Page 5 of Smoke

For a few minutes, the hospital and Warren's damaged door receded while we talked about the stupid disasters that had filled the house. The neighbor's dog getting through the fence. Beth burning dinner because we were arguing and forgetting the oven was on. The ancient dryer she insisted could be fixed until I quietly replaced it.

Those memories were harder than the bad ones because I could remember the fights without wanting them back. I could look at the final year of the marriage and still understand why it broke. It was the ordinary happiness that got under the skin because there had been so much of it before we forgot how to protect it.

Beth laughed at something I said about the dryer, and I watched her without meaning to. The sound brought back years in a way photographs never had. She had laughed in this kitchen, danced barefoot in it once when she was slightly drunk and thought I wasn't watching, and kissed me against the counter enough times that my body still knew what came next when she looked at my mouth.

Her smile faded as the air changed slowly between us. Wanting her wasn't surprising. I had wanted her the second she came around that hospital corner, slightly older than the woman I remembered and still able to get under my skin with one look. I'd spent the hours since pretending physical attraction was the dangerous part because that was easier than admitting I wanted to know everything else too, including what her life looked like now, who she spent time with, whether she still hated driving in heavy rain or slept with one foot outside the covers when she got too warm.

Those weren't questions a man asked about a woman he had stopped loving. I moved closer without touching her, and Beth's breathing changed. Her gaze dropped to my mouth and returned to my eyes.

There had been thousands of kisses between us once. Casual ones on the way out the door, sleepy kisses before work, angry ones after arguments and the kind that ended with clothes on the floor before either of us reached the bedroom. That history made touching her again feel more uncertain, not less, because the years apart had changed both of us and being her ex-husband gave me no claim on the woman she had become afterward.

"Tell me not to," I said. She didn't; instead, Beth reached for the front of my shirt and kissed me first.

The first touch of her mouth hit me harder than I expected. I had prepared for heat because there had always been heat between us, even when the marriage was breaking apart, but I hadn't prepared for recognition. The shape of her mouth, the pressure, the small shift of her head when I deepened the kiss all came back at once, and my hand went around her waist as hers slid behind my neck. Then the familiarity changed into something present as Beth kissed me harder than I remembered, with more demand and less hesitation, and that difference mattered. Five years had happened to both of us. We weren't stepping backward into something preserved; this was the woman she was now, kissing the man I had become after she left.

I pulled her against me, and the soft sound she made into my mouth took a chunk out of the restraint I had left. My hand moved over her back while hers tightened on my shoulder. I remembered exactly where to touch her to change her breathing, and the fact that she still responded went through me hard enough to make me want more than I had any right to ask for.

I'd missed her. Not the idea of having a wife or the comfort of an old life, but Beth herself, the way she met me instead of yielding, the bite of her nails at my neck and the way she pushed closer when she wanted something rather than waiting for me to offer it.

I backed her carefully against the counter. She could have stopped me there, but instead she pulled me in until there was no space between us. My mouth moved to her jaw and then beneath her ear, finding the place that used to make her shiver. It still did.

"Smoke."

My name came out rough and breathless, and for a second she looked as lost in the kiss as I felt. Then her hands flattened against my chest.

"Wait."

I stopped immediately and stepped back far enough to give her room.

Beth turned toward the counter and drew in a slow breath. Her lips were swollen from my mouth, and mine still carried the taste of her. I didn't fill the silence because back then I would have pushed until she told me what I wanted to hear, convincing myself that forcing the truth into the open was the same thing as honesty.

"We shouldn't have done that," she said eventually.

"Maybe."

She turned and looked at me, clearly expecting an argument. When I didn't give her one, her attention moved around the kitchen instead, taking in the table, tile and all the ordinary pieces of the life we used to have.

"We were remembering things. We're back in the same house, talking about when we were married, and it got mixed up with everything else." She rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. "It was nostalgia."

The word didn't fit anything I'd just felt, but telling her that would turn the moment into something she had to defend.

"If that's what you need it to be tonight, okay."

Her eyes came back to mine. "You don't believe that."

"No." I left it there. Beth had come back because her father was still lying in a hospital bed, and somebody had already tried to get into Warren's house. The fact that we'd kissed didn't give me the right to demand an answer about what happened next.

I picked up her suitcase and carried it toward the spare room. "Bed's made. Bathroom's across the hall. I'll get you clean towels."

She followed more slowly, and when I set the suitcase inside, the look she gave me told me she had expected more from the conversation too. I didn't give it to her. The hallway felt familiar beneath my boots. For years, Beth and I had moved through this house without thinking about where the other person was because knowing had been automatic. Then one day she was gone, and I accepted it because she had made a choice. I hadn't chased her, hadn't promised to leave the club or become a different man just to keep her in the house. At the time, I thought respecting her decision was the closest thing I had left to doing right by her.

Maybe I'd been wrong. Maybe she had been too. One kiss wasn't enough to answer that, but it had answered something else. I hadn't kissed a memory in the kitchen. I had kissed Beth as she was now, and I wanted her all over again.

CHAPTER 3

BETH

Iwoke in the spare room of the house that used to be mine and knew where I was before I opened my eyes.