Chapter 8: Here

He caught me on the second landing.

His hand closed on my arm, and I spun around with the whiskey still loud in my blood.

"Who is she?" I said.

"Wendy?"

Damian was in sweatpants and a damp T-shirt, with water running from his hair onto his collar.

"She's an anesthesiologist. She brought a case file and a casserole, because she heard I've been living on cereal."

"There were two plates."

"She was setting one for me and one for herself, and she was about to leave."

Above us, a door opened.

"Damian?" Wendy called down the stairwell. "I'm going out the back."

Her voice dropped, kind and a little amused.

"Jo, he talks about nothing but you. Please don't let him sleep in that office."

Her footsteps went the other way, and a door shut.

The stairwell was very quiet.

"You thought," Damian said.

"I thought you deserved better than me."

He looked at me for a long moment.

"Jo, I don't want better."

I put both hands against his chest.

He was warm through the damp shirt, and his heart was going hard under my palm.

"I came to tell you something," I said.

"Then tell me."

"I can't. I got all the way up the stairs and I can't."

"Okay."

He said it so gently that I started crying.

He pulled me in, and I stopped being able to talk.

His mouth landed on mine, and neither of us made it soft.

He kissed me hungrily, the way he had in our first year, and I pulled his shirt into my fists.

Three weeks of being alone came out of me in one sound.

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