Next Time Away novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: Clearance

The doctor signed the clearance on Thursday at ten.

By eight that night, Greta had been fed, burped, changed and put down in the crib Jonas had built twice.

I stood in the upstairs hall with the baby monitor in my hand and listened to her breathe.

Then I set the monitor on the dresser in my grandmother's room and turned the lamp low.

Jonas was at the bottom of the stairs.

He had been there for ten minutes, in his work jacket, with his hand on the newel post.

He had not come up.

"Jonas," I said, from the landing.

"I'm here."

"I can hear that. Come up."

He climbed the stairs slowly, all six foot two of him.

His eyes stayed on my face.

He stopped one step below me.

"Doctor says it's fine," I said. "Eight weeks. I can do anything I want."

"I know what the doctor said."

"Then why are you standing there?"

"Because I'm trying not to do it wrong." His voice was low and rough. "I've thought about this for weeks, Tove."

"Where?"

"In a truck outside your house."

"Good."

"I mean it. I don't want to hurt you."

I took his hand, the scarred one, and turned it over.

"You don't take anything from this house," I said.

"No."

"Then I'm giving it. Come here."

I pulled him into the bedroom by that hand and shut the door with my back.

He kissed me against it.

It was not slow.

It was the kiss from the boat shed with weeks of waiting behind it.

His mouth was hard on mine and both his hands were in my hair.

I got my fingers under his jacket and pushed it off his shoulders.

It hit the floor.

I got his shirt over his head, and then I stopped.

I had never seen him bare.

He was broad, and scarred in places, and brown from a summer on the water.

I put my palms flat on his chest, and his heart was going fast.

"Look at you," I said.

"Tove."

"Don't talk. I'm looking."

I traced the scar along his ribs with one finger, and he made a sound low in his throat.

Then he reached for the buttons of my cardigan.

His hands were shaking.

"You do it," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I want you to be the one who decides." He swallowed. "I've been told what to do for two years."

"And?"

"This is the one thing I want you to say."

I undid the buttons myself, one by one, and let it fall.

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