Chapter 13: Sober

Nobody at the table said a word.

Then Pearl picked up her cane and pointed it at the dessert trolley.

"Noelle. Dennis. Help me take this to the kitchen. All of it, and slowly."

Noelle was on her feet before Pearl finished.

Dennis held the door.

Tobias did not look at any of them.

He took my hand and walked me out of the dining room.

On the landing, we passed the hallway camera. I waved at it.

"Dennis will see that," I said.

"Dennis will be pushing a cake for twenty minutes," Tobias said.

He did not turn toward the guest room.

He stopped outside my door, which in three years he had never once gone through.

I opened it and looked at him.

"Come in," I said. "I want you to fuck me. I'm sober, nobody told me to, and these are my own words."

His shoulders dropped. "That's all four rules."

"I kept track," I said.

He came in and shut the door with his heel.

He kissed me against it, and it was nothing like the pantry.

The pantry had been a question. This had no questions in it.

His hand went into my hair and his mouth opened mine.

I heard myself make a sound I had never made in front of another person.

"Three years," he said against my mouth.

"I know."

"I know this door," he said. "I know the grain of it. I know it sticks in damp weather."

"You've never been through it."

"I've been through it one thousand and ninety-eight times," he said. "Always on the wrong side."

I pulled his shirt out of his trousers and started on the buttons.

My hands were shaking and he did not help. He just watched me, dark-eyed, with his jaw tight.

When the shirt came open I put my palms flat on his chest.

His heart was going hard under my hand.

"Your turn," I said.

He took hold of my cardigan, the oversized one with the coffee stain, and slid it off my shoulders.

He undid my blouse one button at a time and kissed every inch of skin he uncovered.

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