He slides one hand down the length of me until he’s brought it between us. His calloused fingers touch a part of me that makes my skin go hot. My eyes flutter. My head lists. He grips the side of my throat, his thumb digging into my pulse. “Look at me,” he murmurs. The vulnerable plea in his voice undoes me. “Look at me, Jade.”
“That’s not—”
His touch turns rapid and my body arches in anticipation, a terrible ecstasy that makes me abandon logic.You’ll have to kill him,I think furiously. I grasp his forearms so tightly his skin reddens around my fingertips; his pupils expand when I call his name. These are sensory reactions because he’s alive and I’m alive. All his veins and arteries are flowing with his beautiful life-bringing blood.
He’ll die. You’ll bury him.
But this moment is here, and it’s ours, and nothing has ever felt like this. When he cries out, I cover his mouth with my hand, not tostifle his sounds but to catch them, so that I might carry them inside me and keep them when he’s gone.
—
MORNING LIGHT FILLS THEroom, but I don’t stir. I don’t lift my head from where it rests above Edison’s beating heart. My hair is coiled around his fingers, and he holds me with an arm around my waist.
There’s a soft buzz from my jeans pocket, wadded at the foot of the bed. I extend my arm to reach for it carefully. Edison tightens his grip on me and sighs. I go still. When he doesn’t wake, I grab my burner phone from my pocket.
There’s a text from Moody. I didn’t add anyone to my contacts, but I memorized the last four digits of my sisters’ respective numbers.
Up all night singing psalms with the church boy, Sis?
Fuck off.
There, now she knows I’m still alive. I delete the messages and power the phone off before I put it back. The clock on Edison’s bedside table reads six forty-five. In fifteen minutes, his alarm will sound and he’ll have to get ready for work. The world doesn’t stop even when wonderful things happen.
I force myself to get out of bed. I make my way to the kitchen and pour water into the Keurig. When he wakes up, I want him to realize the bed is empty. He’ll panic, think I’ve left him. He’ll realize how much he needs me and worry that he’s lost me, that last night was too much. And then he’ll smell the coffee and hear me moving around inthe kitchen, wearing his T-shirt that comes halfway down my thighs, my collarbone exposed. He’ll want me all over again, but there won’t be time, and I’ll live inside his thoughts all day.
While I wait for the coffee, I browse the fridge. Edison is the quintessential bachelor. A take-out carton of fried rice, an open box of baking soda, a splash of milk left in the carton, and some eggs. I can work with this. I find a potato next to a brown banana on a cutting board by the sink, and some olive oil by the stove. The bottle is covered in dust, and I run it under the faucet, exposing the date stamped on the bottom. Only a month past its expiration.
By the time I hear Edison’s alarm go off, the diced potatoes are browning on the skillet and the eggs and milk are scrambled in a bowl, waiting to be cooked. I grab the snowman mug and press the button on the Keurig.
I’m singing when he finally makes his way into the kitchen. I don’t turn to greet him, and I wait, my nerves standing on edge, as he coils his arms around me and kisses the side of my neck. “Morning.” His voice is gruff. His fingers tighten against my hip.
“Hi.” The world is spinning only for us. “I made you coffee.”
“Coffee and breakfast,” he says, and my body feels cold when he moves away.
“Oh, did you want some? I was making this for me.”
He laughs, kisses the back of my head as I pour the eggs onto the skillet. He hasn’t told me that he loves me. It’s too soon; he doesn’t even realize yet that he does. We’re in the early stages, filled with comfortable silence and devious kisses. He’ll think about me all day at work. The shape of my mouth, the rasp in my voice when I cried his name. All of me laid out before him for the taking. He’ll think of the ways he’s touched me, and the unexplored ways he still wants to.
I have to let him want me. Don’t text first, not even to ask how his day is going. Be aloof, but not cold. Mysterious but intrigued.
I don’t make myself a cup of coffee because the only two mugs left in the cabinet sayhisandherson them, and I don’t want to remind Edison that he’s a widower. I pour a glass of water from the tap instead, and I bring the plates to the table.
“Looks amazing,” Edison says, inhaling deep. “I don’t know how you managed to whip this up. I didn’t think I had any food in the house.”
Morning light fills his messy hair, and it takes all my willpower not to stare at him.
“I have a meeting before work,” he says.
I reach across the table and put my hand on his. My thumb traces little circles in the space between his thumb and forefinger.Good,my touch says.Stay strong for me. Come home to me.
He meets my gaze, all warmth and a mischievous smile. “Last night was— I’m still breathless.”
A warm feeling fills my chest, and I look down at our joined hands and then at him. It’s too soon to use a word likelove, but we’re shrouded in a beam of morning sun, and it’s the perfect time to ask him the question that’s been tormenting me. “Edison,” I say. “That first night I came over, you said something about—”
A sound in the living room captures both of our attention. Keys jingling and then the front door swinging open.
I give Edison a confused look and he stands, his arm outstretched to keep me behind him. I don’t have my box cutter.Sloppy.It’s in my jeans pocket on the bed.
