Chapter 17 Again
AGAIN
AUDREY
My apartment had survived the burst pipe by six feet and one closed valve.
The hallway outside smelled of wet plaster, cold iron, and the industrial fans pushing air through the floors below.
Inside, the lights worked in the kitchen and nowhere else.
A single lamp burned beside the sofa Gideon had insulted for twelve years, throwing amber across furniture I had chosen after he left.
He stopped just beyond the door.
Not because the apartment was unfamiliar.
Because it was mine.
The last time Gideon had stood here, my father was alive, my mother’s sample books were dry, and the key in his pocket opened every room without asking. He had walked through the apartment as if belonging were a fact established by repetition.
Tonight, he waited in wet clothes while I locked the door behind us.
“You can use the shower first,” I said.
“You are colder.”
“I have dry clothes.”
“So do I, in the car.”
“Your car is on the other side of three fire trucks and a frozen hydrant.”
“A driver can bring them.”
I looked at him.
He looked back.
“May I ask the driver to bring them?” he said.
“Only clothes. No food, contractor, physician, replacement sofa, or emergency acquisition of the building next door.”
“The sofa remains indefensible.”
“It has survived longer than several of your developments.”
“Those were sold at a profit.”
“The sofa has retained all original ownership.”
The corner of his mouth moved.
He sent one message and placed the phone facedown on the kitchen counter.
I found towels in the linen closet and gave him the large gray one.
It had belonged to a set of four. Two had disappeared during the years when Lane House became more company than home.
One had been used to wrap a marble sample after a crate broke in the lobby.
The last waited in Gideon’s hands as if it were evidence of a domestic life he had not purchased.
“The hot water may not last,” I said.
“I can be efficient.”
“You once had a twelve-minute sequence for washing your hair.”
“That was not a sequence.”
“You set a timer.”
“I had a meeting.”
“You were twenty-nine and unbearable.”
“I was thirty.”
“That was the important correction?”
“No.”
He looked toward the narrow hall.
“Which door?”
The question should not have affected me.
It did.
“Second on the left.”
Gideon took two steps, then stopped again.
“Audrey.”
“Yes?”
“Do you want the bathroom door closed?”
My pulse shifted.
The question was not about steam.
Ten years ago, he would have left it open because we had always left it open. Familiarity would have supplied permission. History would have decided for me before I understood a decision had been made.
“Closed,” I said.
He nodded.
The latch clicked behind him.
I remained in the kitchen with both palms on the counter until the shower began.
Water moved through the wall.
After the night we had spent fighting it, the ordinary sound felt obscene.
I changed in my bedroom into soft black pants and an old Lane House shirt. The cotton carried a faded gold line drawing of the building from our first public exhibition. My mother had hated the typeface. My father ordered two hundred shirts anyway because the printer offered a discount.
One hundred and seventy-three remained in storage when he died.
We had given them away at workshops until strangers wore my childhood home across Manhattan.
I sat on the edge of the bed and pressed both hands to my face.
Exhaustion had stripped the day down to its sharpest facts.
My mother’s books were damaged.
Her letter had survived.
Gideon had stayed.
I had asked him upstairs.
The facts did not arrange themselves into safety.
They arranged themselves into desire.
The shower stopped.
A knock sounded at the apartment door before Gideon left the bathroom. I opened it to find his driver holding a black garment bag, a small leather case, and nothing else.
“Mr. West instructed me to confirm there was no food,” the man said.
“There is no food.”
“He appeared concerned I might improvise.”
“He knows his staff.”
The driver handed me the bag and left without glancing into the apartment.
I hung it from the hall hook.
The bathroom door opened.
Gideon stepped into the hallway with the gray towel secured low on his hips and another wrapped around his shoulders. Steam followed him. Water darkened his hair. A thin red mark crossed one forearm where plaster mesh had caught him, and the cut on his knuckle looked worse without dust hiding it.
He saw me looking.
Neither of us pretended the examination was medical.
“Your clothes arrived,” I said.
His gaze moved to the garment bag, then returned to my face.
“I can dress.”
“Yes.”
I did not move.
Neither did he.
The hallway was too narrow for the distance we were trying to maintain. Ten years of remembered touch occupied more room than either body.
Gideon lifted one hand and stopped before reaching me.
“May I?”
“What?”
“Touch your face.”
The exact request returned me to the rooftop.
Put your hand on my face.
Stop.
He had stopped.
That was what I needed ten years ago.
Tonight, I did not need proof he could stop. I needed to discover whether I could begin without losing the right to change direction.
“Yes.”
His palm settled against my cheek.
Warm from the shower. Rough at the base of his fingers. Careful in a way Gideon had never been careful before me because nothing else had taught him how much strength could destroy by arriving too early.
I turned my mouth into his hand.
His breath changed.
“Still yes?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I kissed the center of his palm.
The restraint in his face broke quietly.
He bent and kissed me.
No anger this time.
No reporters, rival offers, architects, or history demanding an answer through our bodies.
His mouth moved over mine with exhausted hunger and a tenderness that made hunger more dangerous.
I gripped the towel at his shoulder. He placed both hands at my waist and waited there until I pulled him closer.
His skin was warm beneath my fingers.
I had forgotten nothing.
That was the first lie desire exposed.
I remembered the shape of his shoulders, the place beneath his jaw where his pulse accelerated, the way he inhaled when my nails moved lightly down his back. I remembered how easily Gideon could make attention feel like the only form of wealth that mattered.
But he had changed.
The man I remembered would have lifted me before I asked because he knew I liked it.
This man kissed me until I pressed against him, then drew back enough to search my face.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Pick me up.”
His hands tightened beneath my thighs.
The towel at his hips became an administrative failure.
I laughed against his mouth.
Gideon carried me into the bedroom without striking the doorframe, which was impressive only because he had once claimed the frame had been installed by a drunk carpenter. He lowered me to the bed and remained standing between my knees.
The lamp behind me gave his body hard edges and deep shadow.
He looked powerful enough to purchase the city outside my windows.
He waited for one woman to decide whether he could remove her shirt.
The contrast made heat move through me.
“Do you want the light?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you want me dressed?”
“No.”
His eyes darkened.
I caught the edge of the towel and pulled.
He let it fall.
Old desire did not return politely.
It came back with a decade of absence inside it.
I touched him with both hands, relearning what time had changed and what it had not. Gideon braced one palm beside my hip. His head lowered when my fingers closed around him. A sound left him that no boardroom, committee, or camera had ever received.
“Look at me,” I said.
He did.
I wanted the control he gave me.
I wanted the strength he held back.
I wanted, for one night, to stop treating every desire as a referendum on whether I had protected myself correctly.
“Take off my shirt.”
He gathered the cotton slowly, lifting it over my ribs, my shoulders, my head. His knuckles brushed my skin. The shirt landed beside the bed with the Lane House drawing folded inward.
Gideon looked at me.
Ten years ago, his gaze had made me feel possessed in the way young women sometimes mistake for being uniquely seen.
Tonight, it felt like a question he intended to keep asking.
“Beautiful,” he said.
“You have purchased more original language.”
“None that applies.”
He bent over me.
His mouth moved from my throat to my breast. I gripped his hair and arched beneath him. The room narrowed to breath, heat, and the precise place his tongue found after years had no right to preserve the knowledge.
My body answered before pride could object.
“Gideon.”
His hand slid along my thigh.
“Tell me what you want.”
“More.”
“Specificity improves execution.”
I opened my eyes.
He looked entirely serious.
“You are using project language in my bed.”
“You asked for more. I possess several methods.”
“Show me the least verbal one.”
His mouth curved against my skin.
Then he did.
He removed the rest of my clothes without haste. He kissed every place fatigue had made tender. When his hand moved between my thighs, he watched my face instead of assuming memory counted as instruction.
I told him yes.
I told him there.
I told him not to stop.
He listened until pleasure broke through me with enough force to turn the damaged building below into nothing but vibration and distant air.
Gideon held me through the aftershocks.
Not tightly.
Not as if my body belonged anywhere except where I placed it.
When I could breathe again, I pulled him over me.
His forehead touched mine.
“Protection?” he asked.
The question carried no presumption.
“Bedside drawer.”
He opened it and found the box.
His face revealed nothing.
I saw the question anyway.
“I had a life,” I said.
“You did.”
“No jealousy?”
“Significant jealousy.”
“Interference?”
“None.”
“Good.”
He returned to me.
The first time we slept together again, in his apartment, hunger had been crowded with old anger and the need to prove choice could survive it. Tonight, the proof had already been given.