Chapter 23: Everything Out Loud

"I want you," Elias said.

He said it standing at my mother's sink with a dish towel in his hand.

He did not look away from me.

"I want to wake up where you are. I want to be the one who asks, every day, and who tells you the answer."

My mother put down her spoon.

"I'm going to the basement," she said. "I need to see where that radiator was."

"Mom."

"For an hour," she said, and went.

Neither of us moved until we heard the basement door shut.

"That was out loud," Elias said.

"It was."

"Was it enough?"

"No," I said. "Take me home."

My apartment in Lakewood was cold and smelled of the coffee I had left on the counter on Friday.

He stood in my doorway with his hands at his sides, the way he had in the loft.

I shut the door and locked both locks.

"Rule," I said. "Everything out loud. What I want, what you want. Nobody guesses."

"Okay."

"I want your coat off."

He took it off.

"I want your shirt."

He pulled it over his head.

I put both palms flat on his chest and felt his heart going.

"Now you," I said.

"I want to take everything off you. Slowly. I want to see every bit of what I've been walking past for nine years."

"That's a lot of years."

"I'll go slow."

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

It was slow, and his hands were shaking against my face, and I didn't have to explain it away.

"You're shaking," I said.

"I'm scared."

"Of what?"

"That you'll change your mind."

"I haven't," I said, against his mouth. "Come to bed."

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