Page 87 of Don't Tell

"I'm glad it was you."

He kisses me.

It starts in the kitchen.

It ends in the bedroom.

It is not the Santa Barbara scene or the cuffs. It is the slower thing two people do when they are not hiding anymore — no morning shift, no service elevator at six, no camera at the end of a hallway. He takes his time. I let him. He says my name. I say his.

There is no hurry.

There is no adrenaline.

There is just the two of us in his bed in the room where the light comes through the windows and lies across the duvet and stays there for a long time.

After.

His fingers are in my hair, slow. The same arc. I'm half asleep against the soft place over his heart. The room is dim.

"Cade."

"Mhmm."

"I have a confession."

"What is it?"

"I was the one who scratched your car."

A beat.

"What?"

I remember the Aston and the first morning. I caught the rear quarter panel with the mop handle on my cart, so Roger sent me upstairs to apologize. That's why I came up to the suite.

"Suzanne."

"That is the entire reason I was in your room that morning."

He starts to laugh.

He does not stop for a long time. The laugh is in his chest under my ear, and the chest moves under my cheek, and I'm laughing too. We are in his bed in the dark, and I have just confessed to scratching a car.

"Suzanne Jenkins, you scratched my car."

"You bought my hotel."

"I did buy your hotel."

"We're even."

"We are not even."

"We are."

He kisses the top of my head, and his hand keeps moving in my hair.

"I need you."