mattress springs, the same angle of lamplight across the comforter. But these were different hands, a different woman, even a different version of herself. Cordelia intentionally didn’t look at the photograph of Eleanor above the bed.
Wren knelt, peeling off Cordelia’s socks one at a time, setting them beside the nightstand with the care of someone who understood that order mattered to Cordelia, that disorder in her physical space was a kind of violence.
Her thumbs pressed into the arch of each foot, briefly, and Cordelia's breath caught at how good it was, how stupidly good, such a small thing.
Then Wren stood and unfastened Cordelia's pants, drew the zipper down, and eased the fabric over her hips.
Cordelia lifted herself just enough for Wren to pull them free.
The underwear went with them. And then Cordelia was naked on the edge of her own bed.
It was impossible for her to not notice that Wren was still fully dressed, still in her sweater and soft pants, and the imbalance of it made Cordelia's throat tight.
"You too," Cordelia said. Her voice came out rougher than she expected.
Wren looked at her for a moment, then she undressed, efficiently, without performance or ceremony, and Cordelia saw the lean lines of her: the too-prominent ribs, the clavicles sharper than they should have been, the body that grief had thinned over time.
Wren unbuckled her belt and stepped out of her pants.
She stood in her fitted briefs, and she was beautiful, the way the light caught her curves.
Cordelia wanted to say something about the weight she'd lost but didn’t. She left it for another night.
Wren turned down the comforter and guided Cordelia back against the pillows.
The sheets were cool on her skin. Cordelia lay with her head on the pillow and her hair fanned against the white cotton, and Wren was above her, one knee on the mattress, then both, settling over her with a slowness that was deliberate.
Wren kissed her. It was different this time from the office and the coastal house.
It wasn’t fueled by a sense of urgency or hunger.
Wren's mouth moved against hers with a tenderness that made Cordelia's hands come up to Wren's waist, and Wren let her hold on, let her grip the warm skin at the curve of her hip.
Wren's tongue touched hers and withdrew and came back, and the rhythm of it was like breathing.
Cordelia felt the kiss move across her body.
Down her throat, across her collarbones, into the space between her ribs where the ache lived.
She kissed back, and she let it consume her.
Her world narrowed to just Wren's mouth, Wren's breath, Wren's hand coming up to cradle the back of her skull, her fingers threaded into her hair, holding her like she was someone precious.
Wren's mouth moved to her jaw, then her neck, and landed in the hollow above her clavicle, where the skin was thin and the pulse was visible.
Cordelia felt Wren's soft lips press against it.
She could feel the beat of her own heart under Wren's mouth, and something in her chest cracked open a little further.
Wren kissed down to her breastbone, slow, each press of lips a deliberate thing, and Cordelia lay still and let it happen despite stillness being the hardest thing Cordelia had ever done.
Wren's mouth found her breast. She took the nipple slowly, tongue first, then lips, then a gentle pull that sent an electric current straight down through Cordelia's belly and into the heat that had been building.
Cordelia's back arched off the mattress, a small and involuntary lift.
Wren held in place there with one hand flat on her ribs.
Her mouth was warm and thorough, and her other hand traced a path down Cordelia's side, over the curve of her waist, and along the ridge of her hip.
Cordelia made a sound, low and unguarded, and she heard it leave her mouth and was frightened by how much it revealed and by how little she could do to take it back.
Wren didn't react to it. She just moved to the other breast and gave it the same attention, the same slow pull with her tongue, and Cordelia's hand tightened in the sheets.
She is going to take me apart piece by piece, and I am going to let her, she thought.
Wren kissed lower, down Cordelia's stomach, her lips pressing the soft skin below her navel.
Her hands were on Cordelia's hips, her thumbs tracing the curve.
Cordelia's thighs shifted, an opening she couldn't control, and Wren settled between them with a patience that was almost unbearable.
She pressed her mouth to the inside of Cordelia's thigh, and the warmth and wetness of it made Cordelia's hips tilt up.
"Wren." It was all she could manage, and it still came out cracked.
Wren looked up at her. The lamplight caught the hazel glint of her eyes.
In them, Cordelia saw the tenderness and, beneath it, the wall—the place where Wren was keeping herself, the grief she hadn't spoken about, the hurt she was sealing off so she could give this to her without breaking.
Cordelia recognized it because she had built the same wall her whole life.
In that moment, it was like looking into a mirror she hadn't known existed.