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“Old house.” He takes a slow sip. “The floors talk.”
He pours me a vodka and holds it out. I hesitate for only a second before I cross the room and take it from him. The glass is cold against my palm, and when I bring it to my lips, the drink burns a clean, bright line down my throat.
We both stay quiet. The silence isn’t comfortable, though. It’s not evencloseto comfortable. It’s a toothy silence and it wants its pound of flesh from each of us.
I don’t look at Lukas; he doesn’t look at me. We both stare straight ahead, out the window above the sink, where stars shine down on the distant rows of grapevines. My fingers fidget with the glass. The vodka sizzles in my stomach, but it does nothing to distract from the riot happening elsewhere in my body.
My robe feels too thin. The tie at my waist feels too loose. Everything about this moment feels like I’m standing on the edge of something vast and dark, waiting for the ground to give way beneath me.
It’s how I felt on the final step of the cellar staircase—like one little push from Lukas is all it would take for me to forever lose my balance.
Then Lukas sets down his glass.
The clink of it against the counter rings out like a gunshot in the silence. He takes mine from my grasp gently and sets it next to his. He turns to face me again, blocking out the light.
His hand, when it drifts up to cup my jaw, is rough and warm, spanning from my chin to my cheekbone with room to spare.
I feel so small in his grip. Fragile. Breakable.
His thumb passes roughly across my lower lip. It’s a slow, proprietary drag. Like heownseverything he’s touching.
I don’t dare move. He’s deciding something. I can see it happening behind those storm-cloud eyes.
I have no idea what that something might be.
“I only have the willpower to say this one more time tonight, Rae, so here it is: Go back to your room.”
His voice is strained, fractured at the edges, like glass on the verge of being heated to its breaking point.
Lukas’s thumb goes still against my lip. His eyes darken.
He leans in, so close I can taste the vodka on his breath. His lips hover a centimeter from mine.
“Because if you stay,” he continues, “I won’t ask permission for what comes next.”
I’m frozen in place. It’s not even that I’m necessarily choosing to stand my ground—it’s that I’ve forgotten how to move. My lungs forget how to breathe. My heart forgets how to beat. Everything in me goes hot and liquid andwanting.
Lukas sees that I’m not going anywhere. He sighs. It’s the heavy, defeated sound of a man losing a battle he knew from the start he was never going to win.
Then his mouth finds mine.
After all this tormented build-up, it’s not the kiss I expected. It’s almost timid. His lips brush against mine, atoms ghosting against atoms, just as grandfather clock in the sitting room behind us strikes 3:00 A.M. He kisses me for those three endless tolls.
Bwongggg.
Bwongggg.
Bwongggg.
Then it’s over, and he’s gone.
He tears himself away so violently that I stumble forward into the space where he used to be. My hand catches the edge of the counter to keep from falling.
Lukas is already halfway across the room, and he isn’t looking back. His bare feet slap against the tile as whips around the corner. I watch his scarred back disappear, listen to the creak of the stairs as he takes them two at a time, hear the distant slam of a door somewhere above me.
After that, then there’s nothing.
I stand there for a long time, touching my lips where the ghost of him still lingers.
