Chapter 15 RONAN
Ronan
I didn’t sleep.
It wasn’t the leg. The leg’s the best it’s been. I lay in the dark listening to the wind come up over the water and replayed the doorway. Her hand on the frame. My name, and then nothing. Whatever she stopped herself from saying, it’s been sitting in the dark with me all night.
Before the sun’s up I’m at my desk with Sadie’s name on the screen. My sister works in the same hospital Tessa walked away from. One call and I’d probably know all of it.
I put the phone down. If she wanted me to know, I’d know.
I’m still sitting there with the phone face down when Knox raps on the doorframe, radar up on his screen, a red smear off the coast.
“Front’s coming in tonight. Changed track overnight. We’ll lose power, we always do, but the generator should pick up the essentials. I’ll do the shutters this morning. And Mrs. Vale’s leaving early, her sister’s place floods.” He pockets the phone. “Quiet house tonight.”
“Goodbye, Knox.”
He goes, not quite smiling. I pay him too much for that.
I bring the forecast to breakfast. Tessa takes the news without looking up from her chart, while Mrs. Vale bangs around the stove behind her, cooking enough for a week.
“How dark does it get?”
“Candles dark.”
She holds my eyes a second too long.
“Cozy.”
That’s all she says. I read the same paragraph four times.
* * *
The rain arrives ahead of dark, and soon the wind is leaning on the west side of the house and the ocean is louder than I’ve ever heard it. Tessa stands at the big window in the last of the light, watching it come.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
“It’s a nuisance.”
“You’re standing here watching it with me.”
I am. The cane’s hooked on the counter behind us and the leg has started asking about it. I stay where I am.
The power dies at eight forty. The whole house drops black at once.
We wait. Somewhere below us, a generator that cost more than most cars is supposed to kick on.
It doesn’t.
“Fuck.”
“What?” she asks, from the dark.
“The generator should’ve started by now.”
“Candles?”
“On the island. Knox set them out this morning.”
She lights them one at a time, and the kitchen comes back in gold.
She’s not humming. She hums when her hands are busy. Tonight, nothing. I know what that means. I’m quiet for the same reason.
We eat Mrs. Vale’s chowder at the island.
It should be nothing. It isn’t. The storm has shrunk the whole world down to one room, and she’s in it, and every time she reaches across the light I lose my train of thought.
She catches me watching her more than once.
She doesn’t look away, and neither do I.
Each time our eyes hold, it feels different, like the room keeps getting smaller.
She clears her throat and reaches for the wine, quick, like she needs something to do with her hands.
I know the feeling. The storm keeps working at the shutters, and I don’t want the night to end.
She’s filling my glass when her eyes catch on my hand.
Something softens in her face, and a small smile tips the corner of her mouth.
“You’ve been holding that all night,” she says.
The quarter. It’s in my fingers. I hadn’t noticed. That’s what she does to me.
I set it down in the candlelight where she can see it, worn nearly blank on both faces, and I tell her.
“The morning the bank took the house, my father emptied his pockets on the kitchen table. I was eleven. Keys to a home that wasn’t ours anymore.
A wallet with nothing in it. And a quarter.
” I turn it once. “He looked at it a long time. Then he went upstairs and didn’t come down for two days.
My mother picked up a night shift on top of her day shift.
I took the quarter before the movers came. ”
“Oh, Ronan.” She reaches across the candle and puts her hand over mine, over the quarter.
“So I’d never forget what everything comes down to when a man stops paying attention.”
“It’s why you count everything,” she says.
“It’s why I count everything.”
“And Marjorie?” Quiet. “Is that your mom?”
“My mother worked two jobs for nine years and never once told me it would be fine. She said things would be what we made them. She was right. I made them. And she died eight months before Synapse signed its first big client. Eight months.” The rain fills the gap so I don’t have to.
“The year after we buried her, I bought a boat she would have called a ridiculous waste of money, and I put her name on the stern so she’d have to come along anyway. ”
Tessa is quiet. “You didn’t want to do any of it without her,” she says, and her voice isn’t quite steady. I look at her and she looks back, and neither of us does anything about the fact that we’ve run out of story and we’re still sitting here in the candlelight with her hand on mine.
Then she draws her hand back. “I’ll clear these.
” She gathers the bowls and carries them to the sink, and for a second I think that’s the night ending itself the safe way.
But she doesn’t turn the water on. She stands there with her back to me, both hands braced on the counter.
She doesn’t move. Whatever she’s working out, she’s working it out hard, and outside the storm goes on, and I keep myself on the stool and let her get there.
She turns, crosses to me, and stops close, her eyes on my face in the candlelight.
She lifts her hand and touches the scar.
Her fingers find my jaw where the glass opened it, the line I’ve kept turned away from every mirror for two months, and I go completely still.
She traces the whole length of it, slow, and her palm settles along my jaw and stays.
“I see you,” she whispers.
Neither of us moves. Her hand stays warm against my face. I’ve closed billion-dollar deals. I’ve sat across from men who came to take my company apart. Nothing has ever felt this dangerous.
I’m done pretending I don’t know what it is.
Lightning whites out the kitchen, one second of her lit up in front of me, eyes on mine, not going anywhere. The dark comes back and I’m out of reasons to hold still.
Then I’m standing.
I take her face in both of my hands. Careful. The bad shoulder complains and I ignore it. Her hands come to rest against my chest. I lean in. And I don’t go to her mouth.
I kiss the line of her jaw first. Her breath stops. Her cheek, slower. Her eyes fall shut and I kiss her eyelid, barely, and somewhere between there and her mouth she makes a sound, small, caught, and her fingers curl into my shirt, careful, like she’s just understood something.
I haven’t done this in years. That’s the truth of it, and it arrives right there with my mouth an inch from hers.
I’ve had women. I gave them what they came for and sent them home by morning.
Somewhere along the way I stopped doing this.
Stopped taking the long way. The long way is where things start meaning something.
I’m letting it mean something.
I stop with my mouth a breath from hers. And I don’t close the distance.
Her lips are parted. Her hands tremble against my chest. Her eyes find mine.
I’ve spent three weeks telling myself no. I can’t anymore.
My gaze drops to her mouth. Then I lift it back to her eyes, and her breath catches. I do it again, holding her gaze, giving her every chance to stop this. Every chance to change her mind.
She doesn’t.
She stays where she is, waiting for me to close the last inch.
So I kiss her.
Barely.
Soft enough that it’s almost nothing, just the brush of my lips over hers before I pull back. Her fingers tighten in my shirt. Her breath leaves her in a shaky exhale.
A smile slips out before I can stop it.
Then I kiss her again, a little longer this time, and when I lift away she follows without thinking, rising onto her toes to keep me, her eyes still closed.
I stop a second time. Our noses touch.
Her eyes open.
God.
She looks at me like she’s waiting for me to kiss her again. Her hand slides from my chest to the back of my neck.
Something inside me finally gives way.
My good arm draws her closer until there’s nothing left between us. She fits. Christ, she fits. I’ve been losing this fight far longer than I knew.
Then she kisses me back with enough certainty to steal what’s left of my restraint. I meet her there, my hand sliding into her hair, the other spread across her back as I pull her flush against me.
Suddenly the lights come back, the whole house waking up around us, and we’re lit up in the middle of the kitchen and still kissing. We slow. We stop. Neither of us pulls away. I feel her smile against my mouth, and I’m smiling too. Twice now, after years of not.
She lets out a breath, shaky, and drops her forehead to my chest. I cradle the back of her head, my chin resting in her hair, and shut my eyes. I want her so badly I can’t see straight, and I know exactly why I can’t have this, and I hold her against me anyway.
“Ronan,” she says into my shirt.
“I know.” Because I do. Neither of us says the rest.
Then she pulls back and looks up at me, biting her bottom lip around a shy smile, and that undoes me more than the kiss did.
“It’s late,” she says. Her voice comes out rough. “I should go to bed.”
“Yeah,” I say, which is the opposite of what I mean.
She steps back, and this time I let her. At the door she turns and looks at me one more time, and then she’s gone, and I hear her door close down the hall.
I stay where I am in the bright kitchen, looking at the empty doorway.
The storm will be gone by morning.
This won’t.