Chapter 8: Separate Rooms

On Wednesday night I stood in my room with my hand on the lock.

I had turned it every night for three nights.

Every night I had lain in the dark and listened to Benedict walking back and forth on the other side of the wall.

He never knocked.

He never tried the handle.

I thought about Cade's hand on my arm in the apartment.

I thought about three years of letting him touch me because I'd believed that was what warmth was.

I thought about two fingers lifting a wrist away and then nothing, nothing at all, until I moved.

I wanted to move.

I turned the lock back, opened the door, and crossed the hall.

His door was half open.

Benedict was at the desk by the window in his shirt sleeves with a lamp on and a stack of papers under his hand.

He looked up and saw me in my nightshirt, and he stood so fast that the chair rolled back into the wall.

"Hallie."

"Separate rooms," I said. "I know. I read the terms."

"You should say if you want to go back."

"I'm not going back."

I shut the door behind me and leaned on it.

"I want to be touched by someone who isn't laughing," I said. "I want it to be you. I want to pick when."

He didn't breathe.

"Now," I said. "That's when."

He crossed the room in three steps and stopped in front of me, close enough that I felt the heat of him through his shirt.

His hands hung at his sides.

I took one and put it on my waist.

His fingers closed over the cotton, tight and careful, and I heard him let out a long shaky breath.

"Tell me what you want," he said.

"Your mouth."

He kissed me.

It was nothing like the car.

He kissed me slowly, with his hand sliding up my back.

When I opened my mouth, he groaned low in his throat.

I got his shirt open with both hands.

He had a scar above his ribs, long and pale, and I put my lips to it, and his whole body jerked.

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