Chapter 8: The Flat in Town

Valen left that night with one bag and a roll of blueprints.

He did not say goodbye to Conrad.

He said it to Posy, on one knee in the front hall.

She held on to his neck so hard that Conrad had to turn his back.

Then he looked at me over her curls.

"Thursday," I said, so only he heard. "It's my evening off."

He gave the smallest nod.

By Thursday I had a map, a borrowed bicycle, and a lie ready for the cook.

The cook, whom I had finally met on Wednesday, winked at the lie and asked me nothing.

His new place was an apartment above a hardware store in the middle of Litchfield, twenty minutes from the lake.

I climbed the back stairs with a bag of groceries I had no business carrying.

He opened the door in a gray sweater with the sleeves shoved to his elbows.

"I wasn't sure you'd come," he said.

"You're a bad liar. You cleaned."

He glanced behind him at the spotless counter.

"There was a lot of dust."

"Valen."

"Yes."

"Kiss me before I remember I'm furious about the way you looked at me at dinner."

He did.

I was twenty-seven and he was thirty-three, and I had stopped thinking at all.

The door banged shut behind me, the groceries hit the floor, and a can of tomatoes rolled across the boards.

He lifted me by the thighs and set me on the kitchen counter without breaking the kiss.

I wrapped my legs around his hips.

My hands went under his sweater, over warm skin, and he shivered.

"I thought about this every night," he said into my mouth. "Every single night. Four days."

"Four days isn't long."

"It's the longest I've ever lived."

I laughed, and pulled the sweater off him.

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