Chapter 10: Her Terms

I took the chain off the door and let Calvin in.

"I said too much," I told him. "I said the van."

"I know," he said. "I was in the lobby when he ran out."

He stood in the middle of my hotel room with his hands hanging, looking at everything but me.

"He knows, or half knows," I said.

"They'll go to the doctor tonight, and by morning there'll be a new petition."

"I'll have a stay drawn up by eight."

"At two in the morning?"

"I haven't slept in a year and a half," said Calvin. "I'm used to it."

I looked at him.

His tie was in his pocket, and his collar was open, and he had a smear of ink on his cuff.

I had stood in a cemetery and told him not yet.

I had stood in a hotel room and watched my husband weep on the carpet, and felt nothing at all.

I wanted to feel something.

I wanted to feel something that I chose.

"Calvin," I said.

"Yes."

"Lock the door."

He turned the bolt without a word.

"I have rules," I said. "Listen."

"I'm listening."

"No promises.

Nothing you say in this room is a promise, and nothing I say is.

I decide what happens, and I decide when it stops."

"Yes."

"And you don't rescue me.

Ever.

You hold the door and I walk through it."

"Gillian," he said, hoarse.

"Faith, in this room," I said. "Say it."

"Faith," said Calvin.

I crossed the carpet and took off his glasses.

I folded them and set them on the desk.

Without them his eyes looked bare and dark and a little unsteady.

I unbuttoned his shirt myself, from the collar down, and he stood with his arms at his sides and let me.

His chest was broad and covered with dark hair, and his skin was hot under my palms.

I pushed the shirt off his shoulders.

"Do you know how long I've thought about this?" he said, rough.

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