Chapter 14 #3
It was slow. It was so slow. She felt all of it, every inch, stretching, filling, and he let out a long ragged breath against her neck, and she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in the rest of the way.
For a moment, neither of them moved. They lay there joined under the dark tree, breathing, with his forehead against hers.
“I missed you,” he said. His voice was barely there. “I missed you so much. I missed you when you were in the next room.”
Caroline cried again. She pulled his mouth down to hers.
And then they moved.
It started slow and deep. Then it wasn’t slow.
The anger came back into it, and the wanting, and all of the year, and she dug her nails into his back and met him, hard, and he said yes and Caroline and God, and the velvet slid under her on the marble, and pine needles fell on them from the branches above.
She bit his shoulder again. He pinned one of her wrists above her head, and then let go at once, and she grabbed his hand and put it back.
It was fierce. It was nothing like the careful Saturday nights of the last few years, when they’d reached for each other in the dark out of habit, politely, like people passing each other in a hall.
This was not polite. This was two people who had nearly lost each other, and knew it, and were furious about it.
And then, somewhere in the middle, it changed.
He slowed down. He lifted his head and looked at her.
And she looked back at him in the blue light from the dome, and the fury went out of it, and something much more dangerous came in.
He moved in her slow and deep again, with his eyes on hers, and he put his hand on her face.
She could feel him trembling. She could feel herself trembling.
It was so tender that it hurt worse than the anger had.
“Stay with me,” he said. “Right now. Just right now. Look at me.”
She looked at him.
The second wave built slower and bigger than the first. It came up from somewhere much deeper.
She felt it coming and could not stop it, and she didn’t try.
She held his face in both hands and looked right at him while it broke, and she said his name.
She felt him follow her over, with a sound like something tearing open, with his face pressed into her neck and her name in his mouth, over and over, like a man saying the only word he knew.
* * *
Afterward, they lay on the red velvet under the tree with his peacoat over them.
He had gone up the steps to get it off the Santa chair.
He had come back and lain down beside her and pulled it over both of them, and it smelled like snow and like him.
Caroline lay on her back with her head on his arm and looked up through the dark branches at the dome.
The snow was still falling on the glass.
From underneath, in the dark, it looked like the snow was falling up.
Connor was very quiet beside her, his breathing slow, his heart quieting, little by little, against her side.
He had not said anything since. He had not said I love you. He had not said does this mean. He had not said stay.
She knew he was not going to.
Caroline lay there, with her husband’s heart beating against her ribs and pine needles in her hair and her whole body still humming, and she started to shake.
It wasn’t the cold. The coat was warm, and he was warm. It came from somewhere else. It came from the deep place the second wave had come from, and it would not stop.
Connor felt it. He turned his head.
“Caroline?”
“This isn’t a yes,” she said.
Her voice came out thin and shaking. She kept looking up at the dome. She couldn’t look at him.
“This isn’t me saying yes. To you. To us. I need you to know that.” Her teeth were chattering now. “I’m still going to Boston. I still start on the fifth. Nothing that happened tonight changes that.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“I know,” Connor said.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do.” He did not move away from her. He didn’t pull her closer either. He lay there beside her under the coat. “I’m not asking you for anything. I told you. I meant that too.”
She pressed her lips together hard.
She had wanted him to argue. She understood that now, lying there shaking.
She had wanted him to hold on to her and say don’t go, so she could be angry at him for it.
So she could say you see? You’re still deciding for me.
So she could get on the train on the fifth with that anger in her pocket, warm and safe, like a coal.
He wasn’t giving her that.
He was lying on the floor of her family’s store in the dark, holding still, letting her go.
Caroline turned her face into his shoulder, finally, and closed her eyes.
She was not afraid of him anymore. She realized that, lying there under the coat.
She had been afraid of him for three years.
Afraid he’d sell. Afraid he’d stop coming home for good.
Afraid he’d decide something about her life in a room she wasn’t in.
And tonight, somewhere between take it and look at me, that fear had gone.
And what she was afraid of now was much worse.
It was her own heart. Beating, hard and stupid and hopeful, against the chest of a man she had promised herself she was leaving in twelve days.