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It made her heart feel a peace she could only have in her community, practicing her faith.
As soon as everyone was bundled into bed, exhaustion hit her and she stole into the library to be alone.
She curled up in a big armchair, humming “Dayenu” to herself, barefoot in her ballgown, and closed her eyes to let herself reset. When she shifted, matzo crunched underneath her. It was the afikomen, which had gone unfound. Rain pounded against the windows, beating a heartbeat of the mountains, and Hannah found herself weeping along with the rain.
She didn’t cry often, because it wasn’t productive, and she was usually too angry for it, but sometimes it was the only way to clear everything out. She wept quietly at first, then louder, her body racked with sobs. For surviving Passover without Cass’s overly dramatic version of “Chad Gadya,” for the loneliness of being in the same house—the same room—with the love of her life, her oldest friend, but not being able to hold him, brush the hair out of his eyes, kiss his forehead.
She wept out of frustration for how much her body still wanted him, no matter what she told herself.
She didn’t hear the door open over the rain, so when Levi appeared in front of her, kneeling down and cupping her face, it was as if she’d summoned him out of her thoughts. She didn’t pause to remember who they were now. His face was inches from hers, and his hands were touching her, so she did what she’d done a thousand times before, as if by muscle memory.
She closed the distance between their mouths and kissed him.
He tasted like macaroons, and his beard was fuller than she remembered, but his lips were hers. Instantly, magnetically, their bodies were fused from head to toe. He was picking her up out of the chair, swooping under her and settling her in his lap before she even understood what was happening.
“Don’t stop touching me,” she breathed frantically against his mouth.
“What makes you think I could?” he groaned, his hands pushing the velvet of her dress up past her thighs.
“Oh, I don’t know, the past four years?” she asked.
Levi grabbed her face. “Hannah,” he growled, “I love you, but please, shut up.”
She did shut up then, because his mouth was on hers, his hands were under her dress, and he’d told her he loved her as if it were nothing, as if this was not world-shattering information. As if, to his mind, loving her was as obvious as the sun rising.
She shut up because every thought had been driven from her head by his mouth.
This felt inevitable, building since the moment he’d walked in that kitchen door and leaned against the door frame, snow in his hair and fire in his eyes. The only possible end to them being in the same house again. No matter that they couldn’t fix what was between them with sex, her body wouldn’t believe that truth.
As long as he was touching her, the loss of him wasn’t exploding inside her. A temporary cease-fire in the never-ending blitz of their breakup that was always bombarding her under the surface of her life.
She shoved his suit jacket off, pulling his shirt open, desperate to get her hands on his bare skin. If she could touch him, all of him, one last time, maybe…Aw, fuck, she didn’t know what the end of that maybe was, except maybe she would feel different than she felt right now.
“I can hear your mind working, Hannah,” Levi rasped in Hannah’s ear as she lay in his arms after, staring out the window. “You’re going to tell me that this was a mistake, and it never happened, and we’re never speaking of it again.”
Hannah was already getting off his lap and gathering her clothes, distancing herself, putting her armor back on.
“Why are you here, Blue?” She was so tired.
“You sent a giant blond man to Australia to find me, presumably to deal with the mess that Cass left when she gave me a portion of the business. You asked me to come home. I came.”
Hannah held her dress in front of her, her arms crossed. “You’ve never done anything for another person in your life, Levi Matthews. You didn’t do this for me, so what are you getting out of it? The truth, just like, two sentences of truth, for once in our lives.”
“I made it. I have a show coming out, offers from TV producers for more work. I did what I set out to do. I made my dreams into a real career. I wanted to show you. I wanted to showall of youwhat I made myself into.” He growled out “all of you,” too much weight for those three small words.
“What are you even talking about?” She threw her hands up, irritated, and her dress dropped. Oh well, it was too late for modesty anyway. “You sound like you were trying to prove us all wrong about you, but who didn’t believe in you? Me? Miri? Yourparents? The twins? No, you know what? I don’t want to know what fucked-up thing you’ve decided to believe in your head. You’re not my responsibility anymore, and I’m happier not knowing you.”
“Are you, Hannah? Because I’m not happier not knowing you. I’m not happier not having you in my life. I’m pretty fucking miserable, actually, if I’m being dead honest.” He leaned forward to try to take her hand, but she moved away. He flopped backward in the chair.
“I’m not happy, no.” She took a rattling deep breath. “I haven’t been happy in four years, except in brief tiny flashes, and I’m angry as fuck about that. I’m so mad at you I want to scream all the time, that you left me here to Miss Havisham my way around this house while everyone who loves me tiptoes around me, careful not to say your name lest they upset my fragile balance.”
She tugged on her hair, and bobby pins scattered around the room, curls falling out of her updo and down her forehead. She blew one out of the way. “Why can’t you set me free, Blue?”
He looked up at her, tears smudging his eyeliner, his hair wild from her hands. “Because you’re my wife, and I want our marriage back.”
Chapter 3
Levi
