Chapter 8: The Word

He stopped.

He stayed inside me, still, and the lantern light shook on the roof beam.

"I'm not your father," Ward said. His voice cracked in the middle. "Do you understand? I'm not. And that word makes me forget it."

"I know you're not."

"Then say my name when you come."

"Ward."

"Again."

"Ward," I said, and he moved.

He rocked into me slowly, then deeper, and every stroke dragged along the place he'd found.

He watched my face the whole time.

The heat built until I couldn't hold it.

I came with my fingers locked in his hair and his name in my mouth, and my whole body shuddered around him.

He followed me with a shuddering groan, his face hidden in my neck.

We lay in the straw afterward without talking.

He pulled his shirt over my shoulders when I shivered.

When the lantern guttered, he walked me to the house and left me at the back steps.

He didn't kiss me.

He stood in the yard until I was inside.

I had four days of that.

Four days of the barn, the book, his hand briefly on mine over a mare's flank, and nothing else.

Then on Friday night the storm came down the valley.

It hit at midnight, a wall of wind and rain that rattled the whole house, and the lights went out.

I lay in bed listening to the shutters bang.

My mother's house had never been so loud.

At one o'clock I got up and went down the dark stairs in my bare feet.

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