Chapter 14 #2
She waited for him to argue. To tell her it was too far. To tell her it was a mistake, that she was running away, that Hadley’s needed her. To tell her he’d give her anything to stay. To make a plan. To make a phone call. To fix it.
Connor sat on the other end of the step with his hands between his knees and looked at her for a very long time.
“Joyce Bannerman,” he said at last. His voice was rough and quiet. “Everly’s is the best holiday store in the country.”
“Yes.”
“She’s lucky,” he said. “She’s very lucky.”
Caroline stared at him.
“Take it,” Connor said. “If it’s what you want. If Boston’s what you want, then take it, Caroline. You’ll be—” He stopped, and she saw his throat work. “You’ll be extraordinary.”
“Why aren’t you fighting?”
“Because it’s yours,” he said.
And it cost him. It went across his face and settled there, in his jaw and around his eyes, and he let it stay there and did not do anything about it.
He didn’t look away from her. He didn’t reach for his phone.
He sat on the step in front of the dark Santa chair, and he let her see exactly how much it hurt, and he did not ask her for one thing.
Something in Caroline’s chest broke open.
* * *
She didn’t decide to cry. It just happened.
It came up out of her all at once, the whole month.
The light, and the nine seconds, and the stopwatch in the front hall.
Brittany at her desk with the coffee. The gold star.
The cold sidewalk and the sixth window. Patricia’s red scarf.
The rug on the fourth floor and the fudge and tell me about next year.
The plan. At her family’s request. Her father at the kitchen table.
The stockroom. The cue sheet. The chalkboard.
All of it came up out of her at once, and she put her face in her hands on the steps of Santa’s stage and cried the way she had not let herself cry since the night of the lighting.
He didn’t touch her.
He was sitting very still at the other end of the step, his hands locked together, not reaching for her. Because she had not said he could.
And she was so angry. She was so angry at him for that. For being right, finally, now, when it was too late. For keeping every rule. For standing on the loading dock at four in the morning in the snow and not telling her. For saying take it and meaning it.
She lifted her head and looked at him through the tears.
“I hate you,” she said.
“I know,” he said.
“I hate you so much.”
“I know.”
“I’m so angry at you I can’t breathe. I’ve been angry for a month. I’ve been angry for a year.”
“I know you have.”
“And I sat on that rug with you in the storm,” she said, “and it was the best night I’ve had in two years. And I hate you for that too.”
He made a sound, low, as if she’d hit him.
Caroline stood up.
She walked the length of the step and stood in front of him, and he looked up at her from where he sat. In the gold light of the tree his face was wrecked and wet. He had been crying too, silently. She hadn’t known.
She put her hand on the side of his face.
He shut his eyes. He did not move. He did not lean into her hand. He sat there under it like a man holding very still in a place where he might fall.
“Connor,” she said.
He opened his eyes.
She bent down and kissed him.
* * *
It was not gentle.
It was not the careful kiss of two people who have been married a long time and know exactly how much space to leave.
It was a whole month in it. It was a whole year.
It was angry and wet and hard, and she felt him make a sound against her mouth, broken, and then his hands came up at last. One went to her waist. One went into her hair.
And when she felt his hand in her hair she made a sound too, and pulled back an inch, shaking.
“Not like that,” she said.
He froze. His hand dropped away from her hair at once.
“Not like—” She couldn’t say it. Not like her.
“I know,” he said. His voice was ragged. “I know. I’m sorry.”
He put both hands on her face instead. On either side, carefully, as if she were something he might break. And he looked at her, in the light from the tree, and waited.
Caroline kissed him again.
This time he stood up into it. This time he pulled her against him, all of him, and she felt the whole long hard shape of him through her dress, and the heat of him, and it was so familiar and so strange that her knees nearly went.
He kissed her as he had kissed her ten years ago in the window, the first time, at three-thirty in the morning, with fake snow in her hair.
As if he’d been waiting a long time. As if he’d been afraid he’d never get to.
She pushed him back.
Not away. Back. She pushed him with both hands flat on his chest until the backs of his knees hit the big red Santa chair and he sat down in it, hard, and she stood over him, breathing.
“Turn off the tree,” she said.
He looked up at her.
“The switch is behind you. The panel. Turn it off.”
He reached back without looking away from her. She heard the metal door of the panel creak. She heard the click.
The tree went dark.
The atrium went dark with it, all at once.
Only the glow from the street came through the glass doors, and the blue night came down through the dome, and the red exit signs burned at the edges of the floor.
In the dark, she could see only the shape of him in the big chair, and the gleam of his eyes looking up at her.
“Merry Christmas, Hadley’s,” Caroline said, very quietly, to the empty store.
And she climbed into his lap.
* * *
She didn’t know who undid what.
His shirt buttons were in her fingers and then they weren’t.
Her dress had a long zipper down the back, and she felt his hands find it, and stop, and wait, and she said yes, God, yes, against his mouth, and he pulled it down, slowly, all the way, and his warm hands came in against her bare back.
She shivered so hard her teeth knocked. He made a low sound in his throat and spread his hands wide across her skin, as if he were trying to hold as much of her as he could.
“You’re so cold,” he said.
“Then do something about it.”
He did.
He pushed the dress down off her shoulders and put his mouth on her collarbone, on her throat, on the soft place under her ear that he had found on their third date and never forgotten.
He kissed her there until she was gripping the back of the Santa chair with both hands.
She dragged his shirt off his shoulders, and it caught on his wrists, and she didn’t care.
She put her mouth on his shoulder and bit him, not gently, and he gasped and said her name.
“I’m still angry,” she said against his skin.
“Good,” he said roughly. “Be angry. Don’t be careful with me.”
She wasn’t.
The dress went. Somewhere on the stage. His shirt went.
She got his belt open with shaking hands, and the buckle hit the wood with a loud clank that echoed up into the dome, and she laughed, a little wildly, and he laughed too, breathless, and pulled her back down against him.
Skin to skin now. His chest was hot. Her breasts pressed against him, and she felt his heart slamming under them as hard as hers.
He bent his head and took one of her nipples in his mouth.
Caroline arched. She couldn’t help it. It went through her like electricity, straight down, and she heard herself make a sound she had not made in more than a year.
He did it again. He moved his mouth to the other breast, slowly, while his hands slid down her back and over her hips and held her against him, and she could feel how hard he was under her.
She rocked against him, once, without meaning to, and he groaned into her skin.
“Not here,” he said. “Not in the chair. I want—let me—”
He stood up with her.
She wrapped her legs around his waist and held on, and he carried her down the two steps of Santa’s stage, and knelt, and laid her down on the thick red velvet tree skirt spread around the base of the tree.
It was soft and wide and smelled of pine.
Above her, the dark branches went up and up, forty feet, into the blue dark of the dome.
He knelt over her, breathing hard, and just looked at her.
She was lying there with nothing on in the dark, on her family’s store floor, under the Christmas tree, and her husband was looking at her the way he had looked at her ten years ago. Not the way he’d looked at Brittany under the light. The other way. The first way. The real one.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, and his voice cracked in half. “God, Caroline. I forgot. How did I forget.”
“You didn’t forget,” she said. “You stopped looking.”
“I’m looking now.”
“I know you are.”
He bent down and kissed her stomach. Then lower. Then lower still, and she felt his hands on her thighs, gentle, opening her, and then his mouth, and she grabbed a fistful of red velvet and said his name out loud into the empty atrium.
He took his time.
He had always known exactly how to do this, and he had not forgotten that either.
He used his mouth slowly, and then not slowly, until she was shaking, until she had both hands in his hair, until she could not think about anything at all.
Not Boston. Not the plan. Not the nine seconds.
There was only his mouth and his hands and the dark tree above her and a wave building and building.
When it broke she cried out, loud, and it went up into the dome and came back down to her like an echo, and she didn’t care who in all of Philadelphia heard it.
He came back up over her. She pulled him down.
“Now,” she said. “Please. Now.”
He pushed his pants the rest of the way off and settled between her thighs, and she felt him, hot and hard against her, and he stopped. He braced himself on his arms over her and looked down into her face. He was shaking.
“Are you sure,” he said.
It wasn’t really a question. It was him waiting. It was him keeping the last rule.
Caroline put her hand on the back of his neck and held his eyes.
“Yes,” she said.
He pushed into her.