ou watch her?”
“Of course.”
Julia went to the kitchen, grabbed the car keys and her purse. Every step seemed to jostle her bones. It felt as if she were held together with old Scotch tape. “Good-bye. I’ll be back soon.”
Outside, she drew in a deep, shaky breath. The night smelled of wet wood and new snow and the coming night. It wasn’t until she was almost to the car that she realized she’d forgotten her coat.
Freezing, she drove to Max’s house. The heat came on just as she turned into his driveway.
By the time she crossed the white yard and reached the porch steps, he was there, on the deck, waiting for her. Pale light spilled through an open window and cast him in a beautiful golden glow.
She felt a powerful jolt at the sight of him. It came from somewhere deep inside of her, past muscle and bone, a place that was normally still. Coming home; that was how it felt.
She climbed the steps toward him. He started to say something else, but she didn’t want to hear his words, his voice, his questions. They would be concrete, somehow, too heavy. She couldn’t carry any more weight right now.
She touched a finger to his lips. “Take me to bed, Max.”
He stared down at her, and for a moment—just that—she saw the man behind the smile, the man who knew a thing or two about loss. “Are you sure?”
“You’re wasting time. Alice—” Her voice broke this time. She had to force a smile. “. . . might have a nightmare. I can’t be gone long.”
He swept her into his arms and carried her up the stairs. She clung to him, her face buried in the crook of his neck. Seconds later they were in his room. She slid out of his arms and took a step backward. Though distance was the last thing she wanted right now, she felt awkward. Undone somehow.
She unbuttoned her shirt, let it fall to the floor. Her bra followed.
They stood there, separated by inches and yet worlds apart, undressing. Finally, both naked, they looked at each other.
When he reached for her, she said nothing, barely even breathed. He circled his hand around the back of her neck and pulled her to him. Off balance, she stumbled a bit, fell into his chest.
He kissed her slowly, with a gentleness that was both surprising and short-lived. She reached up for him, coiled her arms around him, stroking his skin, wanting him closer, closer.
It flashed through her mind to push him away, to change her mind, say, Stop; I was wrong, you’ll break my heart, but her fear lasted no longer than an instant. Passion twisted it into something else. They moved to the bed. In a distant part of her mind she saw that he was pushing his clothes aside, making a bower of rumpled white sheeting for their bodies, and then she was on the bed with him, beneath him, her hands desperate against his bare, hot skin. She was breathing so hard and fast she felt dizzy; his name slipped from her mouth to his. Neither one of them heard it. His hands pushed past her defenses, drove her down, past pleasure and into a kind of pain and back to pleasure again. As if from far away, she heard him rip open a condom package; then her hands were on him, stroking it into place.
He groaned and covered her body with his, moving against her until she couldn’t think of anything, could only feel.
When he entered her, with a thrust that went straight to the core of her, she cried out, terrified for a moment that she’d lost herself in all this need.
When it was over, he held her close and kissed her again. It was long and slow and gentle, and it made her want to cry.
“You’re a good man, Max Cerrasin,” she said throatily.
“I used to be.”
She drew back just enough to look at him. In the pale light from a single lamp, she saw now what she’d refused to admit before, even to herself: she’d been lost from the moment she saw him, certainly from their first kiss. She hadn’t merely stepped into love; she’d tumbled headlong, like her beloved Alice, down the rabbit hole to a place where nothing made sense. It didn’t matter now whether he loved her back. What mattered was the love itself, this feeling of connecting with another heart. She could see, too, that he was worried. They’d come to a place that neither had quite expected, and there was no way to know how it would end. In the past—hell, yesterday—that would have frightened her. She’d learned a lot today. “Yesterday I was worried about a lot of things. Today I know what matters.”
“Alice.”
“Yes,” she said softly. “And you.”
MAX LAY BESIDE HER, HOLDING HER NAKED BODY CLOSE, AND STARED UP at the ceiling. It had been a long time since he’d felt this way. He wanted to spend the night with Julia, to wake up beside her, to kiss her good-morning and talk about whatever came to mind.
In ordinary times that might have been possible; these were far from ordinary times. A part of her was breaking apart right now; she was holding herself together by sheer force of will.
He rolled onto his side and looked down at her. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, tracing her full lower lip with his finger.
“You, too,” she said with a smile. Her nose brushed his chin. When she smiled, her pale green eyes made him think of misty rain-forest mornings. Cool and deep and somehow magical.
“You’re turning me into a romantic,” he said.