Chapter 30: A Whole Night

Tobias's POV

I lived on the second floor of a brick house on the East Side of Providence.

I had never been so aware of my own front door.

Roz stood on the landing behind me with her bandaged hand against her chest.

I got the key into the lock on the second try.

"Nervous?" she said.

"Yes."

"Good. I have been for six years."

The housekeeper had pushed us out of the cottage at eight.

She had said she would keep Maisie, and Maisie had announced that grown-ups needed one night off from being brave.

I shut the door behind us and turned the deadbolt.

The sound was loud in the hall.

Roz looked at the bolt, and then at me.

"You said you'd hold me to it," I said.

"I said I wanted a bed, a locked door and a whole night."

"The door's locked."

"I can see that."

Neither of us moved.

We had waited six years to be alone in a room.

"You decide," I said. "That was the rule."

Her eyes went dark.

"Then take your coat off."

I took it off.

"The jacket."

I dropped it on the floor.

"The shirt."

My fingers were not steady on the buttons.

She watched every one of them with her lips parted.

When I got the last one open she stepped in and put her good hand flat on my chest.

She had not touched me like that before.

Her palm was warm, and my heart was slamming against it.

"You can feel that," I said.

"Yes."

"Then you know what I've been doing for two weeks."

"Tell me anyway."

"Pretending," I said. "Every time you looked at me across a table. Every time you said my name."

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