Chapter 37
Luke and Addison's house was warm and loud and full of people who had decided without discussion that Christmas Eve was happening here.
Kirstin stood in the kitchen doorway with a glass of wine she hadn't touched and watched Beck talk to Brady by the fireplace.
He was using his right hand to gesture, the knuckles still faintly yellow at the edges, the fracture healing under the skin.
He'd stopped favoring it three days ago.
She knew. She knew everything about his hands now.
Brady said something and Beck laughed and it reached her from across the room in a place she hadn't known was still tender. A month ago that had been absent from her life and she'd been sitting in April's kitchen pretending the absence didn't matter.
"Stop staring at your boyfriend," Morgan said. She appeared beside Kirstin with a plate of appetizers and the expression of someone who had been managing this party since before the first guest arrived. "It's very cute and I can't handle it."
"I'm not staring."
"You're staring. You've been staring since you walked in. Addison noticed. I noticed. Luke noticed and he doesn't notice anything."
"Luke notices everything."
"Luke notices baseball. The rest is Addison." Morgan held out the plate. "Eat something. You're making me emotional and I don't do emotional at parties I planned."
Kirstin took a cracker with something on it. She didn't eat it. She held it and watched Beck and Brady and Morgan sighed beside her and walked the appetizers toward the living room.
The house was beautiful. Luke had bought it the November after his retirement, the house on the point, and Addison had made it theirs over the following year.
The furniture was comfortable, lived-in.
The bookshelves held books that had been read.
The kitchen was large and open and Addison was running it with the precision she brought to everything.
Luke came through from the back hallway carrying a case of beer. He set it on the counter and opened one and handed it to Beck, who had drifted toward the kitchen because Beck always drifted toward wherever Kirstin was.
"Thanks," Beck said. He took the beer with his right hand. Easy. No wince.
Luke clocked it. Luke clocked everything about the hand because Luke understood what a throwing hand meant.
"Grip's back," Luke said. Quiet. Between them.
"Getting there."
"You'll be ready."
"I know."
Addison called dinner at seven. They sat around the long table in the dining room, the chairs mismatched because Addison had borrowed two from the facility. Kirstin sat beside Beck. His leg pressed against hers under the table. She pressed back.
The meal was simple and good. Turkey that Luke had smoked on the deck since dawn.
Sides that Addison and Morgan had coordinated through a group text Kirstin had been added back to three days ago without comment, the thread just appearing on her phone as if it had never been gone.
Bread from the bakery on the mainland because Beck had offered to bake and Addison had said "you're a guest, sit down. "
Brent asked if the turkey was organic. Luke said it was a turkey. Brent said he'd been eating organic for months. Ashley said that was impossible because Brent's primary food group was cereal.
Morgan was across the table, next to Brady, and Kirstin caught her eye once during the meal.
Morgan raised her glass a quarter inch. Kirstin raised hers.
They didn't need words for it. The glass said welcome back.
The glass said I missed you. The glass said the banner is up and your name is on it and we're here.
After dinner they moved to the living room. The fire was going. Luke sat on the floor with his back against Addison's legs and Addison's hand dropped to his hair and stayed there. Brent and Ashley shared the loveseat.
Beck sat on the couch. Kirstin sat beside him and leaned into his side and his arm came around her and she felt the room register it. Not with surprise. With relief. The couple on the couch was the couple the room had been waiting to see whole again.
Brady said something to Morgan and Morgan laughed. The real one, from her stomach, the laugh that filled rooms and made strangers feel welcome and had been running this island since before Kirstin could remember.
The evening unwound slowly. Nobody rushed. The conversations overlapped and separated and reformed.
At ten, Beck put his mouth close to her ear.
"Ready?"
"Yeah."
They said their goodbyes. Addison hugged her at the door, close, the Addison hug, the one that held on for an extra second because Addison understood what extra seconds meant.
Luke shook Beck's hand and pulled him in and said something Kirstin didn't hear.
Morgan pointed at Kirstin from the living room and mouthed "call me tomorrow" and Kirstin nodded.
He drove to her house. The island was dark and quiet, Christmas Eve, the streets empty, the lights on the houses along Harbor Road blinking in patterns that nobody had coordinated but somehow worked together.
She unlocked the front door. The house was warm.
She'd left the heat on and the lamp by the couch and the kitchen light over the stove.
Her house. The house she'd rebuilt in the months since Beck arrived on the island, the kitchen she'd redone, the bookshelves she'd organized, the life she'd started building because a man from Ocala had made her want more than content.
The painting was on the wall in the hallway. The woman on the beach, reading, smiling at something private. Every time Kirstin passed it she saw herself as he saw her and the distance between those two versions had gotten smaller.
She turned to him in the hallway.
The lamp from the living room threw light across half his face.
His eyes were dark. His curls were falling across his forehead because he'd taken the hat off in the truck and hadn't pushed them back.
He was standing in her hallway on Christmas Eve and he was hers and she had almost lost him and she hadn't and the gratitude and the want hit her at the same time and she didn't separate them.
She kissed him. Hard. Her hands went to his chest and she pushed him against the hallway wall and the painting on the opposite wall shifted on its nail.
His hands went to her hips and she felt his fingers press into her and the grip was strong in both hands now, no hesitation, no favoring, just his hands on her body pulling her closer.
She pulled his shirt over his head. Her mouth moved to his neck, his collarbone, the scar on his right shoulder where the surgery had gone in.
She'd kissed that scar the first night they were together and she kissed it again now and it meant something different.
The first time she was learning him. This time she was taking him back.
His breathing changed. His hands moved up her sides and his thumbs traced the edges of her ribs and she arched into him and made a sound against his shoulder that she didn't try to control.
"Bedroom," she said.
"Kirstin—"
"Bedroom. Now."
She took his hand and pulled him down the hallway. The bedroom door was open. The bed was made. The window faced the backyard and the trees and the dark beyond them, the same trees, the same dark, everything the same except the two people walking through the door.
She pulled her shirt over her head and turned to him and his eyes moved down her body and back up and she watched what that did to his face.
She'd missed being seen by him. She'd missed what his eyes did when they traveled across her skin, his expression shifting from steady to undone in the space between her neck and her waist.
She unhooked her bra and let it fall and she stepped toward him and put her hands on his belt and his stomach tightened under her fingers.
"I missed you," she said. Low. Against his mouth. "I missed this."
He lifted her. His hands under her thighs, strong, and her legs went around his waist and he carried her to the bed and laid her down and his body covered hers and she pulled him closer with her heels against the backs of his legs.
She was not gentle with him. Her hands in his hair, pulling. Her teeth on his shoulder. Her voice in the dark, loud, because this was her house and her bedroom and she was done being quiet about wanting him.
She held his eyes. He held hers. Neither of them closed them. She wanted to see him and she wanted him to see her and the seeing was the intimacy more than the touching. This was the woman in the painting, unguarded, unmanaged, known.
She came apart with her hands gripping his shoulders and his name in her mouth. He followed her. His forehead dropped to hers and his breathing was ragged and warm against her face and his arms trembled and she held him through it, held him while he shook, held him until he was still.
They lay in the dark. Her head on his chest. His arm around her. The house quiet. Christmas.
His heartbeat was steady under her ear. She traced a line across his chest with one finger, slow, lazy, the same line she'd traced the first night.
"Merry Christmas," she said.
"Merry Christmas."
His hand moved through her hair. She closed her eyes.
"I've been thinking," she said. "You don't need the rental, if you don't want it."
His hand stopped. Then it started again. Slower.
"Yeah?"
"Your stuff is mostly here already. Hudson lives here. You cook in my kitchen." She pressed her palm flat against his chest. "It just makes sense."
She felt his chest rise under her hand. A deep breath, held, released.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?"
"Yeah." He kissed the top of her head. "Okay."
She smiled against his skin. The house was warm and dark and quiet and the painting was on the wall in the hallway and the man in her bed had just agreed to stay in it.