Chapter 6: Vincent's Hands

On the third night Dominik and Florian drove to Munich to pick up an engine for a boat, and they were not coming home until morning.

I poured my wine into the fern anyway.

Vincent watched from the kitchen window and did not smile.

I went up at ten and lay down in my clothes with the covers over my shoulders.

I told myself I was only collecting what I could.

At eleven the stairs creaked, and the door opened without a key.

Two sets of footsteps crossed the room. One of them was slow and one of them was light.

"Sit there," Vincent said very quietly. "Face the wall."

"Vince, I told you, I can't," Felix whispered.

"I'm not asking you to touch her. I'm asking you to be the man who is in the room."

A chair scraped near the door.

I kept my breathing even and my eyes shut.

Vincent crossed to the bed. The mattress dipped under his weight, and the smell of him reached me, soap and cold air and a trace of the ambulance.

"Felix," he said. "Go downstairs. Watch the road. If headlights come up the hill, you come and tell me."

"You're sending me away."

"I'm giving you a job."

A long breath. The chair moved. The door clicked shut behind Felix.

We were alone.

Vincent did not touch me for a long moment.

I could feel him sitting there in the dark, close enough that his knee pressed against my hip.

"Lena," he said, so low that the word was barely a sound. "I know you can hear this."

My eyes stayed closed.

"I'm not going to do anything to you. You don't have to do anything either. I came to tell you that if you want me to leave, I will."

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