Chapter 18: The Cabin Floor

His heart hit my palm.

"Not here," I said. "Take me home."

He didn't ask which one I meant.

He followed my truck up the dirt track with his headlights steady in my mirror the whole way, and neither of us turned on a radio.

I left the letter on the kitchen table.

I lit the stove, because my hands needed something to do, and I heard him stop on the other side of the threshold.

"You're allowed in," I said.

He came in and shut the door.

My mother's quilt was folded on the back of the chair.

I took it, and I shook it out over the floorboards in front of the stove.

It was a small thing to do, and it was the most deliberate thing I had done in two years.

"Hazel."

"Take off your shirt."

His hands went to the buttons.

They were not steady.

He got it open, and shrugged it off his shoulders, and stood in the stove light with his arms at his sides, thin as a boy.

I put my palms on his ribs.

I felt the heat of him, and the quick hammer of his heart, and a long shiver that went down his whole body.

"Is that the bond or you?" I whispered.

"Both."

"Good."

I kissed him.

I had forgotten the exact shape of his mouth, and my body had not.

It went through me from the lips down, a long hot pull, and I heard myself make a noise I hadn't made in a year.

He kept his hands at his sides.

His fists were shut, and his breath shook against my lips.

"You can touch me," I said into his mouth. "I want you to. I'm saying it."

His hands came up and spread across my back, and I felt them find the long seam of the scar.

He went still.

"It's all right."

"I let this happen to you."

"You didn't. Kiss it."

He turned me in his arms, and unzipped my sweater, and drew it off my shoulders.

I stood with my back to him, and I felt his breath, and then his mouth.

He kissed the raised pink line, slowly, from the top of the scar to the bottom.

My knees went soft.

"Duncan," I said. "Don't be sorry. Make me feel it."

He made a rough sound, and his hands came around my ribs and cupped my breasts, which were fuller and more tender than they had ever been.

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