Chapter 21: The Long Way Home

Delaney's POV

Laurence did not turn left at the end of the inn drive.

The lake house was ten minutes to the right, and he turned the car the other way.

"This isn't the road home," I said.

"It's the long way."

"How long?"

"Around the whole lake."

I looked at him.

He kept his eyes on the road and his hand on the gearshift, and the muscle in his jaw moved once.

"I spent the morning terrified," he said. "I'd like an hour where nobody is reading anything out loud."

I put my hand over his on the gearshift.

He drove the whole way around Pike Lake with the windows down and the evening coming in gold through the trees.

Neither of us spoke.

His thumb moved on my knuckles, back and forth, and I felt it low in my stomach every time.

By the time we reached the dock road my skin was humming.

He parked in my mother's drive and turned off the engine.

The house stood white in the dusk, with the blue shutters faded gray.

Nobody was watching.

I got out of the car, went up the porch steps, and unlocked the door with the key that fit.

I heard him come in behind me.

I heard the door shut.

I turned around, and he was already there, with his back against the wood and his hands open at his sides.

"Mrs. Hartwell," he said.

"Say it again."

"Mrs. Hartwell."

I kissed him.

It was nothing like the kiss in the garden or the hard one in the kitchen.

It was slow, and he let me lead, and when I opened his mouth with mine he made a sound I felt in my knees.

"Upstairs," I said.

"Which room?"

"Hers."

My mother's bedroom was at the end of the hall.

Marlene had taken the furniture out and put in her own, so the bed was too big and the lamps were wrong.

The window was the same, and the lake lay beyond it, dark and wide.

I pulled the bedspread off and dropped it on the floor.

Laurence stood in the doorway.

"Come here," I said.

He came.

I put my hands on his chest and undid the buttons of his shirt one at a time, not fast.

His skin was hot under my fingers.

I pushed the shirt off his shoulders, and he stood still and let me look.

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