Page 91 of Taking Turns

He comes inside me. I come all over him. And we sit there in the truck—in the middle of the snow-covered Arapahoe National Forest, windows steamed up with our heavy breathing, only the sounds of our hearts beating against each other to break the silence—and hug the loneliness out of each other.

By the time we get home it’s evening, we’re starved, so Quin orders room service from the kitchen and we don’t even have the strength to do anything to the tree except stand it up in front of the living room window.

We don’t have sex again, but we don’t need it. Quin pulls me on top of his chest and we pass out on the couch, still thinking about the forest, and the snow, and how we aren’t so lonely anymore.

It was the perfect day.

We wake the next morning to his cell phone ringing in his pants. He shifts me around so he can reach it, tabs the accept button, and then croaks out, “Yeah,” into the phone.

I move aside so he can sit up. I get a smile over his shoulder for my thoughtfulness.

“It’s fucking Tuesday,” he says to the person on the other side of the phone. “I told you I’m out of the office today.” His hand finds its way under my shirt and begins to rub my stomach. My bra is still in the back of the Suburban, so he finds my nipple almost immediately as he tries to concentrate on the conversation. “Why can’t Robert handle that?” Quin says. His voice is rough and angry, but he’s smiling at me as he talks.

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll be there in an hour.” He ends the call with a long, heavy sigh. Then tosses the phone onto the coffee table. “I gotta go into the office today. I hate being the goddamned boss.”

“What do you do?” I ask, kind of embarrassed that we’ve gotten this far into the relationship and I have no clue.

“Online marketing company. Private consultant, actually. I have a big account starting tomorrow and Robert is supposed to handle it, but he’s out with the flu. I’m sorry,” he says, leaning down to kiss me.

“For what? If you have to work, you have to work.”

“Yeah, but we should be decorating the tree today. And you don’t have any ornaments. I’m pretty sure Bric threw away, gave away—whatever the fuck he did with Rochelle’s things—all the ornaments and lights.”

“I can go down to Walgreens and get new ones. No big deal.”

“Yeah, fuck. I was gonna say you could go get some from your house. But you don’t do Christmas, do you?”

“I have nothing.” I laugh. “Not one twinkling light to my name.”

“That sucks. We should buy them together, but I have a conference call in an hour and I have to go to the office to get Robert’s computer because he’s got the presentation.”

“I’ll be fine, Quin. Just do your thing.”

“Sorry,” he says again as he leans down to kiss me. “If I can get out of this early, I’ll come back.”

A few minutes later he’s gone and I’m alone again.

I’ve lived alone since I was eighteen. Not always at that Little Raven house. That was a gift from my father when I completed my PhD. I had another, much smaller—and more homey—place just a few blocks from here before that. It wasn’t trendy or new. In fact, the heat barely worked in the winter and I was always wearing two pairs of socks to bed to fight the chill.

But it was my place.

The Little Raven town home has never felt like mine.

For one, my father purchased it as a surprise. A three-million-dollar surprise. Buying me things has always been the only way he’s showed me love. He was proud that day I graduated. Or maybe… he was just feeling obligated? Does it matter?

But this place came with all the same furniture they used to stage it for the sale.

So.

None of that stuff belongs to me. I have zero attachment to any of it. All of it. Whatever. In fact, the only things in that house that weren’t part of the sale contract, aside from the clothes and jewelry in the closet, are the things Smith brought along when he decided he lived there last week.

Fucking Smith.

I shake my head. I don’t want to think about Smith right now. It’s way too early in the week to think about Smith.

I reluctantly get up off the couch so I can take a shower and head down to Walgreens for leftover Christmas decorations.

“What should new Chella wear today?” I ask my closet. Almost all these clothes are new. I brought a few of my own things over so I can go to work in something that won’t start a new conversation about Elias Bricman with Michell on Thursday.