Page 66 of Havoc

"You said there wasn't another one. In the car, the first night." My heart is going and I keep my voice where it is. "You said not for you."

"I did."

"Is that still true?"

The window unit is dead and the house makes the sounds a house makes when it's cooling and there's nothing else in the world but a candle on a milk crate and the two of us on a floor.

"Elias," he says.

Just that. Nothing around it, no story, no explanation, and it comes out of him like a man setting something down that he's been carrying with both arms.

"Elias," I say.

"On the paper. My mama called me Eli."

"Where is she?"

"Two thousand one." He clears his throat. "Ain't nobody said either one out loud since."

Twenty-five years.

I sit on a floor in the dark and do the arithmetic on that, and I have to put both hands flat on the boards.

"Say it again," he says.

And his voice does something on the second word that I will think about for the rest of my life.

"Eli," I say.

* * *

The candle sits on a milk crate. Its flame is a single slice of orange in a black room. The house ticks. The wood cools, popping in the still air. Frogs call from the basin outside, layer after layer of sound. The power went out maybe an hour ago. The windows are open and there is no breeze, only a warm, wet weight.

I’m on the floor. The rug is a worn red thing, thin enough to feel the boards beneath.

It stops a foot from the walls, but there are no walls in the way. The room is mostly empty, a crate and a rug and two people.

Eli sits across from me. His back is to the window, so the candle lights him from the front. The thorn work across his chest covers his shoulders in a dark tangle. Rings sit on his fingers, catching the flame. He is shirtless. Sweat glistens on his collarbones.

He hasn’t said a word since we came in. But earlier he put his patch on the table in the clubhouse. He laid it flat in front of his brothers, and he told them his real name. Then he brought me here, to this empty house, and he told me to say it. I said it. He asked me to say it again. I did. The second time, his chest caved in, a slow exhale. I have said it five times now. Each time is a small earthquake inside him.

I say it again. "Elias."

His jaw tightens. A muscle in his shoulder jumps. He draws a breath that catches in the middle. He reaches across the space between us and takes my hand. His palm is hot, a dry rough weight. He brings my knuckles to his mouth and presses a kiss there, without pulling his eyes from mine. The rings along his fingers grind against my skin. He holds on.

He pulls me toward him by my hand, an unhurried tug. I rise to my knees and he rises to his, so we are face to face. The heat from his body rolls against me. He puts his other hand on the side of my neck. His thumb rests on the scar. He leaves it there, a warm pressure.

He kisses me. It starts soft, a query at the corner of my mouth. Then his tongue moves against mine, slow and deliberate, like he has all the time in the world. One hand stays at my neck. The other goes to the hem of my shirt and lifts. I raise my arms and he pulls the fabric over my head. He does not toss it. He sets it on the floor beside us. The air is thick and warm on my skin. He looks at me, bare-chested and panting, and he does not say a thing. He reaches for my hips.

His hands are big. They span my waist. He pulls me closer until my breasts touch his rib cage, the tattoo, the heat. He slips one hand up my spine and the other down to the button of my jeans. He works it open with a careful patience. Then the zipper, then he pushes the denim down my legs. I step out of the jeans and my underwear goes with them. He sits back on his heels and looks at me in the low light.

I say his name again. "Elias."

His eyes go dark. He takes a breath, and the air comes out of him in a long rush off his shoulders. He reaches out and touches the wet seam of my cunt. Two fingers slide through it, gathering the slick. He brings them to his mouth and tastes them. The gesture is unhurried, a man learning a flavor. It is the most tender thing I have ever seen him do.

He pushes me down onto the rug. I land on my back and he follows me down, his body covering mine but bracing on his forearms so his weight is a frame, not a load. He kisses my mouth and then moves down, trailing his tongue over the sweat on my sternum. He pauses at my nipple and takes it in his mouth, drawing hard. A breath comes out of me, a swallowed sound. I say his name, and it is a long vowel, "Elias." His mouth tightens, a tiny extra pressure, as if the word is a reward.

He keeps moving down. The scar under my collarbone gets a kiss, a warm press. His beard drags against my skin, a brush of static. He stops at my belly and laves his tongue across the soft muscle there. My hips shift. He puts a heavy hand on my stomach, a calm weight. He presses his hand flat, telling me to stay still.