Chapter 5: The Boathouse

The lights went out across the harbor while he was still looking at me.

One by one the wharf lamps died, and the inn on the quay, and the windows of the big house behind us.

It was the same black as three years ago, thick and total, with rain drumming on the rocks.

"Storm's taken the line again," Ansel said. His voice came from very close.

"It does that," I said. "Every fall."

"It does."

His hand found mine in the dark.

I should have pulled it back.

I knew exactly whose hand it was, and he did not know whose he held.

That should have stopped me, and it didn't, because I wanted what I wanted.

"Come on," he said. "You're soaked."

He led me down the cliff stairs without a light, one hand on my wrist and one on the rail.

The boathouse stood at the foot of the path, a long gray shed over the slips with a sail loft above.

He shouldered the door open, and the smell hit me.

Tar and cedar and old canvas and cold water.

My knees nearly went.

"Ansel," I said.

"I know. I don't know why I came here."

He shut the door behind us, and the rain became a roar on the roof.

"Leave it dark," I said.

"I wasn't going to light it."

I heard him breathe.

I heard my own breath, too, fast and shallow.

"You're shaking," he said.

"I'm cold."

"That's not why."

He found my face with both hands, and he kissed me.

It wasn't the cliff.

It was slow, and it was deliberate, and it asked me a question that I answered by opening my mouth.

He backed me against a post.

His hands went down my sides and gripped my hips, and he lifted me an inch so that my feet left the floor.

"Tell me to go," he said against my throat. "Tell me to take you back up to the house."

"No."

"Wynne."

"No. Don't you dare."

I pulled his sweater up over his head, and he let me.

His chest was hot and hard under my palms, and his heart was thumping.

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