Page 50

Her light is on.

I've been parked across the street for long enough that my breath has fogged up every window. The rain’s still pounding down so hard it feels like I'm sitting inside a drum. Engine off. Wipers off. Just the sound of steadily falling rain, and the glow of her window through the water running down the glass.

I told her I needed space.

That was three hours ago.

She buttoned her shirt and walked out of the workshop in her wet clothes looking so forlorn I wanted to crush her to my chest and never let her go. Instead, I just stood there staring at the door she left through for God knows how long.

Eventually Diesel butted his head against my knee, whining to pull me out of my stupor. I took him home, fed him and then froze again in my kitchen, not knowing what to do with myself.

Now I'm parked outside her building in the rain like a man who doesn't know what the word space means.

I get out of the truck.

The street door is unlocked. I’ll have to talk to her about that. There isn’t a whole lot of crime around here, but that’s no need to be lackadaisical about security. You never know who could decide to just open the door and walk up the flight of narrow wooden stairs to go and knock on her front door.

I don’t count the creaking steps as I move up them, tracking water in my wake. I can hear the rain through the walls of this building like it's made of paper. I stare at her door for a full minute before finally lifting my hand to knock, twice, and then I stand there with rainwater running off my jacket onto her landing and absolutely nothing prepared.

It takes a while before she opens the door. Not all the way. Enough to see me.

She’s barefoot, wearing an oversized shirt, soft and gray, hanging past her thighs. Her hair is still damp. She must have been in the shower when I knocked. Or she's been out of it for a while and hasn't done anything about drying off because she's been standing in her apartment the same zombie-like way I’ve been moving since she left the workshop.

She looks at me. I look at her.

I should say something. I'm the one who knocked.

"I don't know what I'm doing here."

She holds the door where it is. Not opening it wider, not closing it.

"You said you needed space."

"Yeah."

"This is the opposite of space, Aiden."

"I know."

The rain is loud enough on her roof that we're almost shouting. She’s five foot four in bare feet, and she's looking up at me the way she did on the workbench three hours ago. Not angry, not careful, just open, and my heart is doing something that can’t be good for it.

She steps back and pulls the door the rest of the way open. Then she moves aside without saying a word.

I walk in.

Her apartment is even smaller than I remember. Four feet of counter. Bed right there, quilt pulled up. A lamp on the floor because there's no room for a nightstand. The whole place slopes toward the harbor. Rain hammers the roof while the window fan pushes warm air around. There's barely enough room in here for her, let alone the two of us.

I move from filling the doorway to filling the apartment. She has to back up to make room for me, and even then, I can feel the walls around me. The ceiling feels too low. Everything in here is built for someone not my size.

She's looking at my jacket. The water pooling at my boots on her floor.

"You're soaked."

"Yeah."

"Are you staying?"

I don't know what she means by that any more than I know what I mean when I say, "Yeah." My hands are at my sides, but they won't stay there. My fingers keep opening and closing around nothing. She's two feet away, barefoot on the sloping floor, and I can smell her soap, the rain, the heat of the room. And underneath it all, her. Just her skin. Cider and pumpkin pie and nutmeg. Comforting and warm. It's making my brain sluggish.