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"I know you were there. I'm not asking you to tell it again." She pulls the jacket tighter. "I just wanted to say that what you built after is impressive. The yard, the dock, all of it. I’m in awe of what you accomplished against all the odds."

That reaches somewhere I’ve kept locked up for a very long time. Not remembering the storm, or the insurance. Not any of the facts my mother spread across the table like a deck of cards. The fact that she’s impressed by someone like me.

"Come here."

She turns her head. "What?"

"Come here, Vanessa."

Her teeth catch her lower lip for a second. "I'm right here."

"Closer."

She doesn't move for long enough that I think she's going to get up and go home and we'll both pretend tomorrow that none of this happened. Good. Thank God one of us is thinking straight. Then she shifts, turning toward me, and I take her by the hips and pull her into my lap.

Her back is to my chest. Her legs drawn up between mine. My jacket is still around her shoulders, and she makes a small, shocked sound and goes rigid against me.

"Okay?" My mouth is close to her ear, and my voice doesn't sound like mine.

"I don't know." She's shaking. Not from the cold. "Aiden, I don't-"

"I'm not going to do anything you don't want me to do."

"That's the problem." Barely a whisper. "I want you to do everything."

The want hits me so hard my hands go stupid. They're on her hips, holding her where she is, and every nerve in my fingers is screaming to move. I’ve spent three weeks forcing these hands do exactly what they're told. Tie a cleat. Seat a bolt. Lift a wrench. And right now, they are shaking against her hip bones because they know what's under her shirt and they know what she sounds like when she's trying not to make a sound, and they want to find out what she feels like when she stops trying.

I slide one hand up under the hem of her shirt. Slow. Flat across her stomach, fingers spread, and her skin is so warm it burns against my palm.

She sucks in a breath and her whole stomach pulls tight under my hand.

"Easy." I hold her there. Just my hand on her bare skin, not moving. "We're just sitting here."

"We are not just sitting here."

"Sound carries, remember?"

She makes a strangled noise that might be a laugh. "You're doing this on purpose."

"I haven't done anything."

"Your hand is under my shirt."

"And it's not moving. You can tell me to stop."

She says nothing. The silence is the answer and we both know it.

I drag my thumb across the skin below her navel. One slow pass. She smiles through her teeth, and her hips press back into me, and I'm so hard against the small of her back that there's no way she doesn't feel it. She doesn't move away.

"Aiden." My name comes out broken.

"I know." I press my mouth against the side of her neck, just below her ear, and she shudders down to her boots. My hand slides lower, fingers tracing the waistband of her jeans, dipping under the denim, finding the soft cotton underneath and the heat radiating through it. "I know."

Her hand comes off the jacket collar and wraps around my wrist. Not stopping me. Holding on.

I pop the button on her jeans with my thumb. She gasps, quiet, a ragged little smile through parted lips, and her grip on my wrist tightens.

"You have to be quiet." My fingers slide down over the cotton, pressing between her thighs, and she is soaked. Drenched through her underwear, hot enough that I can feel it through the fabric, and the sound that tries to leave her throat gets choked off at the last moment. "I mean it. Not a sound."