“Go home,” he says as he stands. “I’ll send you the summary in the morning.”
With a simple nod, I follow him from the room and do exactly that. Only now home to me is 4D.
I stand at the window with two fingers of scotch in my crystal glass and look out over the night lights of the city. Then I take out my phone and do exactly what I’ve been telling myself not to do all night.
The feed from the bookshelf device is clean and clear. I put in one earbud and listen. I need to know that she is where she should be and doing nothing that requires my intervention before I can think about sleep.
I listen to the sounds in the apartment; it’s quiet, not in an empty way, just in that late-night meandering way. I hear the soundof someone filling a glass with liquid in the kitchen, and then a door. Then the sound of the shower starts.
The water runs for eight minutes. Then shuts off.
I should put the phone down. Stop listening. Instead, I pour another finger of scotch into my glass.
The feed continues quietly for a few minutes, and for a minute, I think she must be asleep. Then, just as I’m preparing to put the phone down, the sound changes. A small, involuntary heavy breath. And I go still.
Bozhe moy,I recognize that sound. I set the scotch down.
I hear it again, heavier this time, nearly panting. She is quiet about it, the way she is about most everything she does — controlled, the sounds she makes are small, well hidden from the child sleeping just a few doors away. But I can hear her. I can hear every small thing about her pleasure, the shift of the sheets, the change in her breathing, the cadence of its building.
I should absolutely put the phone away, stop listening. But I still don’t. My eyes close, and I imagine what she looks like in her bed as my hand grips the arm of my chair.
Her breathing is faster now. The sounds she makes are still small, but they are less controlled, slipping past her lips in small gasps, and the sound lands directly in my body. My hand moves to the belt at my waist, unclasping it, then to the zipper beneath.Lost in the sound of her, my hand moves beneath the restricting fabric, following her cadence. And a small moan of my own escapes my lips.
I hear her shift in her bed, the small moans that escape, all of it. Her breathing grows heavier, and my hand moves faster on my shaft as it does. That’s when I hear it. The single word that completely undoes me.
“Victor.”
Soft. Breathless. Said in a way that she’d never say to my face, without the sharp distance she maintains. And I lost it. Completely. Entirely. With none of the control I’ve spent thirty-three years building around myself able to fight it.
I sit in the wreckage of my own composure for a long moment afterward and listen to her breathing slow as she comes down from her own climax. I think about how this has got to be the most undignified thing I’ve ever done, which says a lot given my occupation.
She says something else, too low, too quiet for me to catch. Then I hear the shift of her bed once more, and the change in her breathing as she falls asleep.
I sit in the dark, recovering what dignity I can muster before moving to the sink and pouring the rest of the scotch down the drain. As I shower, all I can think of isher, and when I lie down to sleep, my mind is filled with the soft sounds of her release and my name on her lips.
Chapter Nine
Alex
Evie's overnight bag has been packed since Tuesday. She's been talking about Lily's sleepover with an enthusiasm that I’ve never seen before. This is the first time we’ve stayed in one place for her to not only make a friend, but for that friendship to become something more than passive.
Lily not only sits next to her in math class, but as fate would have it, lives in the apartment building a block away. She has, by Evie's account, correctly identified Sophie as a problem without asking her opinion on the matter, which is apparently the primary qualification for friendship as far as Lily is concerned.
"You have my number," I tell her, for the third time, as we stand outside Lily’s door.
"I have your number," she confirms, with the impatience of someone who has decided to be kind about the repetition.
"And Mr. Roberts?—"
"And his. Alex." She turns and looks at me with those eyes that carry the experience of someone far beyond her years. "I'm going to a sleepover. In the building around the corner. Not across the city."
"I know that."
"You're doing the face."
"I don't have a face."
"You are making a face," she says. "The one that says you want to say something else but you’re trying not to." She picks up her bag, slinging it over her shoulder as she continues. "Whatever it is, just say it."
