Chapter 8: First Night in the New House
The cardboard box labeled ‘EMILY – BOOKS’ sat slumped in the corner, a sad monument to a life that already felt like it belonged to someone else. The lavender walls were supposed to be calming. The sheer curtains her mother had hung over the canopy bed were meant to feel like a fairy tale. All Emily felt was exposure.
Downstairs, the muffled thumps and cheerful, distant shouts of Carol and Mark unpacking the kitchen floated up through the floorboards. A radio was on. Some inoffensive pop song.
“This one goes here, I think!” her mother called.
Emily knelt, slicing tape on another box with a house key. Her clothes. She lifted a stack of folded sweaters, the wool smelling faintly of her old closet, of safety. She turned to place them in the empty dresser by the window.
Jake was leaning against the doorframe.
He’d been there. She didn’t know for how long. He held a glass of water, his other thumb hooked in the pocket of his low-slung jeans. A simple gray t-shirt stretched across his shoulders. He’d been moving heavy furniture all morning; a fine sheen of sweat glistened at the base of his throat. He watched her, silent, taking a slow sip.
Her heart did a hard, clumsy stutter against her ribs.
“You need something?” she asked, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. Her voice was too high.
He didn’t answer. He pushed off the doorframe and walked into her room. Not with purpose, but with a predator’s lazy ease. He set the water glass down on her bare windowsill. The action felt intimate, territorial. He looked around, at the lavender walls, the white furniture, the sunshine painting warm rectangles on the bare wood floor.
“Lavender,” he said, finally. His voice was a low rumble in the quiet room. “Cute.”
“My mom picked it.”
“Figures.” He took another step. The space in the room seemed to shrink, the air thinning. He was looking at the wall beside her dresser. At the blank space. “You gonna put up those lame inspirational quotes? ‘Live, Laugh, Love’?”
“Shut up,” she muttered, turning back to the box to hide the heat in her cheeks. She fumbled with a sweater.
She heard his soft footsteps on the floorboards. He was close now. The fresh-paint smell was gone, overtaken by him—clean sweat, laundry soap, and that deeper, unmistakable musk that was just Jake. It was the smell from her dorm room, from his skin under her hands. It flooded her senses, paralyzing.
His shadow fell over her, blocking the sun.
“Nervous, Em?” he murmured.
She clutched the sweater to her chest like a shield. “About what?”
“About this.” He said it simply. His hand came up, not to touch her, but to brace against the wall above the dresser, caging her in. He leaned in, his mouth near her ear. His breath stirred the fine hairs at her temple. “One thin door. That’s all it is. And a hallway. Fifteen, maybe twenty steps from my room to yours.”
Her lungs tightened. She couldn’t move. The sweater slid from her numb fingers.
“You think I won’t touch you,” he whispered, the words barely sound, just a vibration she felt in her bones, “just because there’s one thin door between us and them?”
It wasn’t a question. It was a promise. A threat. A beautiful, terrifying decree.
Before she could form a thought, his other hand was at her waist, spinning her gently but firmly away from the dresser. Her back met the cool, flat surface of the wall. He moved with her, his body aligning with hers, not quite pressing, but close enough that she felt the heat radiating from him everywhere.
“Jake…” It was a plea, but for what, she didn’t know. Stop. Don’t stop.
He ignored it. He dipped his head, his nose skimming the line of her jaw. He inhaled, as if memorizing her scent in this new room. “You smell the same,” he said, almost to himself. “Like strawberries and that nervous sweat.”
“I’m not nervous,” she lied, her voice trembling.
He gave a low, humorless chuckle. “You’re shaking.” To prove it, he lifted a hand, hovering his fingers near the frantic pulse at the side of her neck. He didn’t touch it. He let her feel the anticipation of the touch. It was worse.
Downstairs, Carol laughed. The sound was bright, carefree, galaxies away.
“They’re right there,” Emily breathed, her eyes wide, fixed on the hollow of his throat.
“I know.” He said it like it made it better. Like it was the point. His lips brushed the shell of her ear. “Makes it fun, doesn’t it?”
Then his mouth was on her neck. Not a kiss. A claiming. His teeth grazed the sensitive skin just below her ear, a sharp, delicious bite of pressure that made her gasp and arch against the wall. The sound was swallowed by the pop song drifting up from below. He soothed the spot with his tongue, a slow, wet stroke that burned through her.
Her hands came up, fluttering, finally landing on his arms. She meant to push him away. Her fingers dug into the hard muscle, the familiar landscape of ink under cotton. She didn’t push. She held on.
He made a sound, a satisfied grunt in the back of his throat. One of his knees nudged between hers, not forcing, just suggesting. Her body understood. She allowed the space, her legs parting just enough to let him settle closer. The contact was electric, devastating.
“See?” he whispered against her damp skin. His lips moved along her jaw, skirting her mouth, heading for her other side. “Nothing’s changed. Just the address.”
Everything had changed. The stakes were now the sounds of their parents stacking plates in the cabinet directly below them. The stakes were breakfast tomorrow, across a kitchen table. The stakes were infinite.
His hand slid from her waist, around to the small of her back, pressing her into him. She felt him, all of him, hard and undeniable against her stomach. A whimper escaped her, a tiny, broken sound.
He froze.
For a second, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing mingling, and the distant, domestic symphony from downstairs. He lifted his head. His eyes, dark and swimming with something feral, searched her face. He was looking for fear. For regret.
She stared back, panting, her lips parted, her body screaming in a language she’d just learned.
Something in his gaze shifted. The fierce possessiveness softened, just at the edges, edged with a question. His thumb came up and swept across her bottom lip, a touch so startlingly gentle it made her eyes prickle.
A heavy thud came from the hallway. Mark grunting, dragging a suitcase.
The spell shattered.
Jake’s expression closed off, the shutters slamming down. He pulled back, putting a few inches of cool, devastating space between their bodies. His hand dropped from her face. The absence was a physical ache.
He cleared his throat, looking past her at the wall. A muscle ticked in his jaw.
“You should,” he started, his voice rough. He cleared it again. “You should finish unpacking.”
He turned and walked to the door, grabbing his water glass from the sill. He didn’t look back.
Emily stayed pinned to the wall, the ghost of his teeth on her neck, the imprint of his body on hers. She listened to his footsteps fade down the hall. A door opened and closed. His door.
From the bottom of the stairs, Carol’s voice, sunny and oblivious, called up. “Kids! Pizza’s here!”
Emily slid down the wall until she was sitting on the floor, surrounded by half-opened boxes. She touched the place on her neck where his mouth had been. It throbbed. A secret brand, invisible to everyone but them. A reminder of the line they’d just blurred beyond all recognition, with her mother’s voice floating up the stairs and the smell of pepperoni filling their new, shared home.