“That day you came home,” I whisper, “when you moved back in, boxes in your arms, and I saw you from the porch, I . . .” Swallowing nervously, I take his hand and set it over my heart. “A storm was coming as I saw you, and this . . . electricity crackled right through my skin. I told myself it was something in the air, the promise of what the sky had up its sleeve. But then there you were, serious and strong. You felt so different from when I’d last seen you, and yet so . . . familiar. After a whole childhood of being the little kid you ignored, it felt different, like we were both . . . equals, like maybe things could be different. I realized I wanted it to be different,” I tell him, cupping my hand around his neck, drawing his head down to press a slow, soft kiss to his lips.
“I wanted to curl up to what was familiar,” I whisper against his mouth. “The sound of your voice. Your belly laugh. The way a shirt stretched across your shoulders and that curl at the tips of your hair.” His touch kneads my breast, wraps around my thigh, to my hip, tucking me closer to him, until our bodies meet, our chests heaving for air. “And I wanted to learn everything that was new, every part of you I didn’t yet know.”
Wordless, he pulls me closer, cradling my head, kissing me deep and slow. And for just a moment, that’s all the world is—the two of us, arms wrapped around each other, in a kitchen filled with memories—sad, beautiful, bittersweet—fading into the corners, making space for what’s to come.
I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss his jaw, his throat. “I need you.”
His hands settle low on my waist and rock me against him. “I need you, too.”
Christopher wraps my legs around his waist and walks us slowly through the kitchen, toward the foyer, where stairs lead up to the second floor.
I nuzzle his nose, then pull away just long enough to glance around, drinking in the truth of what Christopher said.
Nothing’s changed.
The family room’s just as I remember it, and through the pocket doors, the music room, too, where his mom taught piano, the dining room with the same table, same chairs I sat at as a tiny girl.
My heart twists. Now I know why he wouldn’t want just anyone to see this place. Because the polished, devil-may-care man with his fancy this, latest that, lives in a home whose heart was built by his parents thirty-five years ago, a home rich with their lingering presence and memory. The man the world sees doesn’t live here. The man holding me in his arms, who’s opened his heart, lives here, straddling memory and moving forward, living with what he’s lost, cherishing what he could keep.
I feel his eyes on me as he slows to a stop in the foyer.
“It’s as lovely as I remember,” I tell him.
He stares at me steadily as I meet his eyes. “I know I should change it.”
“No, you shouldn’t. Well, only if you want to.” I set my hand on his heart, soothing it. “I love it, just as it is.”
“You do?”
I nod, wrapping my arms around his neck again and pulling myself closer. “I love old things. The memories they carry of the people who touched them, who loved and lived with them. But I could see why you’d be wary of welcoming just anyone into this. If they didn’t know you . . . like I do.”
Drawing me close in his arms, he hugs me hard, his head resting on the crown of mine. We stand like that in the hallway, arms around each other, quiet, still. Against my hair, soft and hoarse, he says, “Thank you for saying that, Kate.”
A lump settles in my throat. I squeeze him tight in my arms. “Thank you for giving me the chance to.”
His sigh is heavy and content as I nuzzle his chest, listening to his heart’s steady lub-dub, lub-dub. Christopher bends his head until our mouths meet. We’re quiet as we kiss, as he walks us up the stairs and I cling to him.
“So,” I tell him. As we turn into his bedroom, it hits me like a freight train. Nerves wrack my system. He’s so experienced. And I’m so not. How many women has he had in this bed? How many wild, erotic things has he done that I can’t even imagine?
“So,” he says, kissing me, sweet and slow.
“This is where you . . .”
He gives me a funny look, flicking on the light switch. “Where I sleep?”
“You haven’t”—I jerk my head toward the bed—“you know, done it here with—”
Christopher stops abruptly halfway to the bed. “Katerina, no.” Resuming his stride, he walks us to the edge of the mattress and sits, holding me so I settle on bent knees, straddling his lap. “Listen to me.”