Page 146 of Roadrunner

“Riley.”

“I’m looking,” he said. “Let me look.”

I let him.

Later, in bed, the patience ran out the way a tank does. Not all at once. Then all at once.

I pulled him down by the back of his neck. His mouth found mine like it had been waiting in the hallway for permission the house had already given.

There was no church lot in it. No caution. His hand at my hip. The other braced beside my head. When he pushed into me, I made a sound I did not try to swallow.

He went still.

Not careful the way the boy in the Jeep had been careful. Present. Checking the room with his body.

“Look at me,” I said.

He did.

Then he moved.

Years do not stay polite. They came up through his shoulders and into the pace of him. I matched his pace with my heels at his back. The headboard knocked once against the wall and then found a rhythm that belonged to our house and not the last one.

Goosebumps rose along my arms. I let them stay.

I came with an intensity that redefined the subject, his name escaping my lips barely made a sound. He followed, finishing inside me with a curse-laden prayer. He stayed exactly where he was until the bed was just a bed again.

Neither of us had reached for the nightstand.

I had noticed it. Distantly. The way you notice a decision already made somewhere below the part of the brain that likes to hold meetings.

He had noticed me notice it. “Is this—”

“Yes,” I said, before he could finish asking. “God, yes.”

The laugh against my shoulder might have been relief. After that there was not much room left for words.

Afterward I lay with my head on his chest and listened to his heart come back down to something ordinary. His hand moved along my spine like he was memorizing the road of it.

“We might have just started something,” I said, into the dark.

“Good,” he said, without a moment’s hesitation.

I felt it in his chest more than I heard it.

He cleared his throat. “About time we did this part right. From the beginning. The two of us knowing exactly what we were doing.”

“We didn’t know what we were doing the first time around,” I said, half laughing. “Not really.”

“No,” he agreed. “But we got a hell of a kid out of not knowing.” His hand stilled against my back. “Wouldn’t mind finding out what we get when we actually mean to.”

I fell asleep like that. His heartbeat under my ear. The desert going quiet outside the window the way it always did once the night had fully settled.

For the first time in longer than I could accurately measure, I did not lie awake afterward calculating all the things that could still go wrong.

There was nothing left that I could find that was still wrong.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO