Chapter 5: The First Night

The lab lights were still on when I got back, at half past ten.

Alasdair was at his desk with a half-eaten sandwich and a spreadsheet, and he stood up the moment I came in.

"What happened?"

"I left Lorna's table in the middle of dinner."

"Good."

"There's a man outside this building. A gray sedan. Lorna hired him to take pictures of me."

His face went still.

"Of us?"

"Of whoever I'm seeing. She doesn't know it's you."

He crossed the room and looked out the window, and then he turned around and put his back against the glass.

"He can't see through brick," Alasdair said. "There's a basement door onto the alley. My car's parked there."

"Alasdair, the rule."

"I made the rule." His voice was rough. "I'm breaking it. If you tell me to stay on my side of this room, I'll stay there."

I looked at him for a long moment.

He had sat beside a dying man's bed with me for fourteen months.

He had waited through a funeral and a marriage, and now he was asking.

"Take me out through the basement," I said.

His house was four blocks away, a narrow brick row house with one lamp left on in the front window.

He unlocked the door and stepped back to let me in, and he didn't touch me.

I put my bag down in the hall. I turned and took hold of his shirt, in both fists.

"I've been Colin's wife for three years," I said. "No one in that house ever asked me what I wanted."

"What do you want?"

"You."

He lifted his hand and laid it along my jaw, slowly, the way he had on the stairs.

This time I turned into his palm and kissed the inside of it.

The sound he made was low and ragged. Then his mouth was on mine, and he wasn't slow anymore.

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