Page 90 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
Then her eyes closed. Her voice trembled. “Is this about Tucson?”
Did shereally notknow?“It’s about every time I’ve ever seen you. It’s about the fact that you’re nice to everyone but me. It’s because you’re the only person on the planet who’s willing to call me on my bullshit. It’s because you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met and yet you’re the only person who doesn’t get that. It’s because I love you, Margaret Elizabeth Chase.” He almost sounded angry. “Don’t tell me I don’t, and don’t tell me to stop because, believe me, I’ve tried. I know you don’t feel the same. But I love you. And so I’m going to get you out of here.”
He’d been pinned down by a sniper the day before, but Ethan had never felt more exposed. The wind howled outside those old stone walls, blowing snow and turning the darkest night of the year pure white. And she was right, there were deep drifts and rocky cliffs and a hundred other ways to die out there. But it didn’t matter. Because what was in here mattered more.
The big, silver flashlight picked that moment to flicker and go out. They’d already turned off the little one to save the battery, so all that was left was the darkness. Even the moon was hiding, so Ethan could do nothing but listen to the sound of her breath. The faint creak of someone taking a small, slow step on ancient floorboards. And then there were fingers, searching. Pressing against his chest, then sliding to his shoulders, his neck, the back of his head. And then he felt the soft brush of lips against his.
“Maggie...”
She sighed into his mouth as his hand slid beneath her seventeen T-shirts and touched the soft, warm skin of her back. “I have to keep you safe,” he breathed against her neck, but the impossible woman just squeezed him tighter, like she was never going to let him go.
“I am safe.” She sighed again, sinking againsthim, like she’d spent her whole life just trying to stay upright. Like it was the first time she’d ever been allowed to lean. “I’m always safe with you.”
And that was the part that broke him. “No, you’re not. If you knew the things I want to do to you...”
“What kinds of things?” Her voice was timid and bashful. Even in the shadows, he thought he saw her blush.
“I want to know what your hair feels like wrapped around my fist. I want to lift you up and press you against that wall until your lips get plump and your breath goes ragged and your legs wrap around my waist because, otherwise, you’d just melt away. I want to feel your hands on my shoulders and mine on your waist. On your ass. I want to feel you everywhere. I want to know you everywhere. I want to purge you from my system and I want to never let you go. I want you. And I want it to end.
“But I can handle those moments, painful as they are. The bad moments—the ones I really hate are the five hundred times a day I want to hold your hand. Or touch that little piece of hair that never stays behind your ear. Or walk just a little bit closer to you than I have to. I want to stop feeling like life is a game of tag and you’re base. I want to forget that base hates me.”
“I don’t hate you.” Her hands were on his shoulders then, almost like he’d willed them there. “And maybe...”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe I want those things too?”
It was like finding their way up a mountain in the dark, feeling along, trying to determine where the boundaries were and then realizing there were no boundaries. It was like realizing you can fly. And Ethan snapped.
In the next moment, Maggie was in his arms, and her legs were around his waist and he was pressing her back against the door. Even in that freezing room, his blood burned. His head spun. He wasn’t strong enough to fight it anymore, and he never, ever wanted to fight it again because there was aclick, the way she snapped into place, fitting herself into his arms and his body and his soul.
He didn’t have to see her; he could feelher. The brush of her breasts and the squeeze of her thighs and the way she tilted and canted and ground as if trying to get closer, needing... more. They both needed more. He’d never felt so complete and so unfinished at the same time, so he turned and carried her to the bed and they fell together in a tangle of arms and legs and roaming hands, cold sheets and warm kisses that rose and fell and crested like the tide. He was never going to get enough of her. Of this. Of them.
She sighed and stretched and arched her back as he kissed the soft skin of her throat.
“Do you want this, sweetheart? You need to tell me.”
“Yes. Yes, I’ve always wanted this.” Her voice was small and shallow, like she’d forgotten how to breathe, and something about it jarred a laugh out of him.
“Since when?”
She stilled beneath him. Her hand rubbed across his cheek where he needed to shave. “Since Tucson.”
Chapter Sixty
Nine Months Ago
Tucson, Arizona
This was a mistake.
Maggie had packed the wrong dress and she was wearing the wrong shoes and she’d ordered the wrong cocktail. It had only been three months, but she hadn’t left her apartment in what felt like so much longer. She had never been very good at peopling, and then she’d up and lost her people—her only two—and so when Deborah emailed to ask if she still wanted to attend the Tucson Festival of Books, Maggie said she was totally planning on going! And was looking forward to it! And was absolutely up for the challenge! (Three exclamation points! She’d used three!)
In other words, she’d lied.
But her only other option had been curling up in a ball and thinking about the husband and best friend and big break that had all disappeared since December.
So that was how she ended up at a party she didn’t want to be at, with a beverage she didn’t want to drink, standing on shoes she didn’t want to wear while sharing awkward smiles with people she didn’t want to talk to.
