Chapter Twelve #3
The shower has just gotten hot enough to be pleasantly scalding when Nicholas unlocks the bathroom door and bursts inside.
We’ve got one of those doorknobs you can pick by sticking a penny into the notch and turning it.
I use this trick whenever I need something from the bathroom and he’s shut himself in there to shave or admire himself in the mirror, but I don’t think I appreciate being on the other end of it.
“Hey!” I squeak, trying to cover all my interesting parts with my hands. The glass shower door is all steamed up, so I’m probably just a flesh-colored blur to him. “I could’ve been going number two in here.”
“With the shower running?”
“You never know.”
My eyes are as big as pumpkins when he peels off his dripping coveralls and rips a flannel shirt over his head.
Stomach. Chest. Arms. So much bare skin going on here and I’m not complaining about any of it.
Being wilderness bros with Leon and playing with axes and power tools has been kind to him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Taking a shower.”
“I’m already in here.”
“Good for you.”
Nicholas completely ignores my shock. I’m a modest and innocent puritan lady, and he’s out to steal my virtue.
My mind flashes to previous episodes of not wearing clothes with Nicholas and it’s a good thing the water’s so hot, or he’d be able to tell I’m blushing.
I remember how his mother has deluded herself into believing he’s a virgin, and I smirk before I can help it.
Nicholas cocks an eyebrow at me as he slides open the door and steps inside. I wait for his gaze to lower, but it doesn’t. He shakes his head in amusement, probably because I’m still trying to cover myself, then turns and starts lathering himself up with soap.
I don’t move. I need to wash my hair but that would require the use of my hands. I decide to face opposite him, minimizing what he can see. The back’s not as interesting as the front, I think.
I’m wrong about that, which becomes glaringly apparent when I catch our reflections in the shower door. He’s looking at me. My gaze slides below his waist without my permission and it’s clear he’s found something about his view to appreciate.
“Don’t look at me,” I hiss.
His laugh is deep and rich-sounding in the acoustics of our foggy bathroom. “I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“How do you know unless you’re looking, too?” He reaches for my conditioner.
I spin around and take it from him. “This is mine and it’s expensive. Get your own.” He smiles like he wants to laugh because I’ve slipped up with the placement of my hands, so I quickly cover his eyes. He squints under my palm, nose scrunching.
“I can still see.”
“Jesus.” I turn around again.
“Yes?”
I want to stomp on his foot. My only course of action here is to hurry up so I can escape.
I try to bend over a little to make myself smaller, because in my mind that gives him less to see, sneaking glances at him in the shower door.
He’s washing himself more slowly than he ever has in his life, staring openly.
I think he’s trying to get me flustered.
If so, it’s working. I slip a hand behind me, trying to span my fingers over my rear and block him from anything enjoyable, which just makes him laugh again.
“Close your eyes,” I demand.
“Okay.”
He doesn’t close his eyes.
“Close them!”
“I did.”
(He didn’t.)
I need to rinse my hair, but he’s standing directly under the spray, giving me very little room to maneuver.
I plant a hand on his chest and he’s immediately compliant, falling back.
Nicholas’s skin is hot satin under my fingertips, responding to my touch with goose bumps and a quickening pulse.
I want to sink my nails into the slightest bit of give his flesh offers, but right now every flinch, every step and turn and tilt conveys a primal message.
He’s waiting for the signal that says Help yourself to whatever you want.
Don’t be wasteful. Lick me up to the last drop.
To prevent myself from extending an invitation I’m too much of a chicken to deliver on, I keep my eyes shut while I rinse my hair, hand motionless against his chest to make sure he can’t come closer.
When I open my eyes again, his gaze is flame, jaw white and set, and I imagine cracks running up the bone all the way to the top of his skull.
Mist pearls in his lashes and brows, sweat cropping along the bridge of his nose and the hollows in his cheeks.
He’s a ripple of heat and with one gesture from me he’ll gladly roast me alive.
My heart goes tha-thump: a wild, winged creature in my rib cage.
He looks like he’s about to lose it and I won’t lie, I’m a bit unnerved by what he might do.
It’s been twelve weeks since I’ve had sex. Twelve weeks for Nicholas, too, if he hasn’t been cheating on me.
The image of him sleeping with another woman and me catching him in the act doesn’t inspire the same victorious feeling that it once did.
It throws a bucket of ice water over all of my pounding, light-headed need-you, take-me while liquid fury chases through my bloodstream, synapses shorting out.
If I discover him cheating on me in a shopping mall parking lot I’m going to end up on the evening news.
Stacy Mootispaw better stay out of my fiancé’s dress-code-prohibited khakis or she’s going to be putting her own teeth back into her mouth after I’ve kicked them out.
I can’t let myself think about him that way, with me or anyone else.
It’s too dangerous and there are too many axes Leon left behind in the shed.
If I conjure up memories of us in intimate positions, superimposing Stacy’s face over mine, I’ll black out and come to with holes smashed through all our walls.
I hurry up with my business, as if I can outrun these intrusive thoughts, and practically fall out of the shower while there are still suds in my hair.
I dart a quick glance at Nicholas while grabbing my towel.
He doesn’t speak a word, but he might as well have an accusing thought bubble above his head that says Coward.
Running feels like surrendering a dose of my power to him, but I embrace my cowardly ways and hotfoot it up to my bedroom to get dressed.
By the time I’m calmed down enough to tiptoe back downstairs, Nicholas is on the couch and his hair’s already dry.
It’s so incredibly upsetting, how quickly a man’s hair dries and looks perfectly fine.
“Look outside,” he tells me.
I peer out the window, and my heart soars when a cascade of snowflakes swirls by and sticks to the glass. They melt one by one. “Snow!”
It’s mid-November, but for me Christmas starts at the first snow.
I get sparkly-eyed over the season, doing pirouettes around the house while I strew Hobby Lobby decorations left and right.
I play all the classics on surround sound and set up the tree well before Thanksgiving.
I’m that person on social media you absolutely hate because I say stuff like IT’S 224 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS in May.
All the festivities of Christmas, and the joy and magic of it, make me happy, so I tend to stretch it out for as long as possible.
I turn to see what he’s watching on TV, and do a double take. The television is turned off. He’s watching me in the black screen.
Something about the way his eyes are following me feels intimate, making my legs watery. I’m conscious of the way my arms swing when I move, and the way I walk. It’s similar to the way I sometimes move in dreams, where there’s inexplicable resistance. Almost like I’m trying to walk underwater.
I go to the drawing room because I want to see the snow through those three beautiful windows, but his big desk blocks me. He sees the change in my expression when I walk back into the living room.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He doesn’t speak, but his gaze narrows. He’s got an ankle propped on his knee, fingertips drumming on the armrest of the couch.
Nothing.
It’s a self-appointed martyr’s answer. It ensures that the issue goes unresolved, and that I suffer all by myself. What do I get out of saying nothing?
“It’s just . . .” I sit down on the other armrest, out of touching range.
“When you first showed me the house, one of the things I liked best were the windows in, uh . . . in there.” He calls it his office or his study and in my head I still call it the drawing room, because in a past life I was a duchess and I’ve never quite gotten over being reborn as a commoner in this age.
“I thought, wow, what a pretty view. You’d be able to see all the stars over the forest. I’d imagined putting an armchair right there, so I could sit and admire the view.
I like that room. I’d put, I don’t know, maybe a nutcracker on the mantel or something.
I don’t know.” I shrug to downplay it. I sound insane.
A nutcracker? Really? These are my gripes?
I’ve been hyperfocusing on such minuscule details.
I’m immediately embarrassed that I admitted this out loud and I’m about to never mind the whole thing when Nicholas stands and walks into the drawing room.
Standing on the other side of his desk, he slides his hands into his pockets and stares at the windows like he’d never gotten a good look at the forest beyond them before.
“You’re right,” he says. He angles his profile toward me.
His eyes are the color of a silver fir. They’re fog and moonlight.
I’m not sure what part of my spiel he’s saying this in reference to, but I’ll take it.
We fall into a pattern that is completely new but somehow already feels ingrained: We silently make dinner together and sit down in front of the television.
We don’t switch it on. We eat in companionable silence as the snow falls steadily around us and darkness smothers the world.