"Charlotte."
"Let me go."
He steps back.
Immediately. No hesitation, no argument, no lingering pressure. His hands leave the counter, and he takes a full step backward, and his arms drop to his sides, and the space between us opens up like a wound.
He doesn't say anything. Doesn't reach for me. Doesn't try to close the gap. He stands there with his hands at his sides and his jaw tight and his chest rising and falling too fast, and he waits.
He stopped.
The thought hits me so hard my vision swims. He stopped. I said let me go and he let me go. Not slowly, not reluctantly, not with a sigh or a comment or acome onor ayou know you want this.I said the word and his body obeyed before his mouth could argue.
No man has ever done that. Not once. Not in my entire life has a man been that close to me, that heated, that wound up, and stepped back the instant I asked.
My chest constricts, breaking open as vulnerability crashes into me.
I grab him by the front of his shirt and pull.
He comes. Not because I'm strong enough to move him. Because he lets me. Because the second my fist closes on the fabric, his body reads the permission and responds. I pull him into me and crush my mouth against his, and the sound he makes is low and rough and breaks apart in the back of his throat.
His hands find my waist. Not gentle. Firm. Fingers digging into the curve above my hips, pulling me off the counter and into him, and I go because my body has already made a decision my brain is screaming about. He tastes like coffee and blood from the cut on his lip, and I bite that lip because I want to, because the anger hasn't left and the want hasn't arrived gently, it’s like a car crash, sudden and violent and rearranging everything.
He kisses me back. Hard. His mouth opens against mine and his tongue slides past my teeth and the sound I make is embarrassing and honest and I don't care. His hands slide up my back, pulling me closer, and my spine arches into him and my fingers twist in his shirt and I can feel his heart hammering against my chest, matching mine, both of us running the same frequency for the first time since he put me in that car.
His teeth catch my bottom lip. I gasp. He pulls back just enough to breathe, his forehead against mine, his hands fisted in the fabric at my waist.
"Tell me to stop," he says. His voice is wrecked. Shredded. Nothing clinical about it, nothing controlled. Just a man with his hands on a woman he wants, asking her to save him from himself.
I should say stop. I should push him away and rebuild the wall and go back to being Charlotte Richardson, the woman who doesn't need anyone and doesn't want anything and survives on bad coffee and unlit cigarettes.
But his hands are shaking. On my waist, against my skin where my blouse has ridden up, his fingers are trembling the way mine tremble when I'm scared. He's scared. Of me. Of this. Of whatever this is becoming.
I press my palm flat against his chest. His heart slams against my hand like it's trying to break out.
"Not tonight," I say. “I… I can’t.”
He exhales. Long. Slow. His forehead stays against mine. His eyes close.
"Okay," he says.
He doesn't step back. I don't push him away. We stand in the farmhouse kitchen with our foreheads touching and our hands on each other and the wood stove popping in the next room, and the almost is so heavy I can taste it. He smells like smoke and coffee, and there’s that sharp taste from his busted lip. My bodywants to devour him, yet I can’t ignore how the wall I’ve spent three years patching up is now letting everything show through.
And it’s allhisfault.
He pulls back first. His hands leave my waist like it costs him something, and the cold rushes into the space where his body was.
He picks up the screwdriver. Goes back to the burner phone. Doesn't look at me.
I stand at the counter with my pulse in my throat and my lips swollen and the ghost of his hands on my skin, and I press my fingers to the back of my neck and count.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Still here. Still standing. Still Charlotte Richardson.
But the name fits differently now. Looser. Like a coat I've been wearing so long I forgot it wasn't mine, and someone just tugged the collar and reminded me there's a body underneath.
I go to the bathroom. Lock the door. Sit on the edge of the tub.
