This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: What the Log Said

Padraig's POV

I carried her down off the roof with her legs around my waist and her mouth on my neck.

I should not have been able to find the stairs.

I found them, and the green tent, and the zipper.

The camp stove was still warm. The lantern on the crate threw a small yellow circle across the cot.

I set her on her feet in it and held her face in both hands.

"Mara."

"If you say 'I have to' to me again," she said, "I'll go find Bess."

She meant it, and I laughed, and then she was dragging the fleece over her head and I stopped laughing.

Under it she wore nothing at all.

I had pictured her three nights running with the light off. I had not pictured the freckles on her shoulders.

"Look at me," she said, "not at the freckles."

"I can do both."

"Padraig."

It was the first time she had said my name without the doctor in front of it.

I pulled her against me and put my mouth on her collarbone, and she arched into me with a small, wanting sound.

She pulled at my sweater.

I let her get it off me, and then she put her palms flat on my chest and moved them down, slowly, over the old scar on my ribs, to the buttons of my trousers.

"You're shaking," I said.

"So are you."

"I know."

I turned her and laid her back on the cot, and the frame creaked under us.

I pulled her trousers down her legs and dropped them on the floor.

She lay there in the lantern light with her knees pressed together and her chin up, daring me.

"Open them," I said.

She did.

Her skin was flushed pink down to her stomach. She was wet already, I could see it, and my mouth went dry.

I knelt on the floor between her knees and put my hands on her thighs.

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