“This one I could fix.”
She’s looking at me the way she does when she’s trying to figure out what’s underneath.I don’t let her.I take her hand—the first time I’ve reached for her without being pulled—and walk her down the hall.
The bathroom is small.Always has been.Emily used to say it was built for one person who didn’t like company.I turn on the water.It runs hot in thirty seconds now—new valve, new line, another thing I fixed because fixing things is the only language I’ve ever been fluent in.
Steam fills the room.Marin is leaning against the doorframe watching me.Arms crossed.One eyebrow raised.The look of a woman deciding whether to follow a man into something she can’t come back from.
“You’re inviting me to see your plumbing,” she says.
“I’m showing you the water pressure.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
I pull my shirt over my head.She watches.Doesn’t pretend not to.Her eyes move across the bruises on my ribs and the scar above my eye and the shoulders and the arms and whatever else she sees when she looks at me that makes her keep looking.
“The pressure’s better,” I say.“You should test it.”
She uncrosses her arms.Pulls her blouse over her head.Steps out of her jeans.I step out of mine.The mirror is fogged.The room is small and getting smaller and the steam is everywhere and she’s standing in front of me in nothing and I forget about the basement.For one second.For the first time.I forget.
She steps into the shower.I follow her.The water hits her shoulders and runs down her back and she turns to face me and the space between us is nothing.Less than nothing.
“Impressive,” she says.
I put my hands on her waist.Press her back against the tile.She gasps—the cold of the wall against her skin, the heat of the water, the heat of everything else.Her hands find my neck.My jaw.She pulls my mouth to hers and the kiss is slow and deep and has nothing to do with rage or tables or six inches of open basement door.
This one is different.This one scares me.
Her back against the tile.My hands on her hips.The water running over both of us like it’s trying to wash away something that won’t come off.She wraps one leg around me and I lift her and she makes a sound against my mouth that I will hear every time I close my eyes for the rest of my life.
We move together.Slow at first.Her fingers digging into my back.Her breath against my neck.My name in her mouth—not Luke the handyman, not Luke the fixer, just Luke, just the word, just the sound of it said by a woman who means it in a way I haven’t heard my name said in years.
I press my forehead against hers.Her eyes are open.Mine are open.We’re looking at each other the way you look at someone when you know this is the last time even if they don’t.
Her hands are in my hair.Her mouth is on my throat.She says my name again and I feel it in my chest the way I feel the house settle at night—deep, structural, the kind of shift that changes what’s above it.
“Luke.”
“Hm?”
“Don’t stop.”
I don’t stop.
The water runs.The steam fills the room.Her back arches against the tile and my hands hold her and she comes apart the way she does everything—completely, without reservation, the full force of a woman who doesn’t know how to do anything halfway.
Afterward, she says, “You were right.The pressure’s better.”
Then she laughs.Small.Real.The laugh of a woman who is happy in a way she wasn’t expecting and doesn’t trust yet.
She wraps a towel around herself.Pushes her hair back.Looks at me.
“I’m going to check on Charles,” she says.
She’s halfway down the hall before I can stop her.
60
Marin
