He Came Back for Both of Us novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Yes

He didn't answer.

He bent, picked my shoes up off the boards with one hand and held the other out to me.

We took a cab, because he'd had a glass of champagne at ten and he was a man who counted.

In the back seat he didn't touch me.

He held my hand on his knee, his thumb moving over my knuckles the whole way down East Bay.

That was worse than touching me.

I texted Ollie with my other hand.

Not coming back tonight.

He answered right away.

I KNOW. He's asleep. Plates is on guard. GO.

The main house was dark.

Jameson unlocked the front door, and I walked in ahead of him in my bare feet.

The door clicked shut behind us.

Then he had me against it.

His mouth found mine in the dark and this time nothing was careful.

My shoes hit the floor somewhere. His jacket followed them.

I pulled his shirt out of his trousers with both hands and got my palms on his back, on warm bare skin.

He made a sound into my mouth.

"Four years," he said against my jaw. "I've stood in this hall for four years."

"I know. I saw you."

"You didn't see the half of it."

He kissed my throat, my collarbone, the strap of the blue dress.

His fingers found the zipper at the back of it and stopped there, on the tab.

He didn't pull it.

"Tell me," he said. "Out loud. I'm not guessing about you ever again."

I took his face in both hands so he had to look at me.

It was dark, but there was light from the street through the transom, and I could see his eyes.

"I want you," I said. "Tonight. In our room. I want all of it."

His hands shook on my back.

"And you?" I said. "Tell me."

"I want you so much I can't think," he said. "I haven't been able to think since bay four."

"You thought fine at the hearing."

"That was the only thing I've done right in four years. It took everything I had."

I laughed, and he kissed the laugh right off my mouth.

We didn't make it up the stairs fast.

He stopped me on the landing and kissed me against the banister until my knees were gone.

I stopped him three steps from the top and bit his lip, because I'd wanted to all night.

At the door of the big front bedroom, he stopped.

The room that had been ours.

Two tall windows over Tradd Street. The bed in the same place.

"I can sleep somewhere else," he said quietly. "Any night you want. Tonight, if you want."

I walked past him into the room and turned around in the light from the windows.

"Unzip me, Jameson," I said.

He didn't move at first.

Just stood behind me with the streetlight on his face.

I heard him breathe.

Then the zipper came down, one slow inch at a time.

Like he was opening something that might dissolve.

The dress slipped off my shoulders.

I let it fall.

It pooled at my feet, midnight blue on the old pine floor.

I stood there in nothing but the light from the windows.

And I turned around.

"Look at me," I said.

He did.

His throat moved when he swallowed.

"Felicity."

"Say what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking I've stood in this doorway a thousand nights," he said. "And not one of them came close."

"Then stop standing in it now."

I walked to him.

I took his face in my hands and kissed him, slow, and his hands came to my waist like he was afraid I'd break.

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