Chapter 22: The Window

Dani's POV

The steel door swung in without a sound.

I had hung it myself, and I had oiled the hinges the week before opening night.

The lookout was exactly as I had left it.

There was the big window over the highway, the plank floor Jesse had helped me lay, the one wooden chair facing the glass.

Late sun lay across the boards in a long gold bar.

For a moment I stood on the threshold and my stomach rolled.

Then Jesse's bandaged hand closed over mine on the door handle.

"We can go back down."

"No."

I walked in.

I crossed the floor to the window and put my palm flat on the glass, warm from the sun.

Below me the highway ran north in both directions, empty, and the whole lot spread out below me.

I had built this room to watch one man come home.

I turned around.

"I want it back," I said. "All of it. The room, the window, the chair."

"Then take it back."

"Come here."

He came.

I took his face in both hands and kissed him, hard and slow.

The taste of that room went out of my mouth and left only him.

He backed me against the window with his hands braced on the glass on either side of my head.

"Here?" he said.

"Here."

I pulled his shirt over his head, and he undid my flannel one button at a time, because there were buttons left.

He dropped it on the floor.

He kissed my throat and my collarbone, and put his hot mouth over my breast through my bra, and I arched into the glass.

"Take it off me, Jesse."

He did.

He took my jeans next, and my underwear, and I stood naked against the big window with the late sun on my skin.

Anyone on the highway could have seen me, if they'd looked up.