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I give it a wary glance. “If that’s another legally binding party favor, I’m going back to bed.”
“Look,” he insists.
He hands it to me.
I take it and open it up. Inside is a photograph printed on thick matte paper.
My breath catches.
It’s us in the coat closet.
Kane’s hand is spread over my hip. My fist is twisted in his shirt. His mouth covers mine while I strain up into him, every soft inch of me fitted against his hard body.
I’m not angling myself sideways to look smaller or hiding behind an inanimate object. I’m fully committed to the kiss, lost in it. Not thinking about my jaw or my hips or one single cruel thing that anybody has ever said about me.
“The photographer took this?” I whisper.
“Yes.”
“Is he still alive?”
“He’s fine,” Kane assures me. “… For now.”
He’s watching my face carefully, but I keep stealing new peeks at the photograph. In his arms, I look pretty. Wanted. Wanting and wanted in return.
What a concept.
My thumb strokes over the edge.
The headboard is gone. In my hand is proof of Kane kissing me beneath winter coats while a new year begins.
A good memory sweeping in and erasing the bad one.
I look at the photograph again.
Then at his mouth.
He notices. His eyes darken. And the vacuum’s still going out in the hall and there’s a drill downstairs and it is very cold in here because the window is cracked open, and it’s funny how none of that seems to matter even a little bit, because I am warmed from within in a way that doesn’t have anything to do with the physics of heat.
I take one step toward him.
He stands, huge and still, waiting for me to come close enough to touch.
Then the bedroom door swings open…
And my sister walks in.
26
DELILAH
Vivian stands in the bedroom doorway in knee-high leather boots and an off-white Max Mara coat, one hand still wrapped around the knob. Snow beads in her dark hair.
Her lipstick is the soft pink she wears when she wants to look harmless, which is a little like putting a cashmere sweater on a circular saw.
The photograph of Kane kissing me is still in my hand.
Vivian looks at it, but I turn it away before she can see. This is one thing I don’t want her to spoil.
