"So tell me to leave, right now, on this sidewalk. And I'll go and stay gone. You have my word."
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
He watches me. Waiting. The streetlight buzzes above us. Somewhere down the block a car door slams, a dog barks. The whole world is noise, and he is the only quiet thing in it.
"I don't know what to say," I whisper.
"Say anything." His thumb strokes over the scar on my lip.
"I don't want you to leave."
The words are out before I can catch them. They hang in the air between us the way the sentence hung in the alley this morning, the one about being afraid of not being afraid of him. I feel my face heat even in the cold.
His other hand comes out of his pocket. He lifts it slowly until his knuckles brush my jaw. His fingers slide along the line of it, under my ear, into the hair at the back of my neck. His thumb rests in the hollow below my ear where my pulse is going so hard I can feel it.
He lowers his head and tips my face up at the same time.
I have a second. Maybe two. I can’t help but feel he gives me those seconds on purpose.
His mouth is warm.
That's the first thing I think. The cold of the night and the warmth of his mouth and the small catch of his lower lip against mine. My hands come up without my permission and grip the front of his sweater the way a drowning person grips a rope.
He doesn't rush me. He doesn't crowd me. He kisses me the way he said my name in the sedan, careful and deliberate. Some part of me that has been white-knuckled for four years unclenches finger by finger.
The unclenching is the part that surprises me.
Because I like it.
I like it more than I have liked anything in a very long time, and the liking is not a small quiet thing. It's loud. It's telling me clearly that the danger in this man's hand on the back of my neck and under my chin feels safer than the danger of trusting a man who I lived with for four years.
That piece of knowledge is going to keep me awake for the rest of my life.
He lifts his head.
His thumb is still under my ear. My pulse is still hammering against it. His eyes are the dark gray of slate beneath the streetlight, and they are looking at me the way no one has ever looked at me before.
He lets me go slowly and steps back. He puts his hand at the small of my back, just enough that I can feel it through my coat. We walk the last few steps to the main door of my building without speaking.
