Page 147 of On His Mind

Chapter 49

Penelope

I’mstillintheangel costume at three in the morning. I could have taken it off hours ago. The party finished a while ago, Melly’s still out, and the apartment has gone dark and quiet around me. So I’m sitting on the edge of my bed in a pair of white wings and the thin white slip that goes underneath them, because I texted him, and now I’m waiting.

The wings have taken a beating tonight. One of them is bent where somebody knocked into me on the dance floor and I didn’t bother to fix it. I danced until my feet gave out, all six of us in a ring, screaming lyrics at each other — and even though every girl in that house was an angel by the end and it stripped the costume of any meaning it might have had, I’m glad. I’m glad we went as a matched set. I like the friends that I’ve made. I likedthe photos, all our arms tangled, all of us laughing at once. I liked being part of a good group of girls.

He texts at ten to four.

Percy:Outside.

He looks wrecked when I open the door. His jacket is zipped to his throat, his face gone pale with a tiredness that only shows up at the very tail end of a long, long day. And I know without asking that he waited out that entire house. He sat in his room in the dark and listened for the last door to close, the last laugh to die out, the last set of feet on the stairs — and then he walked here at four in the morning.

“Hi,” he says.

I pull him in out of the cold, and the door shuts behind him, and only then does he actually look at me. His eyes go down at the wings, my halo, my stockings, and something moves through his face that gives me butterflies.

“You kept it on,” he says.

“I wore it for you.”

We ride the elevator up grinning at each other, punch-drunk on no sleep and it turns into a giggle into the hallway and into my apartment.

Inside, the door clicks shut, and he steps into my space. He lifts a hand to the wing that’s bent and touches the edge of it. Then that hand travels to my shoulder, to the thin strap of the slip, and he eases it down.

Halfway. Only halfway.

“Thank you for waiting for me.”

I nod.

He undresses me so slowly it’s almost unbearable. He takes the wings off first and sets them down on the counter. Then the white comes down off my shoulders and catches at my elbows, and he stops. He steps back an inch to look at me.

Half angel. Half just me.

“Leave it,” he says when I go to take the rest off. “Like that. I want to look at you.”

I stand there, caught halfway out of a costume in the middle of my own kitchen, and I let him look, because he looks at me the way he doesn’t look at anything else in this world. Total attention. Every bit of him aimed at me.

“You’re beautiful.” His eyes stare into mine. It comes out low, almost hoarse. “Do you know that? You walked into my house tonight and I couldn’t—” His jaw works around it. “I had to stand there and keep my eyes down, because you are the most beautiful thing in the world, and I couldn’t look at you for longer than a second without giving myself away.”

“Percy—”

“My angel.” He says it into the small space left between us, and his hand comes up to hold my jaw. “Heaven-sent. I meant it back then and I mean it now. That’s what you are to me, Penelope. Heaven-sent.”

My heart clenches.

His eyes move across my face like he’s checking he’s got all of it.

“I love you.”

I cover his hand with mine and hold it against my cheek. “I love you too.”

He kisses me, and I come apart.

This is the exact thing I have been starving for and would sooner die than admit I was starving for. To be looked at. To be named out loud. To be wanted by him — only him, always him — and told so in a voice that doesn’t shake.

He takes his time like nobody’s expecting him anywhere. He keeps his eyes on mine through all of it, every kiss, every touch, every thrust. We start against the kitchen island. We end up on the couch. We end up in my bed with the door shut, and he holdsmy chin turned toward him, his forehead pressed to my temple, his breath at my ear.