CHAPTER TWENTY

“No, apparently not,” Gabriel said as he stood at my front window, watching the elders leave.

“No to what?” I said from the couch.

“You were about to say, ‘So, I guess no cabin tonight,’ and then you realized I might not appreciate the reminder.”

His phone rang. Lydia’s ring tone. He took it out but only looked down at the screen.

I was about to comment when my own phone blipped.

“Ricky,” I said. “I should bring him up to speed. How about you go upstairs and call Lydia back. I’ll update Ricky, and then I’ll make us a snack. You must be hungry.”

He looked vaguely confused, as if I was asking whether he felt like roller-blading. Then he said, in his normally brisk tone, “Yes, thank you. Food would be wise. I’ll speak to Lydia upstairs.”

Fifteen minutes later, Gabriel’s footfalls thumped down the steps as he called, “Olivia?” with fear lacing his voice. “I smell—”

“Fire?” I leaned out the parlor door. “That would be me, trying to be sneaky and forgetting to open the flue. Apparently, closing the door didn’t block the smell as much as I’d hoped. So, having ruined my surprise, ummm…” I threw open the door. “Ta-da?”

He walked over, still looking not entirely convinced that the house wasn’t about to go up in smoke. Then he stopped in the entrance and blinked.

“Can’t actually see anything, can you?” I said. “Between the lingering smoke and the fact that I tried to make the room as dark as possible. Simulated nighttime.” I waved at the drawn shades. “I even taped them down. So, having ruined the presentation twice…third time’s the charm?”

I flicked on a lamp. His gaze had been fixed on the roaring fire. Now it moved to the space before the fireplace, where I’d pushed aside the table and laid out as many blankets and pillows as I could quietly scrounge up. On the relocated table, I’d set out a tray of finger food and an ice bucket with Krug vintage champagne, one of the many birthday gifts I’d gotten from old friends who hadn’t made actual contact since my life exploded.

“Oh, wait, final touch.”

I scampered to a side table, flipped through my phone apps, and hit Start on one. The sound of the crashing surf filled the room.

“Uh, sorry, hold on.” I flipped through the playlist and the storm was replaced by gentle waves lapping at a shore. “There. Now we won’t feel as if we’re on a ship that’s about to go down.”

Gabriel laughed. Not a quiet chuckle, but an actual laugh. He looked around the parlor and shook his head. “So, if we can’t go to lakeside cabin…”

“It’ll come to us.”

“You are…” He seemed to struggle for a word, and I could have teased him about that, but it was an honest struggle as panic lit his eyes.

“You’re something,” he said at last, and I couldn’t help sputtering a laugh. His eyes widened in horror. “That’s not what I— I mean, you’re something else. Something good. Something…” He rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m not making sense. I’m sorry. I’m tired and…”

“Let me help,” I said. “The problem is, as smooth as we might be in everyday life, when it comes to each other, all that glibness gets zapped from our brains. We can’t seem to get it right, and when we try, it’s like when you lean in to kiss someone and end up stomping on their foot while elbowing them in the ribs.”

His lips curved, just a little. “Yes, exactly like that.”

“Right now, what I should do is pour the champagne. Then we’d get comfortable in front of the fire and make small talk, relaxing and moving past this awkward moment. Then—and only then—I’d tell you what I want to say. That’s smooth. But if I attempt that? The phone will ring. Someone will pound on the door. I’ll have a vision. And Lloergan will develop a terrible case of gas.”

The hound glowered from her spot by the fire.

“Even if none of that happens, I’ll screw it up,” I said. “I won’t find the right words. Or I’ll get cold feet and change my mind. So forget smooth.” I took a deep breath. “This is what it sounded like, that night in the tunnel.”

Gabriel frowned, these clearly not being the words he expected.

“The river lapping against that platform.” I nodded toward my phone, playing the wave effect. “It sounded like that, but it echoed, too. Everything echoed. And I was cold. Colder than I’ve ever been. I couldn’t stop shivering. My teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. And you were warm. So amazingly warm, and all I wanted was to get closer to you. When I got closer, I realized that was just an excuse to cuddle up against you and then, yes, to kiss you.”

I looked up at him. “I might not have been fully conscious, and I might have been slipping into memories of Gwynn, but I knew exactly who I was kissing.”

I stood there, heart pounding. I should kiss him. That was the proper way to end my declaration. But I couldn’t budge. And then I realized I shouldn’t. I had made my move. The next step was his.

Gabriel stood frozen to the spot, his eyes slightly wide, in that way I’d come to interpret as panic.

I’d made a mistake. Somehow I’d misinterpreted.

How the hell could I have misinterpreted?

No, I wasn’t falling back on that, would not blame myself. If he couldn’t make this next move, then he was never going to make it. However he might feel, he was never going to be able to open himself up, accept the risk. Nothing in his life had prepared him to do that.

I squeezed my eyes shut so he wouldn’t see my disappointment. No, my devastation. Tears welled behind my lids as I struggled to think of what I could blurt before running past him and—

His fingers touched my cheek and slowly moved down to my chin, tilting it up and…

I remembered the kiss in the river. I may have told myself it had gotten a little blurry, but that was bullshit. Even if I’d been certain it was just my subconscious conjuring Gabriel for me, I’d clung to that memory, pulled it out and replayed it and polished it so I could not possibly forget, because, real or not, I didn’t want to forget.

Even when Gabriel admitted it had been real, I’d been afraid to trust my memory. The kiss may have happened, but not as I remembered.

What I remembered was the kind of kiss I would read about in books and chuckle over, and think the author was making a mountain out of a molehill. It was a very nice molehill, to be sure, but the over-the-top description belonged farther along that path, when the fireworks really started.

But that kiss in the river? It was the fireworks.

Even as I’d cherished that memory, part of me had wanted to forget it. That kiss was a false promise. It said that kissing should be like that, and if it wasn’t with Ricky, then I was doing it wrong. Worse, it said that if I really ever kissed Gabriel and it wasn’t exactly like that, I would forever be disappointed.

Now his fingers were on my chin, and he was tilting my face up, and I knew what was coming, and I was the one panicking.

All that lasted about 2.5 seconds, just long enough for him to tilt my face up and his lips to touch mine, and then it didn’t matter, because I forgot why I’d been panicking. I forgot everything. Every last damned thing. Because this…

This was not that kiss. It was better. The last time, I’d known it wasn’t quite real, and now it was.

This kiss felt like finding the one thing I’d been unconsciously searching for all my life. With that kiss, I remembered other Matildas, girls and women forever feeling as if they were missing something and never figuring out what it was. That had been me, my gnawing dissatisfaction like a trapped animal ready to chew off a limb. What I’d thought was only discontent with my sheltered life had been a symptom of what I’d been missing—Matilda and Cainsville and the Cŵn Annwn and everything that I could not believe hadn’t been part of my life until a few months ago. When I kissed Gabriel, the last missing piece fell into place, and all I could think was, Yes, this is it.

He started kissing me with one hand on my chin. And then both hands were on my cheeks and then in my hair, and my arms were around his neck, my body against his, and for once there was no destination in mind. This kiss was not only the first step along the path. It was the destination.

When something thumped beside us, I broke away just enough for Gabriel to murmur, “Hmm?” in a way that sounded like I’d woken him from a deep sleep.

We turned as Lloergan made her way out of the room.

“Good call,” I said, and Gabriel smiled.

And that’s when, from deep in the house, his phone started to ring.

“Next time you throw it at the wall?” I said. “Harder, please. That was a poor effort.”

“I don’t hear a thing.”

“I would love to go with that, but it’s Rose’s ring tone. Wait here, and I’ll get the message.”

I ran up to the office, where he’d been working. Five minutes later, I came back down. When he saw his cell phone in my hand, he tensed.

“No worries,” I said. “She was just asking about dinner. I said we’ll be fine. And your phone is now off.”

I laid it beside mine, and he handed me a glass of champagne. We settled in front of the fire, me resting against his leg, but no closer than that, the old tension strumming between us, the one that said we couldn’t just slide back to where we’d been, that it was still too new, too uncertain.

I sipped my champagne and watched the flames. Then I glanced at him and said, “For the record, you’re an amazing kisser,” and he laughed—a spray-his-mouthful-of-champagne laugh.

“No one’s ever told you that?” I said.

“I believe the only time any opinion was given on the matter, it was to inform me that I was wretched at it. Which only gave me the excuse to not do it.”

“You just had a bad partner.”

His eyes sparkled. “That’s the answer, is it?”

“Obviously.” I took another sip of my champagne. “Or maybe it was an anomaly.”

“No, I’m quite certain everyone I’ve kissed has had the same opinion.”

“I mean it might have been an anomaly with me. I was never very good at science, but I remember a teacher pounding into me the need for a significant sample size before drawing a scientific conclusion.”

“Are you asking me to kiss you again?”

“Normally, I’d be fine with taking the initiative, but with you, it seems best to double-check my invitation. Maybe triple-check. Which leaves me doing that thing where I hint for a kiss instead of just trying my luck.”

“It seemed like more than a hint.”

“I’m no good at subtle.”

“Well, as you rightly pointed out, we have a very poor track record with this. I believe the only way to circumvent that is to be clear.” He set down his champagne flute. “You do not need to second-guess the invitation, Olivia. It is as open as it is unequivocal. Any advances you make are welcome.”

“In that case…” I put down my glass beside his. Then I knelt, leaned over, and gave him a peck on the cheek before starting to rise. “Now, I believe we have work to do and—”

He tugged me back down and pulled me into a kiss. And while my old teacher would insist that a sample set of two was not the basis for a scientific conclusion, I felt very confident in theorizing—based on that second kiss—that the first was definitely not an anomaly.

We kissed, me straddling him as he leaned back against the sofa. We kept it slow as I enjoyed this, just this, feeling his hands in my hair, feeling his heartbeat. Reveling in a moment of being close to someone I never thought I could ever be close to. Being intimate with someone I never thought would allow that intimacy.

So we took our time. There were breaks, for that necessary little thing called oxygen, and even then there was nuzzling and kissing, as if the goal was to touch as much of each other as we could, to get as close to each other as we could.

Even when it went further, it wasn’t obvious at first. It was his hands circling my waist under my shirt. It was my hands pushing up his shirt. It was shirts off and more kissing, skin to skin. His hands on the sides of my breasts and then his hands wedged between us, cupping my breasts, and my hands on him, everywhere on him.

More kissing. More touching. More exploring. And then, finally, down onto the blankets and the pillows, belts and buttons undone and zippers pulled and trousers pushed over hips. More touching. More exploring. That last bit of clothing following the rest. Soft sighs and whispers turning to moans and gasps, and occasionally a hand on another hand, no words spoken but the meaning clear. Slower, just a little slower. I want this to last. Even that seemed to stretch to infinity, the tease and the exploration and those hands of wordless warning.

Then came the point where slower was pointless. Where even a touch was too much, and I arched back with, “Gabriel, oh God, Gabriel,” and I was still riding those waves when he pushed into me, and that was…

Beyond words. Beyond thought. Beyond everything.