Small Things You Promised novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Not Home

I didn't tell him to go home.

I didn't tell him anything.

I took the decree out of my own hand and set it on the hall table, very carefully.

Then I took hold of the front of that blue shirt and pulled him over the threshold.

He came in so fast the door hit the wall.

He kicked it shut behind him with his heel.

For a second we just stood there in the hall, breathing.

Three weeks of six feet apart.

Three weeks of palms up in somebody's yard.

"Hi," he said again, lower.

"You said that."

"I'm nervous. I say things twice."

"You carried a man out of a bathtub in a hundred and four degrees."

"That was easier."

I laughed, and he kissed me in the middle of it.

It wasn't the ambulance bay.

There was nobody coming through any doors.

He kissed me slowly, like he'd been told he had all night and didn't believe it yet.

One hand came up and held my jaw.

The other found the small of my back and stayed there, warm and careful, right over the bad disc.

He knew exactly where it was.

Of course he did.

I opened my mouth under his, and the careful went out of him.

He walked me back two steps until my shoulders touched the wall by the coat hooks.

His beard scraped my chin.

I got my hands up under that clean shirt and spread them over his ribs, and he swore into my mouth.

"Your neighbor's camera," he said.

"Can't see through walls."

"Carlie."

"Wiley. I can count."

He laughed against my cheek, that rough surprised sound.

Then he pulled back far enough to look at me.

His eyes were dark and very steady.

"I want to stay," he said. "All night. I want to take you upstairs. Is that a yes?"

"It's a yes."

"Say it again. I'm nervous."

"Yes. Upstairs. Stay."

He looked at the stairs, and then at my back, and I watched him do the math.

"Don't you dare carry me," I said.

"I wasn't going to."

"You were measuring me."

"I was measuring the stairs."

"You were measuring me like a window."

His mouth went at the corner.

He took my hand instead and let me go first, one step at a time, his palm flat on my back the whole way up.

On the Monday after the thirty-first unit, the apprentice had put a little window unit in my bedroom.

He refused to take a dime.

"Kitchen's next," he'd said. "Bedroom's a start."

It was roaring now, the way it had roared every night that week.

The room was cold.

For the first time all summer, I had goosebumps in my own house.

Wiley stopped in the doorway and looked at it.

"He level that?"

"Don't you dare check."

He didn't check.

He turned around and kissed me instead.

He walked me backward into the cold room and I forgot the heat ever happened.

His mouth never left mine.

His hands stayed exactly where they were, one on my jaw, one flat on the small of my back.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and looked at me.

"I want to do this right," he said.

"You already are."

"I mean slow."

"Wiley."

"You've waited for a lot of things."

I reached up and started on his buttons.

"I've waited for you to stop talking."

He laughed and caught my wrists in one hand.

"Carlie."

"I can count, remember."

"I know you can."

He let go of my wrists and pulled his shirt off over his head.

The lamp caught the scar through his eyebrow.

His chest was broad and solid and warm under my palms.

I slid my hands up over his shoulders and pulled him back down to me.

"Slow," he said against my mouth.

"Slow is for people who haven't been six feet apart for three weeks."

He made a sound I felt in my own chest and kissed me harder.

Then he turned me around and sat me on the edge of the bed.

He knelt in front of me and pushed my cutoffs up my thighs.

His beard scraped the inside of my knee.

"I thought about this," he said.

"Tell me."

He unbuttoned my shorts with careful fingers.

"Thought about your kitchen. That day. The way you looked at me."

His thumb hooked under the waistband and pulled.

I lifted my hips and he took the cutoffs off all the way.

← Chapter 12 · All chapters · Chapter 14 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend