Page 92 of Meet Me on Greenwood

The night settled around us as I realized that who I thought was a respectable white doctor, was in fact, something else entirely.

I thought about the swan ferry boats. The speakeasy. The canopy in the rain. Every version of him I'd been assembling piece by piece, and how this bit of knowledge rearranged all of them into something that finally made sense.

"Does anyone know?" I asked.

"Lettie," he said. "She’s from my hometown. She has always known."

I took a deep, slow breath.

"Now you know," he said.

"Now I know," I agreed.

He tilted his head trying to read my face, probably wondering what I would do with this information, and whether it changed the foundation between us. Then his eyes moved to the window. He stood up quickly to look out.

Turning back, he said, "Take my hand. We need to go to the interior of the barn, now."

The look on his face told me he was serious. I didn’t argue, I just took his hand. Houston guided me over to a door that I hadn’t seen before. He unlocked it and ushered me inside. It wasn’t until he flipped on a light, that I realized it was a room. There wasn’t much to it. It had a queen size bed, too fancy for a barn, a wash basin in the corner and a small stack of books. There was a small wood stove, which he quickly went to work lighting. Soon the whole barn began to shudder, and I thought about the physics of being in such a large, empty space. It was the worst place we could be to wait out the storm.

"Don’t worry," Houston said, as the stove came to life. "There is an entry point to the tunnel right under that rug. We can go there if the tornado is on top of us. I could see it moving overhead, but it has not touched down yet."

"Perhaps, we should go back to the house?"

"You felt those winds," he said, coaxing me to sit on the bed as he removed the rug and undid the lock. "There. We can jump in if we need to. I will keep watch."

I thought about his plan. It seemed sound enough, though I was half tempted to jump in the tunnel just to be cautious. Instead, I asked, "What is this room? Why do you have it?"

He looked sheepish. "It is meant for a stable hand, but as you see, I don’t have any horses. Just liquor."

I looked over at the bed and caught a whiff of cedar. "Have you been… sleeping out here?"

"When you were recovering, yes." His cheeks reddened matching the color of his hair. "I wasn’t sleeping in my office. I was here every night."

There was so much I needed to process, and yet my brain wouldn’t allow me to. I thought about Houston out here in the dark every night while I laid in his bed trying not to think about him. About how close we were becoming.

"How is your hand?" I asked, needing to focus on something else, anything else.

He looked down at his bloodied knuckles as if seeing them for the first time, turning his hand slightly like the damage belonged to someone else. "I’m not used to having to use force," he admitted.

"This is the second time I’ve seen you beat someone up," I said, raising an eyebrow. "Any other revelations tonight?"

He shook his head. "No, that is the last of it."

"You don’t make it easy, but I think I understand you now." I gazed at him in the thin stove light, seeing a man who had been two people for so long, he'd nearly forgotten which one was real. "And you are not what I thought you were."

"Is that good or bad?"

"I think it is good," I said.

He released a breath, trailing a gaze down my body until his eyes turned glassy. I looked down to see what had gotten his attention, and saw my robe was gone. I’d abandoned it in the rain and was wearing nothing but a chemise. It was so soaked, my nipples protruded through the thin fabric.

My breath came faster as I watched him, watching me.

"Gema," he said breathlessly, eyes shifting to my lips. "You are shivering."

My mouth quirked. "You don’t have your jacket this time."

A clap of thunder sounded above us, and I practically jumped into his arms. He rubbed my bare sides trying to create warmth, or at least that’s what I told myself. "Relax," he said. "Thunder is good. The louder the storm, the less likely that the tornado is approaching."