Page 20 of Working For Her Second Chance

From somewhere inside, muffled through a cracked window, Josie's voice: "Called it. Hank, you owe me twenty."

River drops his forehead against mine. "This town."

"This town."

Following his taillights down the county road. Hands shaking on the wheel. Body strung so tight my ribs ache. The same road I drove at dawn the morning I left, heading the opposite direction, and I try to file that under something rational—closure, symmetry, a natural resolution of unfinished business—and the filing system catches fire.

This isn't closure. This is the opposite of closure. This is opening every door I sealed shut and walking back through them toward the man I left standing in a field with his heart in his hands.

His house is dark except for the porch light.

Hitch greets us at the door. River lets him out into the yard with a distracted pat, and the door closes, and we're alone in the dim hallway. The same hallway. The maps in the closet. His father's handwriting in the next room. The window at the end that faces the county road.

He's on me before the latch clicks. His mouth, his hands, the full weight of his body pressing mine against the wall. My fist in his shirt, pulling. His hand at the back of my neck, tilting my head, deepening the kiss until it's consuming—wet and desperate and tasting like something we've both been starving for.

My back hits the wall and a memory slams through me: the last time I was in this hallway, I was leaving. Dawn light. His bedroom door behind me. The quiet sound of my boots on these same floorboards while he slept and I didn't wake him and the dawn was breaking outside and I chose the road over this.

The kiss slows. He feels the change—of course he does, River reads shifts the way he reads current, instantly—and pulls back. His eyes search mine. A question he doesn't ask.

I answer it by pulling him back in. Softer this time. My hands on his jaw. My mouth finding his with intention, not frenzy. Choosing to be here. Choosing to stay in this hallway instead of running through it.

"Bedroom," I say against his mouth, and the word is a decision, not a suggestion.

He takes my hand. Walks me down the hall. The door opens.

I stop at the threshold. Moonlight through the window, silver and blue. The bed in the same place—different sheets, same frame. The nightstand. The lamp. The window facing the road, the same view from the first time he laid me down on this bed with shaking hands and a face full of terrified want.

A flash of then: both of us fumbling, nervous, laughing at ourselves because we didn't know what we were doing and didn't care. His hands trembling on my skin. My voice cracking when I said his name.

I blink and I'm thirty. The man in front of me is broader, scarred, his shoulders filling the doorframe. He's looking at me with an expression that isn't uncertain anymore—it's certain and burning and patient, the way a man looks when he's been waiting all this time and is willing to wait more if that's what it takes.

"Get in here," I say.

His hands find the zipper at the back of my dress. The sound of it sliding down is the loudest thing in the room. The fabric loosens, catches on my hips, falls. I'm standing in his bedroom in the moonlight in nothing but underwear and the green heels I wore to the fundraiser, and the sound he makes—a rough exhale, almost a groan, the sound of a man whose entire system just short-circuited—makes the heat pool low in my belly.

"Jesus, Macy."

"Your turn."

My hands go to his buttons. I take my time because I want to. Because that first night I was shaking so badly I couldn't manage the third button and he had to help, and now my fingers are steady and I want to feel every inch of this. Each button undone is a layer of the last decade peeling away. The shirt falls off his shoulders and the body underneath is everything the work shirts hinted at—broader than at eighteen, carved by a decade of climbing poles and hauling equipment.

I press my palms flat against his chest. Warm. Solid. His heart slamming under my hand.

There are scars I don't recognize. A raised line across his ribs, white and healed. I trace it with my fingertip.

"This is new."

"Ice storm. 2019. Crossarm splintered."

My throat tightens. The years I missed, written on his body in white lines. A history of damage I wasn't here for, catalogued on his skin like entries in a ledger I should have been reading.

I lean down and press my mouth to the scar. His breath catches. His hand comes up to cradle the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair, and the tenderness of the gesture—holding me against his wound—almost undoes me before we've started.

His belt. My hands. The buckle clinks and his jeans fall and the boxer briefs leave very little to imagination and absolutely nothing to doubt. He's hard. He's been hard, probably since the loading dock, and the evidence of what I do to him makes something primal and satisfied curl through my chest.

He lays me back on the bed. The sheets are cool against my skin. He kneels over me and his mouth finds my throat—the hollow at the base, the tendon, the soft skin behind my ear that he apparently remembers from that first time because the sensation goes straight between my legs.

Lower. His lips on my collarbone. His tongue tracing the line of my bra strap. His hands reach behind me—the clasp opens on the first try, and I have a brief, irrational flash of jealousy toward whoever taught him that, followed by the realization that I don't care because his mouth is on my breast and his tongue is circling my nipple and rational thought has left the building.