“You’re ready to go.” Her voice is light as air.
I nod.
It takes a while for the pressure to ease out of the moment and when it does, I see right away that everything’s changed.
“Kit,” I say as she finishes toeing off her shoes and heads straight down the hall to my room. “Wait up.”
Her pace doesn’t change. She continues on, all business. My favorite sultry, hip shaking walk a thing of the past.
By the time I get my boots off and grab a towel, I find her sitting up in my bed, under the sheets, naked.
I open my mouth to comment and then hold it in because, fuck, this shit is complicated.
Wasn’t supposed to be, but it is.
I hand her the towel and soak up every second of her body doing practical, everyday things.
Instead of the easy banter we’ve worked up to these past couple of weeks, it’s with a kind of thick quiet that I undress and get into bed.
She watches me every second, though, and I wonder if it’s the same for her. Will she miss this like water? Like air? Are her insides shoring themselves up, too, against what’s about to happen?
Once I’m naked and, contrary to every other time we’ve been together, only half hard, even with her eyes on me, she slides over and I get into the warm place in my bed and fuck if that isn’t the strangest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever felt. A warm spot, waiting for me.
I clear my throat, thinking I’ll say something to improve the mood, but not a solitary word comes to mind. So, instead, I dowhat works for us. I move under the blankets, down her body, one slick slide of my tongue at a time, to that uncomplicated, hot, fragrant place between her legs. And I make love to her. Maybe for the last time.
35
Kit
“What happens if there’s a storm?” I ask, staring straight up into the quiet, dark night.
“Hm?” He flops over onto his back.
“While you’re, you know, underwater.” I gulp. “Welding?”
“We’d avoid that.”
“Okay. Good. Okay.” The stuff I’ve been reading online these past few days keeps swirling, and the more it swirls, the bigger it seems and, to be perfectly honest, it’s really not okay at all. “Do they need you to go underwater?”
“It’s what I’m hired for.”
“Every time?”
“This platform’s got a few issues. It’s an older one.”
Oh, god. I can’t get these images out of my head. A rusty, creaking metal eyesore in the middle of a wild, stormy sea. Cold, cold rain battering down. “Why Norway?”
“Hm? Well, the company I work for sends me out to different locations, based on need and?—”
“Why you?”
He takes a while to answer. When he finally does, his words take the panic I’ve been shoving back and turn it into something rabid, too huge to hide. “I’m good at it. I’m a good diver, a good welder, steady under pressure. I don’t mind danger and I get the technical aspects.”
“I mind danger.” I work hard to keep the fear from my voice. “I mean, for you. I mind that you put yourself out there, that you could get hurt. I read it’s the most dangerous job in the world.”
He doesn’t immediately answer, which is answer enough. He turns onto his side and, in the dark, with the sound of rain pounding on the metal roof above us, he puts his rough, callused hand to my cheek. It smells oh-so-slightly of the balm I gave him.
“You worried about me, baby?”
