I’ve cut myself, I think with a small sense of wonder as the bright blood wells up. I suck my finger automatically. The blood tastes like autumn leaves burning.
“You okay?” Will pauses in pouring me a glass of wine.
“Fine.” And I am, the wound so scant you can barely see it, the blood gone. I wash my hands thoroughly, anyway.
He passes me the glass, along with a kiss that tastes of wine. He nuzzles my neck for a moment and I revel in that touch. I find his mouth again. I can’t get enough.
He praises my dinner as if it came from a four-star restaurant, so much that, laughing, I have to tell him to stop. “It’s only pasta.”
“Nobody’s made a meal for me in a long time, that’s all. Food always tastes better when someone else makes it for you,” he says, and refills my wineglass.
“I like to cook. I used to cook a lot.” I sip the wine, letting the flavor roll around on my tongue while I think about all the meals I’d made over the years. Dinnertime, even when the girls were heavily active in sports and other activities, had always been important. I couldn’t remember the last time Ross and I sat down to a home-cooked meal.
“Not anymore?”
“With my daughters out of the house, no. Not so much.” I shrug, twirling my fork through the strands of pasta, though I’m no longer hungry.
Will leans back in his chair. “You have daughters.”
“Yes. Twins.” I think about telling him their names, how old they are, where they go to school, but somehow giving him that seems like too much information. “And you have a son.”
“Yeah.”
I let the wine make waves in my glass. “And his mother? She’s the ex who left the coffeemaker but took the cat?”
He looks uncomfortable. “Yes.”
“Things aren’t good between you two?”
“No,” he says. Shakes his head. Fiddles with his fork, his attention on the plate as though it’s suddenly important. “No. Not very good.”
“I’m sorry. That must be hard for you. I mean, you share a kid. No matter what happened between the two of you...” I trail off, realizing I have no idea what happened between the two of them, and it’s not any of my business.
Will looks up with one of those shrewd gazes I’ve seen him give the city skyline. Framing me. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Your husband,” Will says. “What would he think about this?”
It’s not funny, but I laugh. “I’m sure he wouldn’t like it.”
“I didn’t know if maybe you had an agreement or something.”
“Oh...no.” My brows raise at the thought. “God. No, not at all. I’m just...”
We both fall silent. I’m not sure how to finish the sentence, anyway, because I’m not sure what I’m “just” doing. The shining silver thread of silence stretches out between us until finally, I find the words.
“I was thirsty,” I tell him. “And you gave me something to drink.”
Will gets up abruptly from the table, plate in hand. He puts it in the sink with a clatter while I watch without moving from my place at the table. His shoulders hunch. He grips the counter edge. He doesn’t look at me.
He doesn’t move when I stand, or when I step so close to him, although he has to feel my body heat, even though we’re both fully clothed. I want to touch him, but I don’t. I wait.
He turns.
“I haven’t...been...with anyone since I broke up with my ex,” Will says.
I think he means a relationship, but then I understand. I’m flattered. I’m also scared shitless, but can’t make myself move away, not even a step. My fingers curl against my palms.
“How long?”
“Since before my son was born.”
Three years? Four? Either way, a long time.
“At first it was because I thought maybe she’d take me back. I thought, we’re having a kid together, you know? Surely she’ll give me another chance. We’ll figure out how to make it work, at least for the kid’s sake. And then after...when I knew it was never going to work again, we were never going to be together, I just didn’t want to. It was all so much work and effort and just...” He grimaces, shuddering, shaking his head. He looks at me, his expression raw and honest.
I’m not sure what to say. “I hope it was worth it.”
He reaches to twirl a finger in the hair framing my face. His fingertip brushes my cheek and I can’t stop myself from turning toward his palm, from pressing it against my mouth. Then I’m in his arms, against him, my face against his shirt. I feel the press of his lips against my hair.
“I’m not trying to cause you trouble, that’s all,” Will says.
My shoulders lift and fall with the force of my sigh. I close my eyes. I breathe him in—the scent of his laundry detergent, his soap, his skin, the sea-smell of his voice.
“He doesn’t know. He won’t find out,” I say.
Will’s laugh is short and sharp. “Famous last words.”
My fingers hook in the hem of his shirt and find the heat of his skin beneath. “My husband does not pay attention.”
More silence. We breathe together. Will pushes me gently until I look at him; his gaze searches mine. I think he means to speak, and I stop him with a kiss.
“I have no intention of leaving my husband. Does that make you feel better?” I ask. “Or worse?”
Will hesitates. “Better, I guess.”
“I’ve never cheated on my husband before, Will. Believe me, it’s not something I went out looking for. I just...well, I turned around and there you were. I don’t know why. I’m not sure I care, to be honest.” I push onto my toes to brush a kiss across his mouth again. “But don’t worry. You will not be the reason my marriage ends, if it does. Okay? I will never let you be my reason.”
He nods, just once, looking both relieved and unconvinced. “Okay. Thanks.”
I kiss him again, slower this time. Lingering. The press of his growing erection against my belly sends a thrill through me.
“Fuck me,” I whisper.
“Again?” he asks, as though the idea shocks him, even though he’s already inching my dress up to my hips and his mouth is slanting over mine.
“Oh, yes,” I tell him. “Again.”
Chapter Twenty-One
I’m on a train.
I don’t know at which stop I got on or where I’ll get off; I only know the train is going, going fast, and the world outside becomes a blur. The trees and sky mesh and meld and become something else. I’m on a train and I should get off, but I don’t.
The universe is playing a cosmic joke on me. Here I had my life, a good life with everything a woman could need, and suddenly, there is something more I didn’t know I could have or even want.
“Here,” the universe says, “here is a chance for you to not simply be ‘fine’ or ‘all right’ or ‘resigned.’ Here is a chance for you to be satisfied and content and maybe even on occasion deliriously, amazingly, exuberantly happy and full of joy. For you to have everything you didn’t know you needed, but always felt was missing.”
So this is where I am, on a train that’s out of control, and I am not just a passenger. I’m the fucking engineer, I’m the operator, I’m the one shoveling the furnace full of coal to keep it going fast and faster.
I do this.
This is me.
It doesn’t seem to matter, owning this, knowing it. If I could make myself believe it all happened by chance and I couldn’t help it—that I’ve been swept away, it’s not my fault, it’s fate, it’s cosmic interference, whatever that might be—would that be easier?
Everything is always pretty in the beginning. I know this. I’ve been through it a few times, after all. But this...oh, this is something diff
erent than I’ve ever known. There shouldn’t be time for it, but I carve out opportunity. I make the space for him because this is more than infatuation.
It’s the way he says my name and looks at me when I talk, as if what I have to say is important. How our eyes meet and lock and we lapse into silence, speaking with just our smiles. It’s his hand on my elbow as we cross the street, making sure I’m safe. It’s the taste of his skin, the brush of his hair on my face when he kisses me, the press of his tongue in my mouth. It is his beautiful, delicious cock. It’s the way he can’t make up his mind about which pair of jeans to wear, when to me they all look the same. It’s the songs he sends me to listen to, the books I tell him to read. And yes, it is the fact he pays attention.
When we are together, everything shines.
The truth is, I didn’t know I was looking for this until I found Will, but I must’ve been, all this time. And now it is not random, it is not fate, it is not being swept away.
This is my choice.
And I don’t know how to stop.
I don’t want to stop.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I can’t spend too much time away from the gallery; Naveen does expect me to work for my paycheck, after all. And though I suspect if I went to him and told him the real reason I want to sneak away for an hour or so at lunchtime, he’d smile and give me a thumbs-up, I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anyone to know.
I carry the weight of my secret like a stone, and hold it in both my hands because I don’t want to let it go.
The ping of a text woke me this morning. Will, playing at being casual, inviting me to watch him shoot some pictures in a warehouse. Professional. Neutral. Distant.
He wants to pretend this is all accidental, but for me it isn’t a game. I haven’t simply let it happen. I’m falling because I jumped, and not because I tripped. This is on purpose and I own it, even if he won’t. But I let him pretend we’re meeting so I can watch him take pictures of empty rooms and peeling paint, and not so that he can fuck me.
But oh, I have every intention of making him do that.
He takes a lot of pictures using natural light. I have to lean in close to see what he sees through the lens, and I take a long, slow breath of him when I do. The feathers of his hair tickle my cheek. I want to nuzzle against his skin, and stop myself only at the last minute. And then only just.
His phone buzzes from his pocket. We pull apart while he answers. It’s the model who’s supposed to be here, posing for some urban fantasy romance cover. She’s sick. Will’s expression goes dark as he listens to excuses that sound like bullshit even in the small bits and pieces I can hear through his speaker.
“She’s not sick,” he says when he disconnects. “She’s hungover, or she ate too much for breakfast and she’s determined to barf it all up.”
“That’s such a cliché.”
He slowly smiles. “Yeah. It is.”
“Maybe she’s got the flu. You’re so cynical.”
We’re standing very close together. I can count his eyelashes and the bristly threads of his brows. I can see the glint of silver in his hair when he stands in the light coming through a window from which all the glass has been broken out.
And then I can’t stop myself from touching him. My fingers curl in the front of his shirt and pull him even closer. He holds his camera to the side, out of the way. Our mouths are very close, but we do not kiss.
We talk every day. Silly things. Jokes and comments on the weather. We talk about our kids; it’s been such a long time since my girls were small that his stories of crayon-colored drawings for the fridge make me feel both nostalgic and relieved I’m no longer in that place. We share our favorite colors and flavors of ice cream and television shows and music, but we never talk about what this is.
He doesn’t lean toward me, but he doesn’t pull away. And I...I stand there for another half a minute with my lips so close to his all it would take is a whisper and we’d be kissing. But I don’t do it. I pull away and walk toward the window, glancing over my shoulder at him to see if he’s watching. He is.
“Great view,” I tell him.
Outside the window is the vast expanse of the East River. Below us, busy streets. This warehouse is slated to be turned into expensive condos pretty soon, and I’ll admit that I don’t have the vision to imagine it as anything other than a giant box of filthy wooden floors and cobweb-strung beams. I spin, arms out, to make the hem of my skirt flare.
He’s taking pictures of me, and I should protest but I don’t. My spinning makes the dust fly up, motes dancing like stars in the shafts of light. This is it, this is me. I am made of stars.
I’ve made myself dizzy so that I stumble, but Will is there to catch me. Together we look out the broken window to the world below, and at last, at last I think he’s finally going to kiss me. That’s when the sound of boots and voices distracts him.
“Shit,” Will says. “Security. C’mon.”
“Wait, what?” I follow him toward the stairs on the opposite side of the huge room. We’d come up on the elevator, a gigantic, creaking thing that gave me visions of plummeting to our deaths.
Will holds the metal door open for me to step through. “Security. I didn’t get permission to shoot here.”
“Oh. Shit.” I pause and wait for him on the landing. There are windows here, thank God, or else we’d be in darkness.
Will eases the door closed to keep it from slamming. We make it down only one flight when the door we came out of opens. Voices, two or three, echo in the concrete shaft. Will pushes me against the wall, out of sight—unless they decide to come down the stairs, in which case we’re screwed. My hands skid along the metal railing. They are on the landing directly above us. In a minute I smell the familiar tang of pot.
I start to laugh. We can’t move from under the landing or they’ll see us, though honestly, stoned security guards can’t be that much trouble, can they? Will lowers his camera bag gently to the gritty concrete and puts a finger to his lips.
When I can’t stop laughing, he covers my mouth with his. His hands anchor at my hips, pushing me back. I’m holding on to the railing, the metal cool and gritty under my palms.
He kisses me hard and harder. It will always be like this, I think, before the slide of his tongue on mine makes it impossible to think about anything but that and the creeping tickle of his fingers against my inner thigh as he pulls up my skirt and eases my panties down. Always hard and fast and delicious like this. We will never grow cold.
His fingertips circle, and I’m already close to the edge when he eases off. I mutter a protest into his mouth, but only for a second, because he’s turning me to face the wall. Behind me, Will puts his hands over mine on the railing, curling my fingers tight on the metal. He nudges my feet apart as he pushes up my skirt, and I hear the click and clack of his zipper, but the moment I let a moan slip free he’s got his hand over my mouth again.
Above us, the guards are talking about their girlfriends and getting laid, but it sounds more like bragging than truth. They’re complaining about their boss, and that sounds more real. They’re talking about rousting out bums who like to sleep in the warehouse, and how they’ll happily beat the shit out of anyone they find inside, and though we aren’t bums and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t actually hit us, my heart beats faster and I struggle a little against Will, who digs his fingers into my hip until I go still.
With his hand covering my mouth, he bends me forward. I grip the railing tighter when he pushes inside me, and it’s a good thing he’s stifling me because I can’t stop myself from moaning again. I spread my arms apart, not caring about dust or rust as my fingers skid on the metal. Holding the railing lets me angle my body to take him in deeper, all the way to the verge of pain.
The colors begin their swirling dance, bursts and
flashes. He’s not saying my name or anything else, but the faint cry of gulls and the rush of the ocean fill my head. I push back against him, but the slap of our flesh is too loud and he holds my hip to keep me from moving. Slowly, slowly, he eases inside me and slowly, slowly, retreats.
The guards are still above us, and I no longer hear what they’re saying as anything more than a long stream of jumbled sounds. I don’t care about them. All that matters is the maddeningly slow press of Will’s body into mine.
He curves himself over me. I feel his breath on the back of my neck and taste salt from his hand. When he bites the soft flesh exposed by the scooped neck of my blouse, I come. Hard but soundless, biting back cries that would surely be too loud even behind the guard of his palm. The metal railing rattles as I shake, but I can’t stay still enough to keep it quiet. Will moves a little faster then. Deeper. The hand that had been gripping my hip shifts forward to press against my clit.
I’m not quite there, and honestly don’t expect to get there again. Really don’t care. I’m still shaking from the first one, unable to catch my breath, my legs weak. But Will’s still moving so slowly, so quietly, that every time he thrusts he pushes my body forward, against his hand. And that slow, steady pressure builds and builds until I’m tipping over. I’ve bitten him on purpose before, but now I sink my teeth into his hand by reflex.
He shudders.
Blinking, I return to the world with an ache in my fingers from gripping the railing too hard, weak knees, strained toes from pushing my body into the right position. He pulls out and away, and I relax all at once, still quiet, still furtive. I start to laugh again.
I try to hold it back, but from upstairs I hear one of the guards remark confidentially to the other that “sometimes, man, I just don’t know what it all means,” and I can’t keep it in anymore. My shoulders shake and I bite my tongue, but I can’t stop.
Will is laughing, too, and he pushes me back against the wall to cover my mouth with his. The kiss presses in my giggles, and then, without thinking, I have my arms and legs wrapped around him, my face buried in his neck, my ass resting on the railing and the concrete wall digging into my back. It’s not comfortable, but I’m not laughing anymore. I’m clinging to him like a baby monkey, trying to get as much of myself around as much of him as possible, and now I’m stifling something closer to tears.