Chapter 13: The Unwinding
The space between their hands on the velvet cushion was maybe two inches. It felt like a canyon. Dee’s fingers were still curled around the stem of her wine glass, but she wasn’t drinking. She was watching him. Watching the firelight catch the gold in his hair, the stark vulnerability in his eyes that no red carpet photo had ever captured.
He’d just said the words. Seven years. Lying to myself.
The jazz from another room was a low, smoky trumpet line, underscoring the silence that wasn’t really silent at all. It was full of the crackle of the fire, the distant sigh of a elevator, the ragged sound of her own breathing.
Matt looked down at his hands, then back at her. He’d taken his jacket off, rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. The casual dishevelment was more intimate than nudity. “When you left for Berlin,” he started, then stopped. He let out a shaky breath, a half-laugh. “Jesus. When you left, it was like… the color just dialed itself down. Everything was quieter. I kept turning to tell you things. Jokes. Stupid gossip from set. And you weren’t there.”
“You called,” she whispered. “You called all the time.”
“I called because I was fucking starving for it,” he said, the words rough. “For your voice. For that laugh. And I told myself it was just… missing my friend. That I was worried about you being so far away.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his gaze intense. “But I wasn’t worried. I was jealous. Of the city. Of the people who got to see you every day. I was jealous of a time zone, Dee.”
The air left her lungs. She set the glass down on the low mahogany table, the click too loud. The wilting peonies lay beside it, a testament to his frantic rush to get here. To now.
“All those years,” she said, her voice thick. “The ‘little sister’ thing. It was a great shield, Matt. For both of us, I guess.”
“It was a prison.” He ran a hand over his face. “A really comfortable, happy-feeling prison I built myself. Because the alternative was terrifying. Was risking you. Risking this.” He gestured between them, the space now charged, pulsating. “So I dated people who didn’t matter. I listened to you talk about guys who didn’t deserve you, and I gave advice. What kind of pathetic…”
“Stop,” she said. She moved. She closed the two inches. Her hand found his, where it rested on his knee. His skin was warm. His fingers trembled, just slightly, before they turned, lacing tightly with hers. The contact was a jolt, a completion of the circuit started on the phone, on the stoop.
He stared at their joined hands as if he’d never seen anything so miraculous. “The phone call last night… that wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t just wine. It was a fuse. And I lit it because I couldn’t breathe anymore pretending I didn’t want you. That I haven’t always wanted you.”
Dee brought her other hand up, cupping his jaw. The stubble was rough against her palm. He leaned into the touch, his eyes closing for a second. “I spent a year in Germany trying to carve you out of me,” she confessed, the truth raw and ugly and necessary. “I dated a nice architect. I learned how to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ in German. And every night, I’d scroll through my phone and the only thing I wanted to tell was you.”
His eyes opened. They were bluer than she remembered, swimming with something that looked like pain and hope all mixed together. “Did it work? The carving?”
“What do you think?”
He shifted then, turning his body fully toward her on the sofa, their knees touching. His free hand came up to mirror hers, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. “I think,” he said, his voice a low scrape, “that I have seven years of missed touches to make up for.”
“That’s a lot of touches.”
“I’m a quick study.”
He leaned in slowly, giving her every chance to pull away. She didn’t. She met him halfway.
The first kiss wasn’t fireworks. It was a relief. A soft, trembling exhale against his mouth, a settling of a profound, achey wrongness that had lived in her for years. It was warm, and tasted like the expensive whiskey he’d been sipping, and like him. It was familiar and brand new.
He pulled back just an inch, his forehead resting against hers, their breath mingling. “Okay,” he whispered.
“Okay?”
“That just confirmed it. I’m an idiot of epic, historical proportions.”
She laughed, a wet, choked sound. “Yeah. You are.”
The second kiss was different. It was the confirmation. It was hunger. His hand slid into her hair, angling her head, and the careful control he’d always worn like a second skin shattered. It was all open mouths and desperate, searching pressure. It was the silent, furious conversation they should have had years ago. His tongue traced her lower lip and she gasped, curling her fingers into the front of his shirt, pulling him closer.
His tongue traced her lower lip and she gasped, curling her fingers into the front of his shirt, pulling him closer. The world narrowed to the soft, insistent pressure of his mouth, the scratch of his stubble, the firm line of his body against hers as he shifted to ease her back into the deep cushions.
Somehow, her sweater was gone, discarded on the floor with a whisper of fabric. His hands were on her waist, under the thin cotton of her tank top, his palms hot against her skin. “Tell me to stop,” he murmured against her neck, his breath a shaky promise. “Any time. You just say it.”
“Don’t you dare stop,” she breathed, arching into his touch.
He kissed her again, deeper this time, and his hands moved with a reverence that unmoored her. They traced her ribs, the dip of her spine, as if memorizing a landscape he’d only ever imagined. Everywhere his fingers traveled, her skin fluttered in their wake, alive with a current that had been dormant for years. He broke the kiss to look at her, his eyes dark and serious.
“I’m not dreaming this, right?” he asked, his voice ragged. “This is really happening.”
She answered by sliding her hands under his shirt, splaying her fingers over the warm, taut skin of his back. He sucked in a breath, his muscles jumping under her touch. “Feels pretty real to me,” she said.
He helped her pull the shirt over his head, and for a moment, she just looked. The firelight played over his shoulders, the defined lines of his chest. This wasn’t the magazine-perfect actor. This was Matt, breathless and real, a faint scar she remembered from a long-ago biking accident visible on his ribs. She touched it lightly.
He shuddered.
Then his mouth was on hers again, hungry and sweet, and his hands found the button of her jeans. The metal gave with a quiet snick. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet room. He stilled, his fingers on the zipper tab, his gaze searching hers. The question was silent, urgent.
Dee nodded, a barely-there dip of her chin. “Yes,” she whispered into his mouth.
He took his time. The zipper’s slow descent was a tease, a deliberate drag of metal teeth that had her lifting her hips off the cushion. He eased the denim down over her hips, his hands skimming her thighs, and then she was in just her tank top and a simple pair of black cotton panties. He looked his fill, his expression one of naked awe that made her stomach flip.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, the words sounding broken. “It’s actually unfair.”
He kissed her then, a soft, deep exploration that felt like a vow. His hand slid from her jaw, down her throat, over the frantic pulse at the base, tracing the neckline of her tank top before finally, finally slipping beneath the waistband of her panties. His touch was warm, certain.
He found her wet and ready, just as he had on the phone, but this was different. This was real. A low groan vibrated from his chest into hers. “Dee,” he breathed, his forehead against her temple.
His fingers were gentle, achingly so. He explored her with a tactile curiosity that was entirely new, each stroke a question and an answer. It wasn’t practiced, performative. It was discovery. He watched her face, learning what made her breath catch, what made her hips cant upward for more pressure. His thumb circled a slow, maddening rhythm while his fingers dipped inside, and the world dissolved into sensation.
“Look at me,” he whispered.
Her eyes, which had fluttered shut, snapped open. She was pinned by that blue gaze, by the intense focus he usually reserved for a camera. Now it was all for her. The intimacy of it was more profound than the touch. She was laid bare in every possible way.
“I’ve got you,” he said, his voice steady now, a anchor in the rising storm. “Just let go. I’ve got you.”
His tenderness shattered her. The careful, exquisite pressure built, a coil winding tighter and tighter in her lower belly. It was different from anything she’d ever managed alone. This was shared, witnessed, given. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. A sound escaped her, half-sob, half-plea.
“That’s it,” he encouraged softly, his breath hot against her ear. His movements became more precise, perfectly tuned to the trembling feedback of her body. “Come on. I’m right here.”
The release, when it broke, was a shock. It tore through her with a speed and violence that stole the air from her lungs. Her back arched off the sofa, a sharp cry ripped from her throat, and she trembled, writhing under his hand as wave after wave of pure, bright pleasure electrocuted her system. It seemed to last forever, this blinding unraveling, this freefall.
Slowly, the tremors subsided. She floated back to the room, to the feel of the velvet under her, to the crackle of the fire. He was watching her, his expression one of stunned wonder. He slowly withdrew his hand.
Without breaking eye contact, he brought his glistening fingers to his mouth and tasted her.
The act was so primal, so claiming, that a fresh jolt of heat sparked deep inside her. He closed his eyes for a second, as if committing the flavor to memory. When he opened them, the awe was still there, mixed with a dark, possessive satisfaction.
“Wow,” he said, the word exhaled on a laugh of pure disbelief.
“Yeah,” she managed, her voice wrecked. “Wow.”
He leaned down and kissed her, softly, deeply, letting her taste herself on his tongue. It was the most intimate kiss of her life. He gathered her against him, her head finding the space between his shoulder and chest, and they just breathed together in the shifting light. His heart hammered against her ear, a frantic echo of her own.
Neither of them spoke. The silent understanding settled over them, thicker than the blanket he eventually pulled over their legs. The phone call, the stoop, the years of distance—they had all been a prelude to this quiet, beating heart of a moment. The world outside the velvet drapes no longer existed.