Chapter 3: The Hidden Room
The attic swallows the sounds of the house below. Grant's palm fits against the small of her back, steering her past the stacked boxes and dusty photo frames to where an old cedar chest sits beneath the slanted window.
He kneels, flips the brass latch. The lid creaks open, and the smell of mothballs and old paper curls out. Inside: a flattened football, a cracked plastic tiara, a stack of school portraits with creased edges.
"Remember this?" He lifts a scraped leather knee-pad, the one she'd worn the summer she taught him to skateboard. "You took the fall for me on the hill."
Margot sits beside him on the quilt. Her fingers find the thin white scar on his chin, the one she'd patched with butterfly bandages. "You never let me forget it."
He catches her wrist, turns it over, kisses the inside. "I don't want to forget anything about you."
The worn knee-pad slips from his fingers, forgotten. She leans closer, and her lips find his collarbone, tracing the ridge of bone beneath his skin. Grant's breath catches, his hand tightening on her thigh.
He shifts, pulling her onto his lap. "Still sure about this?" he asks, voice low.
Her answer is the press of her mouth along his neck, her fingers sliding under the hem of his shirt. "I've never been surer of anything."
His hands find her hips, gripping hard. "Then don't stop."
A knock slices through the attic, sharp and quick. Grant freezes, his hands still on her hips.
"That's my girlfriend," he says. "I told her I'd help with her essay tonight."
Margot's fingers still at the hem of his shirt. "Go. I'll stay here."
He's already pulling away, tucking his shirt in, heading for the stairs. The doorbell rings again, harder. Grant calls down that he's coming. Margot hears a woman's laugh from the hallway below, bright and careless.
She waits until the front door clicks shut, then moves to the window. Grant stands on the porch with his girlfriend, his hand on her lower back. The same hand that was just gripping Margot's thigh.
Margot's throat tightens. She watches a moment longer, then turns from the glass.
"Careful," she whispers to the empty room, "that's all we have to be."