“Yes,Jasper. Please.”
“Put the book down and take off your glasses.”
She placed them both on the table, and I moved my hand from her cheek into her hair at the nape of her neck, slow enoughthat she could feel each finger settling there. My other hand stayed on her jaw. I leaned in. I kissed her the way a man kisses a woman when he knows he has to stop in two minutes and has decided to live his whole life inside those two minutes.
The kiss started slowly. My mouth on hers, warm and deliberate, the kind of kiss that took its time because there was nowhere else to be. She made a small sound against my mouth that was almost a gasp and almost a sigh, and I felt it against my lips before I heard it, and something inside me that had been tightly wound for two weeks came loose.
I deepened the kiss. My mouth opened against hers, and she met me with a hunger that told me she had been thinking about this as much as I had, maybe more. She fisted the front of my jacket, pulling me closer. My hand tightened in her hair.
She made another small sound, and her knees gave slightly, and her back came to rest fully against the green door behind her, and her free hand let go of my jacket and found the doorframe beside her, and she grabbed the wood to keep herself steady.
I kissed her until I started to lose my mind. I kissed her until the sound of the alley and the hum of the streetlight, and the wooden creak of the landing all disappeared, and the only thing left in the world was her mouth and her hand on the doorframe and the soft, sharp huff of her breath against my lips every time we pulled apart for half a second before going back in.
I was going to have to stop. I knew I was going to have to stop. I had promised myself. I had told her thirty seconds. It had been much longer than thirty seconds.
I pulled back slowly. A quarter inch at a time. Because I could not do it all at once. My forehead came back against hers. Both of us were breathing hard. Her hand was still braced against the doorframe. Her other hand was still pressed against my chest. Her eyes were closed.
“Cara.”
“Don’t say anything yet.”
We stood there, forehead to forehead, in the yellow light on her landing for a long moment, with our breath still mixed between us and neither of us moving, and the rosemary in its terracotta pot releasing its faint herbal smell into the cool evening air.
When she finally opened her eyes, her whole face had been undone in a way I was going to carry with me for the rest of my life. She looked up at me from inches away with her pupils huge, and her mouth still warm from mine, and her hand still braced against the doorframe because she was not entirely sure her knees would hold her if she let go.
“Jasper.”
“Yeah.”
“I need you to go now. Right now. Because if you don’t go now, I am going to do something I said I wasn’t going to do tonight.”
“I’m going.”
“I mean it, Jasper.”
“I know you do. I’m going.”
I lifted my head off hers. I took a step back. It was the hardest step I had ever taken, and that was saying something. She stayed where she was, pressed against the door with her hand still on the doorframe.
I reached up and brushed my thumb along her cheekbone one more time.
“Goodnight, Cara.”
“Goodnight, Jasper.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You better.”
I made myself turn. I forced myself to walk across the landing toward the stairs. At the top step, I paused and looked back at her over my shoulder. She was still standing against the door.
I stopped. “Get your keys out and put your glasses on, sweetheart. I’m not leaving until you get inside.”
She huffed a laugh, put her glasses on, grabbed the book, fumbled in her small purse, and came up with her keys. She turned and unlocked the door. Before she stepped inside, she looked back at me one more time.
“Tonight was amazing. Thank you.”
I did not trust my voice to answer that. I just nodded once before she stepped inside.
