Chapter 14
There were four rules. Nora checked them off on her fingers on the walk from the truck to the door. That was who she was, and the walk was short, and a person had to do something with her hands.
Rule one: don’t sleep with a neighbor. She could not un-see a neighbor.
He was going to be eight feet away every single morning for the foreseeable future.
If this went badly she would spend the rest of her tenure in this house conducting elaborate surveillance to make sure the driveway was empty before she took out the recycling.
Rule two: don’t sleep with a client-adjacent party. She did the books for the bar half his team drank in. That was a professional entanglement, and professional entanglements on top of personal ones made the kind of mess she’d spent her adult life avoiding.
Rule three: property values. That one was a joke she was making entirely to herself.
Breaking rules one and two had put her in a strange, giddy, light-headed frame of mind.
The only way she knew to handle the strange giddiness was to file it.
Consideration three: cohabitation, or the appearance thereof, may affect resale.
She almost laughed. He heard the almost, and looked at her, and she shook her head.
Rule four: don’t decide a person is safe just because they’re standing close to you in the dark. And they smell like cedar and spice. And they didn’t laugh when you told them about the phone book.
She unlocked her front door and let him into her house.
The house was the concession. Not the rest of it.
The rest of it had been a foregone conclusion since the truck, since the payphone, since the second week after he moved in, honestly.
She had spent four years and a lot of time and a genuinely unreasonable amount of money making this house hers.
The paint she’d chosen, the good couch she’d saved for.
The drawer where the keys went, and the hook where the keys went if she couldn’t be bothered with the drawer.
Making a life where nothing arrived unexpectedly, and nobody disturbed her peace.
She let him in because Charlie was asleep in his house with a Deb-approved sitter. It was a practical reason and she leaned on it hard, because she didn’t want to look at the other one.
Rule one broke in the hallway, with her back against the wall she’d painted a color called Stillwater, and his hands framing her jaw. She stopped counting the rules because every thought went out of her head
Rule two broke in the doorway to her bedroom. He stopped, with his mouth at her throat and one enormous hand curved under her butt, holding her weight like it was nothing, and said, plainly, “Tell me if this is a no.”
“It’s not a no.”
“Say the other one, then.”
“It’s a yes.” Her voice came out unsteadily, which she resented. “Rognar. It’s a yes, would you—”
He laughed, which wasn’t at all what she’d planned for. He laughed, low and delighted, into the curve of her neck. Not laughing at her, but at the ridiculous fact of the two of them stalled in a bedroom doorway.
She had never in her life been to bed with anyone who laughed.
Sex had always been a serious business, a slightly grim negotiation conducted in the dark by two people pretending very hard.
Nobody had ever once found it funny. Nobody had been so plainly and warmly glad to be exactly where he was.
She froze against him, both hands still in his shirt, and something turned over in her chest that had no business turning over in a doorway.
He must have felt it, because he stopped at once.
“Okay?” He pulled back to look at her, and there was nothing fake in his face, only a real and immediate attention. “We can stop. We don’t have to—”
“No. It’s fine.” She had to swallow. “Keep… Do that again.”
“Do what again?”
“The—” She couldn’t say laugh because it was mortifying, like the most exposing possible thing to ask for. “Just. Don’t stop being like that.”
He looked at her for one more second, and she could see he understood. He had the grace not to say a word about it. Then he carried her through the doorway, and she stopped counting rules entirely.
Rule three she never got back to.
Rule four she’d already broken on the front path and just hadn’t admitted it yet.
Her bed was against the far wall, calm and serene and unshared until tonight. She’d never had anyone in this room. His hands weren’t quite as steady when he laid her down. He stood over her and she looked up at him, and he made a sound in the back of his throat like he was in pain.
“Nora.” His voice was soft and low and a little astonished. “I don’t—”
“It’s fine.” She sat up, took hold of the hem of her dress, and pulled it off over her head.
She had a lacy bra on beneath it because she’d been aware, when she chose it, that it would be seen tonight.
He made that low sound again. Then he dropped to his knees beside the bed and she was up against his mouth with her hands in his hair before she knew it.
“I didn’t know,” she managed.
“I’m full of surprises.” He spoke against her skin. “You have to tell me if anything’s—”
He was trying so hard to be careful, and she couldn’t bear it, and she pulled his hair to get his mouth back on her because she wanted to enjoy herself so badly that she felt like crying. She’d spent her whole sex life not enjoying herself.
“Are you going to stop talking now?” she said.
“I’m not going to stop.” He bit her gently, over her bra, and she pushed his head down so he’d do it again. “But I will if you want. You can trust me with that.”
He worked her out of her bra with one hand and his mouth, and put her back against the mattress.
He kissed her breasts and her ribs and the insides of her thighs, which she hadn't expected to do anything for her, and she was panting and wild and moving restlessly by the time he got to the edge of her underwear.
He looked up at her, his hair loose and his eyes hot.
“Can I?”
She nodded, because it would come out as a gasp if she tried to speak, and she didn't want to waste words. He peeled the underwear down and off, and she was bare in front of him for the first time. She expected the pause, the appraisal, and she tried to pretend it didn't matter.
It didn't come. He made that low noise in his throat again and then he put his mouth on her, and his first touch was so hot and soft and firm that she came apart for him at once, without meaning to, with her hands in his hair, and him not letting up for a second.
And then he did it again, his enormous fingers gentle and careful, and his mouth everywhere, and she was shaking by the time she finally pushed him off, so overstimulated she couldn't have taken another second.
He crawled up the bed beside her, propped on one elbow, looking at her with the most absurdly pleased expression.
She pushed his hair out of his face. "You can be very smug about that."
"Can I?"
"Only for a minute."
He grinned, and then he knelt between her legs and ran one hand up from her knee to the top of her thigh, watching her face.
“You good?”
“I’m good.” She swallowed. “I want to see you.”
“You can see me.” He was working his pants open. “You can do whatever you want. I’m flexible.”
She laughed, she couldn’t help it. “Oh, I bet you are.”
She’d never said anything like that to a man in her life.
It was exhilarating and horrifying in about equal parts, and he laughed back, delighted, and she sat up to get his mouth and the laugh together.
He was huge and hard and hot against her, and he was kissing her again, and she wanted, all at once, to be on top of him.
They got his pants off, and she got him on his back somehow, which took effort because he was not a male who was used to being moved, but he let her move him.
She found herself on top of him, straddling that ridiculous body, and he looked up at her with his hair loose around his shoulders and his mouth red from kissing her, and said, “This is a good one.”
“Rognar.” She put a hand over his mouth. “I’m very close to doing this and I need you to say something reassuring.”
He nodded. She took her hand away.
“You can’t hurt me,” he said. It was the truest thing he could have said. He was twice her size and she wasn’t going to break him, and she knew it down to her bones, the way she knew numbers.
“I’ve got you.” He put one huge warm hand on her waist and drew her slowly down, and his other hand went between them and he held her open while he pushed up and in, and the first inch of him was so big that her breath stopped.
"Oh," he said, with a reverence that made her want to hear it a hundred times, and she kept going down, because she was making the choice and she was trusting him and he was watching her like he couldn’t believe this was his to have.
He went in. All of him, filling her so completely that she made a surprised, shocked sound that made him smile because he knew why she’d made it and she loved him for knowing.
She moved. She had to. She couldn’t just sit there and let him be inside her and not move. She rose up and pushed down, and the breath went out of him. She put her hands on his chest and did it again and he said ah, fuck softly, and put his hands on her hips, and helped her.
He let her take him the way she needed to, and he took her right back, and it was nothing she’d ever done before.
She did it forever, and when she came again it was with her head thrown back, her hands clutching at him, and his hands hard on her.
When she opened her eyes he was looking at her with wonder.
She collapsed down onto his chest, boneless, and then he rolled her under him and she realized he hadn’t even finished yet. He’d waited for her, and the thought was so unexpected and so lovely that she almost came again just from that.
She hooked her legs around his back and he pushed her knees up and drove into her, and there was nothing gentle about it, and she didn’t want there to be.
She wanted him exactly like this. She wanted his weight, and his heat, and the sheer intensity of him.
He held himself above her on one arm and looked down at her and came with her name in his mouth.
When he was done he slowly lowered himself down onto her.
He was heavy and hot and sweaty, and she had never let anyone stay like that, and she’d never wanted them to before.
She ran her hand up his back and discovered the muscles there were shuddering slightly with aftershocks. He laughed into her neck.
“That was good.” He propped himself on his elbows and looked at her, his hair falling into his face. “You liked that?”
“I liked that,” she said, and it was true, but it wasn’t the most important thing. Because she knew, as soon as she said it, that the single best thing about this night hadn’t been the orgasms or the laughing or the things she’d let herself say. It was the look on his face right now, watching her.
“I liked that too,” he said. “I want to do it again.”
“Okay.”
“Soon,” he said, and dropped his forehead against hers. “But not tonight. I’m supposed to be charming and considerate and I’m not. I’m going to fall asleep on you in about three minutes.”
She laughed. She didn’t know why. She just felt like laughing.
He was as good as his word. He fell asleep on her three minutes later, his weight enormous and absolutely comfortable.
She fell asleep with him still on top of her, and woke up in the dark to find he’d rolled them both onto their sides and curled around her.
She couldn’t see his face. There was only his arm around her waist and his breath on her neck, his body solid and warm and unmoving.
She thought of a nine-year-old in a phone booth, and a twenty-year-old who hadn’t been signed, and a thirty-four-year-old who was maybe about to understand some things.
She fell asleep before she could file it.
She woke to noise in her kitchen. For one disoriented second she was alarmed.
Nobody made noise in her kitchen. Her adult life had been specifically arranged so that the only sounds in the house in the morning were the ones she made herself.
A cupboard. Running water. The soft clatter of a pan set on the range.
Then a small, delighted, gummy shriek floated down the hallway, and she remembered the night before in a single warm flood. She got up, and found her robe, and went down the hallway.
He was in her kitchen. He’d been next door, showered and changed, and come back with Charlie and a diaper bag.
Charlie was strapped to his chest in the sling, facing out, chewing her fist with grim six-month determination and kicking her chubby green legs at the general concept of morning.
He had one arm around the baby and the other working the pan, cracking an egg one-handed against the rim, and she stopped in the doorway.
She had watched him do this through the glass—cooking with his daughter tucked against him.
It had done unfortunate things to her then, and she had pretended it hadn’t.
Except now she wasn’t looking through the glass and it was even worse.
She was standing in the room. It was her range and her pan and her one good spatula, and he was using all of them like he’d used them a hundred times before.
He held out her green mug without turning around.
“You’re up,” he said.
She took it. She didn’t have to look to know that it would be the right color and the right amount of oat milk—coffee made by a male who had never once been told and had simply watched and remembered.
He hadn’t looked up from the eggs to do it.
He hadn’t made a fuss of it, and her chest went tight and warm all at once.
She’d have coped better if he’d made a production of it.
On the counter, her mother’s ancient cream-colored 1997 Panasonic rang, the shrill electronic warble it had produced for as long as Nora could remember. Charlie’s whole body lit up. She flung one starfish hand towards it, opening and closing, roaring a demand.
Nobody answered it. Rognar slid the eggs onto a plate. Charlie abandoned the phone in favor of her fist again. The Panasonic gave up after four rings and fell silent.
She stood in the doorway of her kitchen and looked at it. The male, the baby, the eggs, the two mugs, the bag on the chair, the morning light coming in over the arrangement. All of it fitted into a room she had built precisely so that nothing could ever fit into it unexpectedly.
She waited for the alarm. She genuinely waited, standing there with the perfectly made coffee warming her hands.
She waited for the old reliable clang of it, the one that went off whenever her careful, expensive quiet got breached.
The alarm that had run her life and kept it safe.
She gave it every opportunity. It didn’t go off.
And that was so much worse than if it had.