Chapter 7: Nobody's Shadow

I did not go home after the letter.

I went to work, because the work was the only thing that stayed where I put it.

I poured for six hours with the number in my head.

Four hundred twelve thousand, six hundred.

It had not been Elliot's kindness.

It had been a price, and somebody had put it in writing.

At two o'clock the last customer left.

Jace locked the front door and turned the sign, and the room went quiet except for the ice machine.

I was wiping down the zinc, and my hands would not stop moving.

"Hey," he said. "Nina. It's clean."

"It's not."

"It's been clean for ten minutes."

I put the towel down.

I stood there with both hands flat on the bar, and I looked at the pale line on my finger.

"My hand isn't looking for a ring," I said.

Jace stayed where he was, on the other side of the zinc.

"I know it isn't."

"I wasn't looking for one on Sunday either. You were wrong about that."

"Maybe."

"I want to be here. In this room. With you." I made myself hold his eyes.

"Nobody's shadow is on me. I want you to touch me."

"Nina."

"I'm done waiting for someone to say I can."

He didn't move for a moment.

Then he came around the end of the bar.

He took my face in both hands, and his palms were warm and rough, and he kissed me.

It was slow for about two seconds.

Then I got my fists in his shirt and pulled, and it wasn't slow at all.

He tasted of rye and mint.

His beard scraped my chin, and I made a sound I had never made in the Rainer house.

Jace answered it with a low noise of his own.

He lifted me by the waist and sat me on the bar.

I was at his height, with my knees on either side of his hips.

The zinc was cold through my skirt.

"Tell me what you want," he said against my mouth.

"I want you to stop talking."

He laughed, and bit my lower lip.

"That's an order I can follow."

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