He Begged Me to Forgive Her, Then Lost Everything novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Dock

That night I did not sleep on the sofa.

I stood in the doorway of Tiernan's boat shop at eleven o'clock.

I wore his gray sweatshirt and my own jeans, and my breath fogged in front of the black lake.

He was bent over a long cedar plank on the workbench, running a plane down it in one smooth pull.

Curls of pale wood fell to the floor.

The space heater glowed orange.

A half-built hull stood above him on its stands, ribs open to the roof like a whale somebody had stopped halfway through carving.

He did not look up.

"You're supposed to be in bed."

"I've been in bed for a month," I said. "I've been in a hospital bed, and a sofa, and Hattie's bed."

"I'm sick of being careful."

His hands stopped.

"I'm sick of people holding me like I'm glass," I said.

"Warner did it, Constance did it, the judge did it today."

"Even you did it, with the foot."

"That was a foot."

"It was a very careful foot."

He set the plane down.

He wiped his palms on his jeans, slowly, and turned to face me with the heater light along one side of his face.

"Willa."

"My doctor cleared me on Monday," I said. "I'm a nurse. I know exactly what I'm asking."

"Then you know I've wanted to ask you the same thing for four years."

It came out of him rough.

I crossed the shop floor.

Wood curls crunched under my socks.

I stopped in front of him, close enough to smell cedar and cold air and warm skin.

"I don't want to be careful," I said. "I don't want you to be careful either."

His hand came up and cupped my jaw.

His thumb was rough on my cheekbone.

For one long second we just looked.

"Say it, then," he said, low. "Out loud. Tell me what you want."

"You," I said. "Now. Here. All of it."

His mouth landed on mine and the kiss was not careful.

He kissed like he had been holding his breath for four years and my mouth was the first air.

His hands went to my hips and lifted.

The workbench hit the backs of my thighs and I gasped into his mouth.

He pulled back just far enough to look at me.

"Not hard enough."

His eyes went dark and something in his jaw tightened.

"Careful what you ask for."

"I didn't come here to be careful."

"I know exactly why you came here."

His hands went to the hem of the sweatshirt and he pulled it up over my head in one motion.

The air was warm from the heater but my skin prickled anyway.

He looked at me the way a man looks at a thing he has wanted for a very long time and has just been told he can have.

"Christ, Willa."

His thumbs traced the lines of my ribs, slow and steady.

"You have no idea what you looked like that night."

"Which night?"

"The dinner. Four years ago. You passed me the wine and your fingers brushed mine and I thought, that's it. That's the problem."

"That was the problem?"

"That was the problem."

He bent and put his mouth on my collarbone.

His teeth scraped and I arched into him without meaning to.

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