After a Year of Silence novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Asking

We planned it over takeout at my kitchen table, the three of us, and then Miles went home.

At nine the next morning I would dial that number in the middle of the thirty-fourth floor, and we would hear where it rang.

Until then there was nothing to do but wait.

I could not sit still.

I washed two plates that were already clean.

Quentin stood at the window with his hands in his pockets, watching the rain, not saying what we were both thinking.

"If it's her," I said.

"Don't."

"If it is, she held my hand while I cried."

"Harper."

"I don't want to think about it tonight."

He turned around.

"What do you want to think about?"

I looked at him across my small kitchen.

He was in the same gray sweater, with his sleeves pushed up to the elbow and his hair still messy from my couch.

He looked like the man I had married in a courthouse in a borrowed dress.

"I want to not think," I said.

"I can leave."

"That's not what I said."

He did not move.

He was waiting, and I knew exactly what for.

"You haven't asked me to touch you," he said quietly. "Not tonight. I'm not going to guess."

I crossed the kitchen.

I took the chain from around my neck and held the ring in my palm.

"Put it on," I said.

He took it from me with fingers that were not quite steady and slid it onto my left hand.

It was the first time it had been there in public light in three years.

"Now," I said. "Touch me."

"Say it properly."

"Quentin."

"Say what you want."

My face went hot.

"I want your hands on me," I said. "All of them. Everywhere. I want you to stop being careful."

His breath left him in a rush.

Then he had me against the counter with his mouth on mine, and nothing about it was careful.

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