I Heard Dad's Friends Through the Wall, Now They Hear Me novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Boone in the Dark
Boone tries to send her inside, then kisses her against the porch post and breaks off; Dex's text tells her where to be tomorrow night.
Emmett let go of me and stepped back so fast that I nearly slid off the counter.
"Back door," I whispered.
"I'm not leaving you to face him alone."
"You'll leave me to face him at the front door, where Dad can't hear. Go."
He went out through the mudroom with his coat in his hand.
I pulled the T-shirt down over my thighs, found my father's barn coat on its hook, and walked out the front.
The cold hit my bare legs at once.
It was October in Erie, and the porch boards were damp under my feet.
Boone was standing beside his truck with the engine off and the door open.
He didn't say anything.
He looked at my feet, and then at the coat, and then he came up the porch steps, took the coat off my shoulders and put his own jacket around me instead.
It was heavy, and it smelled of sawdust and cold air.
"You came back," I said.
"I dropped Dex at the bar and drove around the block four times."
"Why four?"
"The fifth time, I was going to keep driving."
His voice was flat, but his hands were not steady on the lapels of the jacket.
"Diana," he said. "Listen to me. What you heard tonight, it was whiskey."
"You had one glass."
"It was Dex being stupid, and the rest of us being stupider."
"You said you'd have me against that door in a minute."
Boone looked away down the street, at the porches he had built.
A muscle moved in his jaw.
"I'm forty-nine," he said. "I held your mother's casket. I've known your father thirty-one years, and I stood next to him at your parents' wedding."
"I know what you mean, Boone. I'm asking what you want."
"What I want," he said, "is for you to go inside and shut your door."
I didn't move.
He took a breath, and it shook.
"Go inside, Diana."
"No."
His hand came up, slowly, and rested against my jaw.
It was an enormous hand, hard with calluses, and it covered half of my face.
His thumb moved across my lower lip once.
My knees went weak, and I leaned into the palm.
"You see?" he said hoarsely. "This is exactly what I can't do."
"Then why are you doing it?"
He didn't answer.
He backed me against the porch post with his body, not roughly, and I felt his whole length against mine through the heavy jacket.
I tipped my face up.
He kissed me.
It was nothing like Emmett's.
It was hard and sure and angry, and it came from months of holding back.
His fingers went into my hair.
I opened my mouth under his and heard myself moan.
He growled low in his chest, and his other hand found my hip and dragged me against him.
He was hard, and he was big, and he ground against me once, slowly, so I could feel every inch.
"Boone," I said into his mouth.
"Say it again."
"Boone."
His kiss turned fierce.
He lifted me against the post, and my bare legs came around his waist, and for a long minute neither of us was thinking about anyone's father.
Then he tore his mouth away.
He set me down with great care and held me at arm's length by the shoulders.
His chest was heaving.
"No," he said. "Not on his porch. Not like this."
"You keep saying that."
"Because I keep needing to." He let go of me and stepped back. "I'll go. Tomorrow, I'll be on a neighbor's roof all day. Don't come looking."
"Boone."
"I mean it, Diana."
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out and read it, and something crossed his face that was almost a laugh and almost not.
He turned the screen toward me.
It was a text from Dex.
Tell her Muldoon's. Tomorrow night, 10, back booth. Tell her the first drink is on me and the rest is up to her.
"He's not subtle," I said.
"No," said Boone, and he looked at me for a long time. "He never was."
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