I've Died Here Before novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Thursday

We didn't make it out of the elevator.

Holden pressed me against the mirrored wall on the way up to the fortieth floor and kissed me until my knees went.

"The clock," he said, against my mouth. "I watched it turn."

"I know."

"I watched it go to 8:45."

"I know," I said. "I was holding your hand."

He kissed my throat, my collarbone, the lapel of the cream coat.

The doors opened on the suite.

He walked me backward into it and shut the door with his heel.

The curtains on the river side were still drawn.

On the city side the windows were bare, from floor to ceiling, and the towers burned gold and white beyond them.

"You're shaking," I said, and took his tie in my fist. "Is it the hospital coffee?"

"It's the minute," he said. "It's been in me since the twelfth, and tonight it just went by."

I walked him to the window and turned him around so his back was to the glass.

I opened his gray suit, and then his shirt, and put my hands flat on his bare chest.

His heart was pounding.

"Tonight I'm not going to be careful," I said. "You're going to take all of it."

"I like it."

"You haven't heard it."

"Rule two," Holden said, and he smiled, wild and wrecked. "Tell me first."

"I'm going to take you to the window and put your hands on the glass, and I'm going to ride you until you forget the number eight."

His breath left him.

"Say you want it," I said.

"I want it."

I pushed him back onto the pale carpet at the foot of the window and shed the coat.

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