“And maybe I’m misreading all of this, but I don’t think I am, because I’ve never met anyone so much like me. And — if any part of all this is that you think, in the end, I’ll want a golden retriever instead of a mean little cat, you’re wrong.”
“Everyone wants a golden retriever,” he says in a low voice. As ridiculous a statement as it is, he looks serious, concerned.
I shake my head. “I don’t.”
Charlie’s hands settle on the edge of the desk on either side of me, his gaze melting back into honey, caramel, maple. “Nora.” My heart trips at his rough, halting tone: the voice of a man letting someone down easy.
“Never mind.” I avert my gaze but I’m unable to remove him from it entirely, not with him so close, his hands on either side of my hips. “I understand. I just wanted to say something, in case—”
“I’m not going back to New York,” he interrupts.
My eyes rebound to his. Every sharp edge of his expression takes on new meaning. “That’s why,” he says. “The reason I can’t . . .”
“I don’t . . .” I shake my head. “For how long?”
His throat bobs as he swallows. “My sister was supposed to come back in December to take over the store. But she met someone in Italy. She’s staying there.”
My heart has gone from feeling like an over-caffeinated hummingbird to an anvil, each beat a heavy, aching thud.
“I already emailed Libby about the apartment,” he goes on. “It’s hers if she wants it. It was always going to be.”
My eyes sting. My heart feels like a phone book whose pages have all come loose, and I’m trying to stuff them into an order that makes sense, that fixes this.
“That first night I ran into you in town,” Charlie says, “I’d just found out Carina was staying awhile longer. I wasn’t sure how long, but . . . she and her boyfriend eloped. She’s not moving back.”
His words wash over me in a buzzing, distant way.
“I’ve been trying to find a way out. But there isn’t one. My dad’s the one who held everything together. Their house is old — it constantly needs work that I’m trying to figure out how to do, because he won’t let me hire someone, and the store’s worse than ever — my mom’s trying, but she can’t do it.
“The way we’re going, the shop has maybe six months left. Someone needs to be there, every day, and my mom didn’t even manage that before she had to help my dad get around. And fuck, he’s terrible at relying on people, so even if we could afford to hire a nurse, he wouldn’t let us. And if we could afford to hire a store manager, my mom wouldn’t allow it. It’s always been in her family. She says it would break her heart to have someone else running things.”
The muscles in his jaw work, shadows flickering against his skin. “And they weren’t perfect, but my parents gave up a lot for me. So I could go to the school I wanted and have the job I wanted and — I can’t keep this up. Loggia wants someone local, and my family needs me. They need someone better than me, but I’m what they’ve got. I’m leaving after Frigid’s done. That’s the job opening, the one I put you up for.”
His job. His apartment. Like he’s just handing over the life he’s worked so hard for, wholesale. Giving up the city where he belongs. Where he feels like himself. Where he doesn’t feel wrong or useless.
“What about what you want?” I demand. He looks at me like he believes I could give it to him, and I want to, so badly. “Who’s making sure you’re happy, Charlie? What about your heart?”
He tries to smile; he’s too bad at lying. “Do people like us have those?”
I touch his face, tipping his eyes up to mine. It takes me a beat to swallow down the jumble of emotion rising through me, to tuck the shrapnel of my thoughts away and accept this new reality. I’m trying to make a list, a plan, a plotline that takes us from A to B, but it’s only this one bullet point, this cliff-hanger of a chapter.
“Tonight,” I say, “can I just have you, Charlie? Even if it can’t last. Even if we already know how it ends.”
He holds my jaw so gingerly. Like I’m something delicate. Or maybe like he is. Like with one wrong move we could crack each other open. My chest squeezes with that heart-crushing final-chapter feeling, only now I know the word for it. I know it even if I can’t bring myself to think it. “You do have me, Nora. I never stood a chance.”
For the first time in my life, I know what the hell Cathy was talking about when she said I am Heathcliff. Not just because Charlie and I are so similar, but because he’s right: we belong. In a way I don’t understand, he’s mine, and I’m his. It doesn’t matter what the last page says. That’s the truth. Here, now.
His lips brush mine, light, careful, warm. I open to him, knowing how it will feel when I turn the page but unwilling not to turn it at all.
29
HIS FINGERS SNAKE into my hair, his tongue dipping between my lips. A sound rises out of me, and he eases me onto the desk. In the past, our connection has been frantic, mindless, but now he’s so careful and tender it makes me ache.
His fingers brush one of my dress’s shoulder ties, tugging the knot loose before moving to the other one. My hands are under his shirt, feeling his smooth, warm skin until it’s alive with goose bumps.
He tastes like coffee, with a wintergreen edge. His tongue skates over my bottom lip and his hand trails down my side.
I pull him closer, and he jerks me to the edge of the desk, his mouth more urgent now, his teeth sinking and releasing as we pull together and draw apart, each breathy gap making the next kiss more needful. His palm rakes up to my chest, his thumb stroking over my nipple, and I shiver. His heart hammers against me, and mine matches its pace, two metronomes falling into sync.
Lightning screams across the sky, followed by a low boom. The fire gutters, then flares. Little by little, Charlie kisses away the ache of these past three weeks. His lips skim my jaw, my throat, his hands moving back to finish unknotting the ties at my shoulders. The bodice of my dress gapes, and my heart spins like a pinwheel beneath his warm breath as his mouth moves down me.
I tip my head back, my lungs catching when his tongue brushes the inner curve of my breast. Charlie pushes the fabric lower until warm air meets my skin. His eyes lift to mine as he drops his lips to me, watching me as he draws my nipple into his mouth. When I start to arch, his tongue and teeth carefully skim across my skin.
His name slips out of me. Our mouths collide again, deeper, surer. His hand finds the hem of my dress and slips up the inside of my thigh. I widen my knees, his palm grazing higher until it reaches the lacy band at my hips. His other hand does the same, and I lean back, lifting myself so he can gather the fabric and slip it down my legs.
His eyes lock with mine, his grip tightening on the creases of my bare hips, as he kneels and brings his lips to the inside of my knee, kissing higher until his mouth sinks between my thighs. I lean back onto my hands, breath going shallow as the heat of his tongue melts against me.
I roll my hips into the pressure and he groans, his hand sliding up over my stomach, pressing me back until I’m lying on the desk.
I think about suggesting we move. I think about asking if doing this, here, is disrespectful. But then I’m unable to think at all, because his tongue has found a breaker switch in my body, cutting power to my brain entirely.