Well. Were we? For the first time since I’d been back at the lake, I finally knew why Eddie wasn’t responding to my texts. In Eddie’s head, maybe he’d just had a terrible June, but he could still count on coming home to his faithful girlfriend when this nightmare was all over.
But I’d been waiting on Eddie for a long time. Before all of this. For weeks. Months. Years. Before the fall into the dam, really. The only thing that had changed was that I now realized there were other things to do with my life. I didn’t have to wait. I could walk away.
I could be happy.
I found my gaze trailing down Fen’s chest. I forced it back up to his face, but that was just as dangerous. Maybe more.
Fen bent his head to mine and kissed my tearstained cheek. Kissed my jaw. My ear. He slung an arm around my back and tugged me closer, until I was straddling his lap on the bench. And the same hands that had played those stormy, cascading notes on the piano were all over me. His skin felt damp and feverish under my hands, and his hair faintly smelled of eucalyptus and mint.
I wanted him. And where our bodies connected, I could feel that he wanted me too.
“Come upstairs with me,” he said in a raspy voice. His eyes all lazy and full of sex.
“What’s upstairs?”
“My apartment.”
I looked up. A loft.
“And condoms,” he added. “I think. God, I hope.”
My cheeks puffed out a breath. I was rattled. Not thinking straight.
“Frida?” I asked, looking for her pointy ears.
“She can hang upstairs,” Fen said, “but I’m not sharing my bed with a dog.”
I laughed nervously. My hands were shaky when I slung my arm around Fen’s neck. He lifted me off the bench and, upon standing, kicked the seat backward, knocking it over with a thump.
“Upstairs?” he asked, depositing me on the floor.
I took his hand.
Up the stairs, above the rafters to an open door. Frida ran up with us, and when I stepped inside, he shut the door behind us. It was a tiny apartment, barely bigger than my staff room. Kitchenette and living space crammed together. Most of it was covered in books and record shelves. A purple couch was buried in clothes. Fen pushed them to one side, picked up Frida, and deposited her there. Then he led me into the bedroom and shut the door. “One second…”
“Ow,” I said, tripping over something in the dark.
He flipped on a switch in an adjoining bathroom that cast a slant of light into the room. And as he rummaged frantically inside a medicine cabinet, I perched on the edge of his unmade bed. A laptop sat on his bedside table playing music I didn’t recognize.
“Success,” he said, chest heaving and hair all disheveled.
He stopped in the slant of light and stared at me. Dark curls hung over one eye. A fine sheen of sweat glistened on his neck and shoulders. From playing the sonata, the kissing after, or the frantic condom search, maybe all of it.
“Seeing you here…,” he said in a low voice. “I feel like I’m dreaming. You’re not another ghost, are you?”
“I think I’m real.” I gave him a soft smile.
His weight made the mattress sink next to me, and for a moment, I lost my nerve. Then he picked up my hand and kissed my palm. “Is this okay?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to be here? If you change your mind, it’s okay. I’ve waited a long time for you. I don’t mind waiting longer.”
I felt that connection between us click into place, the same one I’d felt the first day I walked into the record shop. He called to something instinctual inside me, and it just feltright.
He kissed my throat as I wrapped my arms around him. My body caught on fire, and I couldn’t get close enough to him. By the time my flats were slipping off my feet and falling to the floor with two soft thunks, I wasn’t nervous at all. I was aching for him to touch me.
“Remember what I told you back at the tree?” he whispered, sliding his hand beneath my clothes. “Nothing has changed. You have all the power. I am yours to destroy.”
