Chapter 19: What He Does Not Fix

I did not cry in the car, or in the driveway, or in the front hall.

I cried in the kitchen, standing at the sink with the water running over nothing.

Everett turned the tap off.

He did not say it would be all right.

He took the dish towel out of my hands and pulled out a chair for me at the long maple table, and then he sat down on the floor at my feet.

"I let her go in there," I said. "I stood at the glass and I let her sign."

"Sloane asked to go in."

"I should have said no a second time."

"You'd have been making her choices for her."

"I'd rather have done that than watch it."

He rested his forearms on my knees and looked up at me.

"I fix things," he said. "You know that. I've been sitting in that car for forty minutes trying to think of how to fix this."

"And?"

"I can't." He said it simply. "It's not a faucet. I'm not going to fix it, Callie. I'm going to stay."

I put my hand on his jaw.

"There's a thing I haven't told you," I said. "It's small. We said nothing hidden."

"Tell me."

"When they led her out of the house in handcuffs, I was glad. I was glad all the way through, and I haven't been sorry once."

"Good," Everett said.

"That isn't a nice thing to feel."

"It's an honest one." He turned his face into my palm and kissed it. "I wish I'd been glad with you."

I slid off the chair onto the floor in front of him.

He caught my hips, and his breath changed.

"Make me stop thinking," I said.

"Callie."

"Please."

He kissed me slowly, which I hadn't expected.

His mouth was warm and sure and patient, and I opened for it, and his hand slid into my hair.

I got his shirt over his head.

He got my blouse open, and then my bra, and I felt the cool kitchen air on my nipples before his mouth closed over one.

I gasped and arched, and he held me there with an arm around my back.

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