This just keeps going, and going, and going, and I don't know where it leads, and I can't control it, and for a man who's spent his entire adult life controlling everything that's the scariest thing of all.
"Come inside," she says. "It's cold."
I let her pull me to my feet, lead me through the back door and into the kitchen and down the hallway, past the girls' closed doors, past the photos on the wall and the packed lunches on the counter and all the evidence of a life I built by myself and am now—terrifyingly, wonderfully, completely—letting someone else into.
She stops in the hallway outside my bedroom, turns to face me, and her hands find the front of my shirt.
"You don't have to be gentle tonight," she says.
She sees it. The anger I'm holding. The fear. The helpless fury of a man who's been invaded and threatened and confronted with the ghost of his worst mistake, all in the same week.
She sees all of it, and she's not asking me to lock it down.
She's not asking me to be the controlled, deliberate, careful version of myself.
She's asking for the rest of it.
"Leah—"
"I can take it. Whatever you're holding. I can take it. Give it to me."
Something snaps. Not breaks—snaps.
Like a rubber band that's been stretched too far for too long, and the release is sudden and violent and it takes my breath with it.
I push her against the wall. Not gently.
My mouth finds hers and the kiss isn't soft, isn't careful, isn't the tender worship of our first time.
This is teeth and tongue and ten years of rage with nowhere to go, and she doesn't flinch.
She grabs my hair and pulls me closer and kisses me back just as hard, and the sound she makes against my mouth.
God. That sound.
I lift her.
She wraps her legs around me and I carry her into the bedroom. We don't make it to the bed.
Her back hits the dresser and the framed photo of the girls rattles.
I catch it with one hand without looking and set it face-down because my daughters don't need to witness this.
My hands are everywhere. Not careful, not deliberate—hungry.
Pulling at her scrub top, dragging it over her head, my mouth on her neck before the fabric hits the floor.
She's already working my belt, her fingers fast and impatient, and the fact that she's not asking me to slow down, not trying to soothe me, not handling me with kid gloves—it's the hottest thing I've ever experienced.
"Off," she says, yanking my shirt up. "Now."
I pull it over my head.
She runs her hands down my chest and her nails drag—not scratch, drag—and the sensation sends a jolt straight through me that makes my hips pin her harder against the dresser.
"There he is," she breathes. "Let go, Coin."
I unhook her bra and my mouth finds her breast. I'm not gentle about it.
