She considers that for a moment with the same careful honesty she brings to everything.“I feel like I have you again, and now I don’t want to lose you,” she says simply.“I spent five years being very disciplined about not wanting that, and I’m tired of the discipline.”
I feel a shift in my chest, slow and certain, like the vessel that’s been holding the tension finally snaps open.“I think we’re both in alignment on that, but I can’t pretend that the same fears aren’t there for me.If anything, they’re more brutal because we’re in the thick of it.My worst nightmare coming true.”
She looks at me for a long moment.“I’m not sure I ever really understood—and maybe I still don’t—how that translates into fear for you.You’re always so confident.”
“Not when it comes to losing you,” I say with a half laugh.“I know I dressed up all my objections to your career as concern and principle and reasonable disagreement, but it was just fear.Plain and ordinary.”I reach over and take her hand off the table, holding it the way I’ve been doing in the car, simple and deliberate.“I’m still afraid and that clearly hasn’t gone away.”
She turns her hand in mine, squeezing once.“But maybe fear is a reason to hold on tighter, not a reason to let go.Have you ever considered you might have it backward?”
“Yeah, I’ve considered it and it’s still a war going on inside me, Tess.Not sure I’ve got any real clarity and it’s hard… with all this going on.You’ve got a legitimate target on your back, and it doesn’t get any more real than what we’re facing now.So I’m not sure I can even comprehend what our future looks like together.I’m just trying to look at this day, and this day alone, making sure you stay alive.”
She nods in understanding, giving my hand another squeeze.
Then she stands, still holding my hand, and tugs.“Come on,” she says.
I let her pull me up and lead me to my bedroom.She’s unhurried tonight… I’d even call it settled and solid.At the bedside table, she lifts the pen from behind her ear, setting it down and unclipping her hair.It falls loose in a glorious crimson veil.She reaches for the hem of her shirt at the same time I do, our hands colliding, and she laughs softly.
“I’ve got it,” she says.
“I know,” I say, and let her.
She pulls it over her head and drops it, and I don’t move as I drink my fill, taking in her perfection, this woman I have been trying not to want since the second she called my name and asked for help.She lifts her chin, comfortable being seen in a way that some people never are.
I step forward and she lets me, my hands finding her waist, her palms coming up to my chest.
“You’re staring,” she says.
“I am,” I confirm.
“Why?”
I think about Josie on the docks earlier.Don’t wait until the threat is neutralized to figure out what you want.
“Because I can,” I say.“And I wasted a lot of time when I could have been doing this instead.”
A flash of emotion crosses her face before she reaches up and pulls me down to her, and I go without resistance.My mouth finds hers in a kiss that starts slow and stays that way, deliberate and thorough, the kind of kiss that doesn’t have anywhere urgent to be.
Her hands move to the buttons of my shirt, working them slowly, and I let her, my hands burying in her hair to tilt her head back slightly.She hums when my mouth finds her neck.
When the last button gives, she pushes the shirt off my shoulders and runs her palms flat across my chest, my ribs, the plane of my stomach, like she’s relearning the geography of me.Not urgent.Deliberate.The way you touch something you intend to keep.
“You’re still so—” she starts, then stops herself.
“So what?”I ask.
She looks up at me, a small curve at the corner of her mouth.“Never mind.”
I reach behind her and unhook her bra with one easy flick.Her expression shifts from amused to unguarded lust.I ease the straps down her arms, kissing her shoulders, and drop it somewhere behind me without looking.
“So what?”I ask again, quieter this time.
“Unfairly built,” she says against my mouth, and I feel her smile.
I walk her backward to the bed, her knees buckling when we reach its edge.I grasp the waist of her leggings and she lifts her hips cooperatively, and I pull them down and off in one motion, leaving her in nothing but a scrap of cotton that I take care of next.
Then I just look at her and she stares back without shame.
She tilts her chin up slightly.“You’re doing it again.”
