“Maybe you should come inside,” she said.
He stilled. He waited for thebut. None came.
“You could... stay, if you wanted.” Her eyes skewed away. “I promise I wouldn’t try anything, like the other day. Which I’m sorry about, by the way. I get why it’s a hard line for you.And I couldn’t anymore, anyway, not with the way things’ve gone with...”
She trailed off, chewing her lip.
Gallant, he silently finished. Under different circumstances, the sentiment would have clawed bloody furrows into his ability to function. But his equanimity had gone out the window when Paige had left him at the dinner table Monday night. Now Aubrey’s invitation granted him the first ounce of relief he’d experienced since.
“That would mean a lot to me,” he rasped. “It would mean everything, actually.”
“Then come inside.”
She didn’t have to say it twice. He silenced the truck engine and followed her out. On her stoop, he inhaled her sunshine scent while she fitted her key into the lock. She looked up from beneath her lashes for a moment before opening the door. Inside, he expected her to go to the living room, but she led him down the opposite hallway.
He hesitated, then followed. At the end of the hall, her bedroom greeted him like an old, familiar friend. The bedspread hadn’t changed. Neither had the white dresser along the wall, or the plastic math trophies lining the shelves. Nor had the window, which he’d clambered through countless times. Just looking at it made something tight and painful catch inside him.
Aubrey clicked on her bedside lamp. She sifted through her dresser for pajamas, then disappeared into the adjacent bathroom.
He hovered in the doorway. She couldn’t possibly mean for him to sleep in here with her. But when she emerged again, a vision in white cotton, she peeled back the blankets, climbed into bed, and patted the empty half of the mattress.
Heat flooded him, writing words of gratitude in his blood. Aubrey hadn’t spoken since coming inside, so he didn’t, either.He just ventured into the room, kicked off his boots, and tossed down his jacket. His fingers hesitated on his belt buckle, but the green of her eyes darkened in invitation, so he thumbed his zipper down and yanked his shirt over his head, then climbed into her bed wearing nothing but boxer-briefs.
She pulled up the blanket to cover them. He lay on his side and, when her hand found his chest, pulled her close. The pressure of her palm burned a brand into his skin, tattooing him with her warmth.
He stared into her eyes as she stared into his. He swore the world grew bigger, all of existence expanding to accommodate the way his heart kept swelling into forever.
It was better than sex, lying with her like that, looking into her. So much flowed between them, the silence more eloquent than any letter he had or ever could write. It was a wordless, naked admission of all that had never been. It was regret and longing and ecstasy all rolled into one, and he would have traded ten years of his life for the undiluted perfection of it.
He didn’t remember falling asleep. At some point, she clicked off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness, and then he was somehow studying her again, only now sunlight leaked in through the curtains, painting the lids of her closed eyes silver.
As he watched, her lashes parted, almost like his attention had woken her. He wanted to believe it had, that she could feel the weight of what she meant to him, even in her sleep.
She smoothed the pad of her thumb along his cheekbone. He synchronized his breathing to the rasp of her fingers against his stubble.
She slid a leg over him and tugged. He obeyed the unspoken command by rolling onto her, hardly believing the way her body turned supple and inviting, the way she parted her legs and let him settle within the heated cradle of her thighs.
He stared down and didn’t dare try for anything more. She’d made it clear he shouldn’t. Even this much counted as a gift beyond measure.
Aubrey breathed deep, as if soaking up his smell. Her fingers painted long strokes against his cheeks. Her attention drifted downward, locking onto his mouth for the longest time, then she looked up again, into his eyes.
Awe coursed through his veins. He almost told her he loved her, but he knew she already knew, and he found the silence so unbearably sweet that he couldn’t bear to shatter it. Instead, he reveled in the quiet, gathered it into himself like a held breath he would never exhale.
She eventually pulled him down into a hug, and he curled his body around hers, awed by how perfectly he fit against her, now. He nestled his nose in the crook of her neck and dragged in one drugged breath after another. He clung to her for an eternity before finally pulling away.
He dressed slowly. Aubrey stayed where she’d slept, her eyes traveling across his bare skin like a caress. He smiled before he left, and she smiled back, a sad and somehow perfect thing, and when he closed her front door he stood on the stoop for a long time, gazing at the wide white sky.
He felt changed. Calmer, surer, more awake than he’d ever been.
Just yesterday, he’d considered that evening with her in front of the fireplace the best night of his life. Now he knew this had been.
He just wished he didn’t have to follow it up with the worst day he would ever have.
33.
At home, Nick found Tansy bent over the sink in their single cramped bathroom, brushing her teeth. Half an hour remained before his shift, which gave him just enough time to ask. He had to do it now, before this tranquility wore off.
At his approach, Tansy snapped off the water and glanced up, catching his gaze in the mirror. For some reason, that bolstered him, that he could face this reflected facsimile instead of the real live person.
