Chapter 17: The Key

I took a cab to Chestnut Hill on Saturday afternoon, with the brass key in my coat pocket and my heart going hard.

I had texted him from the back seat.

Stay downstairs. Don't come to the east hall until I say.

He had answered within seconds. Yes.

The house was quiet when I let myself in.

Margot's coats were gone from the hooks, and the driver's car was gone from the drive.

Elliot stood at the foot of the stairs in his shirtsleeves with his hands pressed flat against his thighs.

"You're really going to make me wait," he said.

"For about a minute."

I climbed the stairs by myself.

The east hall was long and carpeted, and I had walked down it a hundred times with a lifted hand.

Today I did not lift it.

I took the key out of my pocket and held it against the lock.

Then I turned it and opened the door of his room, all the way, with my own hand.

The lamp was on.

The bed had its covers folded flat, and the desk was tidy, and the room smelled of cedar and soap and him.

It was smaller than I had pictured.

I had made it a fortress, and it was only a room.

"Elliot," I called.

I heard him on the stairs before I saw him.

He came to the door and stopped on the threshold, and his gray eyes went over me and the open door.

"You can come in," I said.

He crossed it slowly.

I shut the door behind him and turned the key from the inside, and then I put the key in his palm.

"That's yours," I said. "I just wanted to be the one who opened it."

His hand closed on it.

"Nina."

"I have something else."

I took the little box out of my other pocket, the one I had carried for a week.

I opened it and took out one cufflink.

"Give me your wrist."

He held it out, and I fed the link through the cuff and fastened it, and then the other.

My fingers were not steady.

His pulse was visible at his throat, quick and high.

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