A Special Place for Women, Laura Hankin [brene brown rising strong .txt] 📗

“And I don’t mean to . . .” He let out a breath of frustration at himself, at his imperfect words. “This shit is scary and weird, and I get why you’re freaked out. I just mean that I don’t know if you can say for sure one way or another what’s real and what’s not.”

If I’d been with Miles, we would’ve snarked about this like snark would save the world, and everything would have seemed less real and less terrifying. But instead Raf was saying in his sort of stumbling way that there was no certainty, that maybe I’d just fully insinuated myself with an all-powerful coven, and the tingling feeling was growing all over my body instead of going away like it was supposed to.

I turned the water off and stood still, staring at the shower mold, water dripping off me, my body covered in goose bumps. In the sudden quiet, I became very aware of Raf’s breathing on the other side of the curtain. “Sorry,” he said. “That’s probably not helpful right now.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t have to apologize. You’re being so kind to me. You’ve been so kind to me this whole time.”

As if to prove my point, he handed me a large, fuzzy bear of a towel through the gap between the curtain and the wall. I wrapped the towel tightly around me and emerged, face-to-face with him.

“Well,” he said, “I care about you.” His dark hair was mussed from sleep, a single curl falling over his forehead. He had a slight line, an indentation from his pillow, on his cheek.

“I care about you too.”

He looked at me for a moment more, then averted his eyes. “You want to sleep here?” I nodded, and he paced out of the bathroom, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll get you something to sleep in.”

I toweled off, then followed him to the door of his bedroom, waiting at the threshold like a vampire who couldn’t come in unless invited. His sheets were rumpled from when I’d startled him awake. A few different baseball caps sat scattered on top of his dresser. On one wall, he’d hung up a corkboard on which he’d pinned notes to himself, an article announcing the restaurant opening, and some pictures—his family at Christmastime, him with a group of his guy friends hiking in the woods, and a photo of a block party in our neighborhood years ago, where I’d slung my arm around him, my mother on the other side of me, his parents on the other side of him, and we all grinned, naive, no premonitions about the sadness that was coming our way.

He rummaged around in his drawer, then pulled out an oversize T-shirt and a pair of mesh shorts. “Here,” he said, handing the clothes to me. “I’ll take the couch.”

“No, you take the bed,” I replied.

He shook his head. “You’re taking the bed.”

“We could both take the bed.”

My breath caught in my throat for the eternity in which my words hung in the air. Then he nodded and climbed in.

I pulled the shirt and shorts on quickly, hung my towel on his doorknob while he turned off the lamp, and got in beside him, still shivering. We lay there, both looking up at the ceiling, his body heat radiating from a foot away. I scooted a little closer to him and turned onto my side, craving the warmth of him, hoping that he would turn too. After a moment, he did, and wordlessly lifted his arm to wrap it around me. I nestled into him. Behind his wall, the pipes clanked and murmured softly, the only other sound besides our shallow breathing. The ice in my bones began to melt, coursing and rippling around, an almost ticklish sensation inside my skin.

But still we hadn’t crossed a line. Still, this could all be explained away in the morning, just another hazy thing that had happened on this unexpected night.

“Are you feeling any better?” he asked.

“It’s all so much . . . more than I expected,” I said.

“You could always stop,” he said, his breath hot in my ear. I pressed myself closer to him, against the hardness at his hips, and his voice grew husky. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

I turned my face to his. “But I do want to,” I said, and kissed him.

Like at the gala, he stayed rigid for a moment. And then he kissed me back. His arms tightened around me, and I ran my hands over his scratchy cheeks, and our tentative movements turned urgent. He pulled my shorts off me, and I wanted him more than anything. When he pushed inside of me, it was inevitable and safe, but thrilling too. I wasn’t overthinking it at all. Everything was only need and instinct and our ragged noises until it was done, and then sleep came and pulled me under.

THIRTY-FOUR

The next morning, though, the freaking out set in.

I woke up, locked in Raf’s arms, drool crusted on my chin, and for a moment, it was right and warm. Then came the electric shock of remembrance. You can’t unfuck someone. I’d ruined things between us. And to top it all off, I hadn’t peed afterward, so I was probably going to get a UTI.

The night before, I’d been out of my mind, light-headed from the smoke and the oils and the sight of my own blood spilling into a fire. Infected by their way of thinking, I’d very nearly believed that the women in the Coven had summoned a certain kind of power. And then I’d carried that infection here.

With a clear head came reality: Those women could make things go their way, but it wasn’t because of magic. It was because of their wealth. In so many ways, magic and wealth were just the same thing.

Raf stirred. When he opened his eyes and saw me, still there in his