Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
HOLDEN
She's in my kitchen.
Mara Adekunle is sitting on my counter, legs swinging, drinking coffee from the WORLD'S OKAYEST VET mug while she tells me about a gas station attendant in Sudbury who asked if she was running to or from something.
"Both," she says, wrapping both hands around the ceramic. "I said both. Which felt very dramatic at 4am, but also very accurate."
Five foot four. Deep brown skin. Natural hair in a halo of coils pulled back with a yellow scarf.
Gold septum ring catching the morning light.
Full mouth. Dimple in her left cheek that only appears when she's genuinely amused, which is apparently most of the time, because everything about this woman is warmth.
She's wearing a tank top and cotton shorts from a three day drive, road tired, slightly rumpled, the most alive thing that's been in this cabin in five years.
"You drove for three days."
"Three and a half days. I stopped in Winnipeg."
"To sleep?"
"To panic. Then sleep. Then unpanic. Then drive some more." She sips the coffee. Makes a face. "Holden, this coffee is a crime."
"The machine hates me."
"The machine isn't the problem. These grounds have been sitting in an open bag for what, a month?
Two?" She's already off the counter, opening my cabinet, rifling through with the casual efficiency of someone who's been here before.
She hasn't. She just moves through spaces like she belongs in them.
Something in my chest cracks wider. That fissure from weeks ago, the one her midnight texts opened, splits clean down the middle watching her root through my kitchen.
"Do you have a French press?"
"No."
"A pour over?"
"Mara. I have a coffee maker that hates me and grounds of an uncertain age. That's the situation."
She turns. Leans against the counter. Looks at me with those brown eyes, the ones I've spent two months imagining without knowing their color. "I'm going to fix your coffee situation. That's not negotiable."
"You drove five thousand kilometers to fix my coffee."
"Among other things."
The air shifts. She holds my gaze. The dimple is gone. Her mouth is serious. The tank top strap has slipped down one brown shoulder and every nerve ending in my body fires at the sight of that bare skin, that single exposed collarbone, the soft curve where her neck meets her shoulder.
Two months. Two months of midnight texts, of truths told through a screen, of falling for a voice I'd never heard saying things nobody else ever said. And now she's here. In my kitchen. Five feet away. Smelling like road trip coffee and something warm underneath.
"Mara."
"Yeah?"
"I need you to know something before any of this goes further.
" My hands are in my pockets because if they're not, they're going to reach for her, and once I touch this woman I'm not going to be careful about it.
"I haven't touched anyone in five years.
Haven't wanted to. Haven't let myself. The last woman who stood in this kitchen was my wife, and she never left it. "
Her face doesn't change. No pity. No performance. Just stillness. The same stillness she gives me in text when I say something that matters. She just holds the moment steady.
"I know."
"You drove here anyway."
"I drove here because of that." She sets the mug down.
Steps away from the counter. One step closer to me.
"You told me the hardest thing about yourself, and you didn't hide it.
You didn't clean it up or make it smaller.
You just said it. My wife died. Three words.
The bravest thing anyone's ever trusted me with. "
Another step. Three feet between us. Two. The kitchen isn't big enough for both of us and all this want.
"I'm not trying to replace her, Holden. I'm not trying to fix you. I just want to be in the same room as the man who texts me at midnight."
My hands come out of my pockets.
"Come here."
She does. One more step and she's against my chest. My arms close around her, one hand at her lower back, one at the base of her skull. She's warm. Solid. Real in a way that the texts never were, all that honesty given a body, a heartbeat, the rise and fall of her breathing against my ribs.
"You're shaking," she whispers.
"Yeah."
"Me too."
My mouth finds hers.
The kiss starts slow. Careful. Testing. Her lips part and the taste of my terrible coffee on her tongue is somehow the best thing I've tasted in five years. Her hands flatten against my chest, slide up to my collar. Her fingers curl into the flannel. Pull me closer.
The careful part lasts about four seconds.
Then her tongue strokes mine and my hand tightens at her lower back, pulling her hips flush against me, and the sound she makes, this quiet, broken little moan, detonates everything I've been holding in check since she stepped out of that car.
I lift her. Her legs wrap around my waist. Her back presses against the refrigerator hard enough to knock a magnet loose. My mouth drops to her throat, her jaw, the soft spot below her ear. She arches, grinds her hips forward, and the friction against my cock sends a jolt up my spine.
"Bedroom," she breathes.
"Down the hall."
"I can walk."
"No." I carry her. Her laugh vibrates against my neck. Her fingers are in my hair. The hallway is twelve steps. I've walked it ten thousand times in five years. Never like this.
The bed is unmade. She doesn't care. She pulls the tank top over her head before I set her down, and the sight of her bare breasts, full, dark nipples already hard, brown skin glowing in the morning light through the window, stops me.
Just stops me. Standing at the edge of my bed, looking at this woman, the first woman to make me want anything since I stopped wanting everything.
"What?" she says.
"Nothing. You're just..." Words fail. For a man who communicates in clipped sentences, this is new territory.
Her hand reaches for my shirt. Tugs the flannel off my shoulders. Pulls the Henley over my head. Her palms slide down my chest, over the hair there, across my stomach. Her eyes follow her hands.
"You're just, too," she says.
Then she lies back and pulls me down with her.
My mouth moves from her lips to her throat to the space between her breasts.
Her nipple is warm against my tongue when I take it into my mouth, and the sound she makes is loud, unguarded, nothing held back.
Her fingers tighten in my hair. My hand slides down her stomach, over the soft curve below her belly button, into the waistband of her shorts.
She lifts her hips. The shorts come off. Then the underwear, yellow cotton, and she's naked in my bed. Full thighs, round hips, the dark curls between her legs already glistening.
"Holden." My name in her real voice, not through a screen. Wrecked. Urgent.
My mouth trails down her stomach. Past her navel.
Between her thighs. The first stroke of my tongue along her pussy pulls a sound out of her that echoes off the cabin walls.
She's wet. Hot. Her clit swells against my tongue as I circle it, slow, deliberate, learning every response.
Her hips roll. Her thighs tighten around my ears.
"Oh god. Oh fuck." Her hand finds the back of my head, holds me there. "Don't stop."
Wouldn't dream of it. Two fingers slide inside her, curling, finding the spot that makes her back arch off the mattress.
My tongue flattens against her clit while my fingers work, a slow rhythm that builds until she's panting, until her thighs are shaking, until she breaks apart with a cry that sounds like my name torn in half.
Before the aftershocks finish, I'm reaching for the nightstand. Drawer. Condom I bought three days ago after she said she was coming, because even grumpy mountain vets have hope they won't admit to.
She watches me roll it on. Her eyes are hazy, skin flushed. She bites her lower lip and the sight of her teeth against that full mouth almost finishes me.
"You bought condoms."
"You said you were coming."
The laugh dissolves into a gasp as I push inside her. Slow. Watching her face. The stretch of her around me, the wet heat, the way her eyes go wide then heavy, all of it. Devastating.
"Fuck." Her nails dig into my shoulders. "Holden."
My hips pull back. Drive forward. Deep. Her legs lock around my waist, her heels pressing into my lower back, pulling me closer. The angle shifts. She cries out.
There. Right there.
Every thrust hits the same spot. Her moans are constant now, broken syllables, my name, Yoruba words I don't understand but feel in my bones. My forehead drops to hers. Our breath mingles. The bed creaks against the wall.
"Look at me," I say.
Her eyes open. Brown. Warm. Full of everything she's been typing at midnight for two months. Every confession, every truth, every scared and brave and lonely word she sent across five thousand kilometers to a stranger who needed them more than he'll ever be able to say.
"Come for me, Mara."
She shatters. Tight around my cock, nails in my back, voice breaking open. The clench of her pulls me over the edge seconds later, my face buried in her neck, her name ripping out of me raw.
Silence. Just breathing. Her fingers drawing slow circles on my spine. Mountain light through the window. The rocking chair on the porch, empty for five years, visible through the bedroom doorway.
"Holden?"
"Yeah."
"Your coffee is still terrible."
A sound comes out of me. Low, rusty. Foreign. It takes a second to recognize it.
Laughter.
Her dimple appears against my cheek. Her arms tighten around me. The cabin is quiet, but the quiet is full now. Warm. Alive.
Five years of silence. Broken by a wrong number, a golden retriever named Mango, and a woman brave enough to drive to find me.
My mouth presses against her temple.
"Stay."
"Okay."