Chapter 11: The Rule Breaks

I didn't go home.

I walked twenty blocks in the dark with my hands in my sleeves.

Delphine's damp palms still felt stuck to my skin.

At eleven o'clock I was at the street door under the bike shop's sign.

I pressed the buzzer for the apartment above the studio.

He came down himself.

He opened the door in a gray T-shirt and old jeans, barefoot, with a paperback in one hand.

He looked at my face and dropped the book on the stairs.

"What happened?"

"She told me Tobin died for me. She told me not to make it mean nothing."

"Emme."

"I need to not think about it."

He stepped back to let me in.

We climbed the stairs without touching.

In the kitchen he turned the light on, and I turned it off.

"We have a rule," he said.

"I know."

"The papers aren't signed."

"I know that too."

He stood very still, six feet of him in the dark, breathing hard.

"I said I wouldn't be the man you came to because you were hurting."

"Then don't be," I said. "Be the man I came to because I want you."

I crossed the kitchen and took his face in my hands.

His jaw was rough under my palms.

For one second he held out, and I felt him do it.

Then his hands closed on my waist and he kissed me.

It was not careful.

It was hard and open and he tasted of coffee.

I made a sound against his mouth that I hadn't made in years.

He backed me into the counter, and my fingers were in his hair, and he said, "God, your hands."

"They're cold."

"They're perfect."

He pulled my coat off my shoulders, and then my sweater.

Then he stopped with his mouth against my collarbone.