When it finally finishes I am damp at the temples, breathing hard, my fingers slick, my thighs trembling, the duvet half-kicked off the bed.
I lie in the empty bed in his shirt with my body cooling and my chest aching and I think:please come home. Please come home. Please come home.
Would this be the time he doesn’t make it home? Over a gambling debt, of all things? I find myself resenting Christopher. At least Henderson is with them. That comforts me enough to close my eyes, and eventually I sleep a little.
I drift, not sure for how long. The light at the windows changes—the grey of late afternoon thickening into the slow blue of the early evening, and then the deeper blue of dusk, and I move in and out of consciousness with no real grip on either side of it. I dream about water, about being pushed off a yacht.
When I wake with a start, I’m still alone in bed. The house is silent. I lie absolutely still and listen, but there is nothing.
CHAPTER 25
Rough At the Edges
ALISTAIR
It’s close to ten PM when Reacher meets me at the foot of the stairs.
He has been waiting. He doesn't bark, he has been a Ravenscroft dog long enough to understand that’s not allowed at this hour, but his tail is in motion before I have fully come through the door, and Bijou appears from somewhere down the corridor in three bounding strides and wraps herself around my ankles.
I crouch and get my hands behind their ears for a moment. They smell of dog and the warmth of whatever room they have been sleeping in, and I let myself stand there with my hands on them and breathe out, properly, for the first time in several hours.
Then I straighten, wash my hands, and I go upstairs.
The corridor is dim. The wall sconces are turned to their lowest setting. From under our bedroom door there is a thin line of soft amber light.
I push the door open.
The room is in a particular state.
The bedside lamp is on at its lowest. The duvet is half off the bed. There is a wine glass with about an inch in the bottom of it, the sheets are warm and rumpled, and the air has a specific quality.
Ivy is in one of my shirts, which is twisted up around her ribs. Her hair damp and loose across the pillow.
I stand very still in the doorway and look at her. Something low and heavy moves through me. Possessive. Pleased. I cross the room.
When I sit on the edge of the bed, she opens her eyes. She lets me see her exactly as I have found her.
“Is everything okay?” she says. Her voice is rough at the edges.
“Everything went according to plan.”
Her eyes track me. They go to my collar, my jaw, my hands. They go to the bed beside her, and then they come back to me.
“You've been busy,” I say. Quietly.
Her mouth moves into something that is not quite a smile. She watches me, waiting.
I get up and undress slowly, because she is watching. The jacket goes on the back of the chair. The shoulder holster, with the weight of the gun back in it, follows. The cufflinks, the white shirt, the trousers, all of it, all the way down. She watches me the entire time and does not look away.
I sit again on the edge of the bed and lean over her.
I put my hand against her cheek. She turns her face into my palm and closes her eyes. Her skin is warm. Her hair is damp at the temple where it meets her ear.
I bend and kiss her. Slowly. Not lightly, but slowly, the way I would kiss her if we had nowhere to be in the morning. Her mouth opens under mine. Her hand comes up to the back of my neck, and we stay like that for a long while.
I push the shirt up out of the way without taking it off her. The cotton bunches at her waist.
I take her in for a moment.
