He kissed me through the kitchen and down the hallway, never leaving my mouth but somehow still guiding us in the right direction and around any obtrusive furniture. He pushed the door open behind my back, and there we were. Jonah’s bedroom.
The room reminded me of him in every way. From the clean and tidy spaces—a feature he never experienced growing up. To the way everything was pristine and perfect. But right then, all I could concentrate on was his touch. His desperate need to have me. The heat he’d built beneath my skin, in the very center of me, pulsing and pounding and drowning out every other thing until there was just him and me and what was about to happen.
He guided me to the bed, my back landing on his perfectly tucked-in comforter. He took a second to toe off his shoes and slip them onto a shelf near his dresser before joining me on the mattress.
After he was stretched out next to me, his hand splayed over my stomach, his face hovering near mine, I said, “Should I put my shoes away too before we continue or...”
His eyes immediately narrowed. “You didn’t already?”
I knew he was teasing, but I wondered if he was also vaguely serious. “I can if you need me to.”
“What do you mean if I need you to?”
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. Did he really not see what a neat freak he was? But instead of asking him that directly, I said, “Does my apartment drive you crazy? Be honest.”
His teasing frown turned into one of confusion. “What do you mean? Why would it drive me crazy?”
“It’s so messy compared to yours. There are shoes everywhere. Clothes everywhere. Sometimes dust everywhere. Your apartment is perfectly in order. I’m like a tornado in comparison.”
“I love that about you,” he said honestly. “I love your apartment. I wouldn’t ever call it tidy, but it’s you. I much prefer it to mine.”
“Stop lying,” I demanded playfully. “Your apartment is so clean I bet I could eat off your ceiling fan. There’s no way you prefer mine to this germ-free haven.”
His deep rumble of laughter vibrated through all the spots where his body touched mine. “You think because I’ve hired a cleaning company, I’m somehow better at keeping house than you?”
Cleaning company. That made more sense. Still, I shrugged. “I think you like things in order... and I am anything but orderly.”
He kissed my temple and then the corner of my mouth, letting his mouth linger and then slowly draw away. “You know my mom. She was never... I don’t know... neat. But it wasn’t just that my house was messy. It was that it was like the physical version of my mom. And what she was capable of. Holes in the wall, broken furniture, mattresses on the floor. I grew up in unsafe conditions that usually scared me. To be honest, I grew up in filth. I made myself a promise a long, long time ago that once I was out of her house, I would never go back to those standards; I would always have a safe and healthy home.” His lips pursed before he rushed to explain. “I do know how to keep my own home clean. The cleaning company is just... convenient. I work so much, you know?”
I did know. This was nothing he had to explain to me. I had been there. “I get where you’re coming from,” I told him immediately. I hadn’t been over to his house many times when I was a kid, but I knew that it was bad from what my mom and Will had said over the years. It had never been bad enough for Shalya to lose custody... but it had been bad enough for me to whisper desperate prayers for his safety in the middle of the night. And for my mom to constantly offer him a place to stay. “But hey, I can make a better effort if my place makes you feel uncomfortable.”
His brows dipped together over his nose. “Your place doesn’t make me uncomfortable. The furthest thing from it. And please don’t try to make it something it’s not because you’re worried about me, Eliza. I’m fine.”
“I am worried about you, though. I just... I was there, you know? I was there when you were a kid. You might not have known it, but I was. I watched you go through all of that. I’ve watched you continue to deal with it now as an adult. I just... I think you’re incredible for surviving what you did. But I also know you have limitations. You’re an amazing, gorgeous, capable man. But you’re still just a man.”
His lips curved in that lopsided grin I loved so much. But this time, it was softer, sweeter. “You have nothing to worry about. Your apartment doesn’t feel stressful. It feels like the closest thing I’ve ever known to home.”
My heart jumped up and then twisted into a somersault, then landed in a splat somewhere near my kidneys. Had I just died? Was it possible to die from happiness? Because those words... those words would have been the thing that did it.“Your apartment doesn’t feel stressful. It feels like the closest thing I’ve ever known to home.”It means I’ve done what my mom did for Jonah. I’ve helped him feel safe. Seen. Loved.
His pointer finger traced the outline of my jaw. “You’re so beautiful. Do you know that? Sometimes, I look at you, and I forget what I’m going to say or even what I was thinking. I just... it’s not just your apartment that’s home, Eliza. It’s you. You’re home to me.”
A tear slid from the corner of my eye and rolled over my temple and landed in my hair. I felt its entire path but didn’t bother to wipe it away. Because honestly, what was I supposed to do with all of that besides melt into a puddle of liquid goo. “Jonah...”
“You seem to think I had this terrible childhood. I mean, I know you think that. And I know all the evidence points to you being right. But... but I didn’t have a bad childhood. I had a redemptive one. There were a lot of hard moments. Honestly, to this day, my mom is still the most difficult person in my life... but there were so many better moments, so many good times. Because of your family. Because of your brothers, yes. But also because of you.”
“But what about—”
“You think I pushed you away that time because of Will.” He closed his eyes like he was in pain.
I gave him a look. I was still wrapped in his arms, and the heat from his bare chest was keeping me very warm, so if there was a reason for insecurity now, I was struggling to let it penetrate my Jonah-Mason-half-naked-cuddling fog. Still, I said, “I only think that because you said it.”
“You were seventeen,” he argued defensively as if he’d been waiting for this conversation for a long time. And maybe he had been... because I certainly had. “And we were in your parents’ house. The same parents who saved me from a wretched home and fed and clothed me for my entire life.” He was growing more animated. “And you were seventeen. I was fucking twenty, Eliza. Your dad would have murdered me. In cold blood.”
My mouth twisted into a frown. I had a whole decade to stew over what had happened. And I wasn’t someone who had normal face-to-face conversations unless it was with my brothers. No, I was more the imaginary-conversation-in-the-shower kind of girl. So I had had this argument with Jonah at least a thousand times before now. At least. But to be honest, in my head, he had never explained it quite like that.
There had been a lot of apologies. A fair amount of pathetic groveling. Sometimes he had been angry or vindictive or cruel. But mostly, he had always blamed it on Will.
This was an entirely new perspective. Because I really had been seventeen. Sure, an almost legal adult beyond the dangers of statutory rape scenarios. But... still seventeen. He had been well into college. I had still been in high school. He had been a grown adult living on his own. I had been at home. With my parents. After a day at school.
