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  I meant it as a threat, but Joe seems to take it as a gift. Still silent, he doesn’t need to speak because his face says it all. Stunned, I can’t say anything either as he pushes past me. I find my voice when I see he’s already dressed.

  “How can you expect me to know these things if you never told me?”

  No answer.

  “If you walk out that door, don’t think you can come back!”

  He pauses in the doorway, but doesn’t turn around.

  “You’ll be sorry!”

  My threats are coming fast and wild, but how dare he? How dare he leave me? Even if I’m the one telling him to go?

  “You just…get out!” I scream.

  And he does.

  “You can say I told you so,” Joe said as soon as he’d finished.

  “No. I don’t want to say that.”

  We sat in companionable silence. I didn’t ask him how long ago the story had taken place. It didn’t seem to matter.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell her?”

  “She was happy with me the way things were. She didn’t seem to need to know those things.”

  “But…you knew them about her. Did she tell you? Or did you just pay closer attention?”

  He sighed. “It doesn’t matter, now.”

  “Will you tell me something?”

  He looked into my eyes. “Sadie. I think you know I’ll tell you just about anything.”

  We both laughed, and oh, it was so good to feel that my grief didn’t need to be all I had. “Did you want her to not know?”

  “Are you asking me if I wanted to fail?”

  “Yes.” Our hands were close together on the bench, not touching, but close. “Did you?”

  “I didn’t think so at the time.”

  “Someday, Joe, you’re going to run out of stories.”

  He laughed, shaking his head, and got to his feet. “I don’t think so. See you next month?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  Joe put his hands in his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet before answering. “I hope I do, Sadie. I really do.”

  I looked up at him. He smiled. As always, I did, too.

  “Thanks.”

  He nodded and silence that wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to be fell between us. Then he took a step back. I got up. We faced each other, no bench separating us. Nothing but air and uncertainty.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Joe leaned closer, just a hair. “You’re welcome.”

  We left at the same time but in different directions. Yet when I made to cross the street, Joe stood on the corner. We laughed, self-conscious, before parting again, and I tried not think about how different paths had led us to the same place.

  Chapter

  19

  March

  A dark and rainy Saturday night seemed perfect for a long, hot shower, new pajamas and a pot of Earl Grey tea to go along with a new release by my favorite author. I was in the kitchen pouring boiling water over the loose tea, secure in its strainer ball, when the doorbell rang. I stopped, startled, my eyes going automatically to the clock. It was just past eleven.

  And I was alone.

  For the first time since Adam’s death, having the house to myself seemed a disadvantage. I set the kettle back on the burner and listened, body tense. I’d half-convinced myself I’d imagined it when it rang again. I crept down the hall. Through the curtained windows on either side of the front door I saw the faint black shape of my visitor.

  I snagged the poker from the fireplace and held it close to my side as I unlocked the door and eased it open. Outside, rain lashed the trees on the street. Faint blue-white lightning lit the sky above the rooftops, followed shortly after by the far-off rumble of thunder. The street-lights silhouetted my guest from behind, keeping his face in darkness, but I knew who it was at once.

  “Joe?”

  I stepped back, and he came forward. Rain slicked his hair over his forehead and dripped off his nose. His clothes hung, sodden, the white shirt made sheer. He carried a bottle of whiskey. He made a puddle on my rug and gave no greeting, no word of explanation, made no noise but the slightly raspy hiss of his breath.

  I was already reaching for him when he put his arm around my waist and pulled me against him. The rain was cold. He was hot, burning beneath the wetness, his skin a furnace burning with such fury I expected to see steam. The whiskey bottle was hard between my shoulder blades.

  I drank the taste of smoke and whiskey from his mouth. He didn’t smell as good as he always did, but better, the tang of musk beneath the scent of soap and water not even the rain could wash away. He kicked the door shut behind him without leaving my mouth.

  We made it to the stairs in three steps, but got no farther. The ridge of the step bit into my back as he pressed me down. He swallowed my gasp, sipped my breath and stole my air, then gave it back to me with his next exhale. He was wet and cold and hot, and so was I, shivering under his touch. The bottle slipped to the steps beside me, the solid thunk of glass on wood an exclamation mark we both ignored.

  “Sadie, Sadie, Sadie…”

  I tasted my name on his tongue. Joe’s hands were everywhere. They cupped my breasts, my sides, reached down to slide the hem of my nightgown up over my thighs. His hand slid against my bare skin without preamble. I needed none.

  There were buttons on the front of the nightgown from the high neck to the hem, but it was easier for him to push it up than to open it. The fabric, damp from the kiss of his clothes, bunched up around my neck and caught under my ass. Joe bent his head to my breasts, and I arched in anticipation. He didn’t disappoint me. He kissed my breasts as he cupped them together. His breath skated hot over skin his clothes had made moist. He licked and sucked my nipples, each one, until I cried out.

  I didn’t have to move, not to shift, not to ready myself for him in any way. Joe did it all. He left my breasts, his hands already parting my thighs, and not even the steps biting into the back of my neck and back kept me from arching my entire body when he put his face between my legs.

  I thought of nothing, but everything. He parted my curls with his thumbs and found the sweetness of my clit with his tongue. It was not as I’d imagined it would be.

  It was better.

  Pleasure surged inside me when Joe traced my body’s curves and lines with his mouth. I felt lips, tongue, a hint of teeth that made me gasp and lift toward him. It wasn’t soft or tender, not even graceful, the way he went down on me. It didn’t matter.

  Thunder rumbled outside, closer. His mouth left ecstasy like lightning in its path. My body tensed, electric, humming with it.

  I looked down. He looked up. He licked his mouth. Swallowed. He got up, and I was sure he meant to leave. It was in his eyes, that knowing he should go.

  He stayed. He leaned in with a hand on the stair behind my head. The other went between my legs, his palm pressed to my flesh. He kissed me, and I tasted myself mingled with his flavor.

  His eyes had specks of gold around the pupils, which had gone large and dark. Each eyebrow seemed perfectly groomed, each hair like a golden wire. Faint freckles dotted his nose, invisible at a distance but deliciously plain at this close range.

  He slanted his mouth to capture mine again and kissed me slowly as his hand moved on me. I drew a breath and held it.

  We didn’t move. Locked in his gaze with the taste of myself mingled with him on my lips, I let out the breath I held. Slowly, slowly, and slowly, too, I drew in another. My chest rose with it. My body shifted. Joe pressed the heel of his hand on me.

  That was all it took. Pleasure came over me. We were looking into each other’s eyes when I came, and neither one of us looked away.

  The world shifted back into focus around me. The storm outside, the awkward folding of our limbs, the whiskey bottle as it got nudged from its place and fell down the final step to the floor, where at least it didn’t break. I’d opened the door less than ten minutes before