Page 37 of The Heartbreak Hotel

“I love them,” he says. That word in his mouth hits me low and warm. “I want to be with them, and I want to help them, and it’s good for me to be there. But it’s better for all of us if I come back home before things get heavy.”

I nod, and his hands move to frame my face. “I understand.”

Henry’s leaning to kiss me when, over the speakers, I hear the opening notes of a song I’d be able to place anywhere. The guitar chords pluck right between my ribs.

“ No ,” I groan, wriggling out of his grip. All at once, I’m absolutely overstimulated. “Can you change the song?”

Henry blinks, confused. “I—yeah. Yes.”

But he’s slow to find his phone, rifling through a bowl on his coffee table, and Nate’s already singing: “ She reads with her lip between her teeth; asleep, her breath falls slow and sweet; she always wakes up reaching for me. ” It’s the acoustic version, of course.

Nate last year, instead of at twenty: his voice a little huskier, rougher on the vowels.

“ Purple, like the lake before a storm, like the mountains in the morning— ”

The music cuts, stuttering into the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” I blink, hard, to clear my head.

That song sounds like my old life, one that has no place in this kitchen with Henry and his parents and Molly.

Henry’s still looking at his phone and I can picture the album art, there in his palm: Nate’s dorm room at CU, a pair of girls’ sneakers lined up next to the bed, mine.

Say It Now , below the photo. Purple Girl (Acoustic).

Henry’s voice is low. “I didn’t realize that would be on this playlist.”

“It’s fine,” I say. Like that article about Nate and Estelle in People , this kind of thing will find me. “It’s everywhere.”

Henry’s quiet. When he walks back over to the island, he doesn’t touch me. “Does it upset you? To hear it.”

“Not really.” I swirl my wine again just to have something to do with my hands.

I look up at him and there’s something guarded in his eyes—this reminder of my past, of a person who loved me once, doesn’t mean something only to me.

Nate’s the reason Henry and I know one another at all.

“I’d just rather not think about him, you know? ”

“Mmm.” Henry reaches over the counter, stilling my hand. I stare at our fingers, there on the granite: his knuckles curved over mine like shelter. He waits for me to look up at him to ask, “It’s about you, isn’t it?”

I feel heat building under the bones in my chest, grief or panic or fear. I don’t want Nate to take this moment from me. “Yes,” I say, turning back to watch Henry’s thumb trace a line over my wrist. “But it’s old. It was a lifetime ago.”

“You’ve never seemed purple, to me.” I look up at him, surprised. He keeps tracing my skin, watching his thumb move. “It’s a sad song. He makes you sound sad.”

“I was, a little.”

Henry nods, winding his fingers between my own. When our eyes meet, he says, “Me, too.”

“But I’m not so much,” I tell him, “anymore.”

Henry’s extraordinary eyes move over mine, searching. I stand, putting my hands on his face and bringing his lips down to mine. Against my mouth, between one kiss and the next, he says, “Me, too.”

Henry turns on his fireplace after dinner, gas flame clicking on to fill the living room with warm light. He carries our wineglasses to the coffee table and I pick up the apple pie, rummaging through his drawers until I find two forks. When I sink into the couch next to him, I hold one out.

“I do have plates,” he says, his arm following the line of my shoulders along the back of the couch.

“This is how we always did it,” I say, spearing my fork into one edge of the pie. “Growing up.”

“Your mom, too?” He follows my lead, digging in.

“Yeah, she loves the holidays. We’d always go to one of her friends’ houses but she’d make sure there was a pie just for the three of us—me and Goldie and her.”

Henry chews thoughtfully. “This is delicious.”

“It was mostly Nan,” I assure him. “She made the dough for me.”

“Well,” he says, “the filling is the best part.”

“Oh, yeah?” I ask, smiling, and he says, “Without question.”

Henry has crumbs at the corner of his mouth, cinnamon on his lips.

The pie is good—but I’m tired of waiting.

I take the fork from his hand and drop it into the dish with my own, sliding it onto the coffee table and climbing into his lap.

His hands steady my waist as I settle onto him, as I dip my head and kiss the corner of his lips.

Run my tongue over the crumbs there, the sugar.

“Done with the pie?” he asks quietly. In the firelight, his eyes are liquid and warm. I think of that first night in the Aspen Room, Henry’s breathless voice in the dark. I want more than that. All of you.

“Done,” I confirm, and then I roll my hips against his. Air punches out of him, his eyes fluttering shut. His fingertips dig into my jeans.

“Louisa,” he says, his voice low and rough.

I press my mouth to his ear, kiss the corner of his jaw.

His hands slide up my back, warm beneath my cardigan.

When I take his head into my hands he gives me the weight of him, leans into my fingers, opens his mouth under my own.

In the warm, breathless space between our lips, I whisper, “Are you still scared of me?”

“Terrified,” he says, and then he kisses my throat, sucks at the arch of my neck, grazes his teeth along my skin so that I shiver.

My voice is barely a sound at all. “Do you want to take me upstairs?”

“I want,” Henry says, pressing his lips to mine, “to take my time with you.”

His words move through me like warm water, a slick rush.

When I push my hands under his sweater he lifts his arms and lets me pull it over his head.

It drops to the floor behind the couch, leaves his hair mussed and wild.

The white T-shirt he has on underneath is thin and tight, pulled taut over the lines of his chest.

“You first,” I say against his mouth, unbuttoning his jeans. But he traps my hands in his, pulling them behind my back so my spine arches, pushing my chest into his.

“No.” Henry starts to unbutton my sweater, one slow step at a time. “You first.” He pushes the fabric over my shoulders so it pools at my wrists, taking me in—pale yellow bra, floral lace, nearly translucent. He swallows, frames my ribs with his warm hands. Looks up at me. “Always you first.”

“Why?”

His thumbs stroke the bottom edge of my bra, raising goose bumps. His voice sounds scraped. “Because you’re so gorgeous like this.” His hands slide upward, palming my breasts. “Because I want to watch you. Because I’m selfish.”

My eyes fall shut, throat tipping back, as Henry unhooks the clasp of my bra and pulls it away.

He slides me onto the couch beside him, tipping me backward and starting on my jeans, my underwear.

When I’m completely naked underneath him he kicks off his own jeans and settles on top of me—warm weight, his heartbeat thudding against mine—and frames my face with one hand.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, and I bite my lip. He ducks his head and pulls it between his own teeth, a low growl vibrating from his throat. “I can’t think when you do that.”

I reach down between us, finding him hard and straining against the fabric of his boxers. “Henry,” I say, breathless. “Let me.”

But as I slide a hand under his waistband and wrap it around him, his own fingers brush the ridge of my hip bone, the crease of my hip, finally parting me. My breath catches, chin tipping backward, and he kisses my exposed throat—hot and wet and graceless.

“Is this okay?” he whispers, his fingertips circling torturously.

I nod, focusing all I have on keeping my own rhythm—but then Henry’s fingers are inside of me, and his tongue is slick against the pulse in my throat, and I lose my grip on everything.

On Henry, on reality, on the steadiness of my own breathing.

“That’s good,” Henry says, low and close. “You’re so beautiful.”

I whimper as he finds something hot and vulnerable inside of me—a place that makes my stomach muscles tense, my breath come short. He traces it again and again, his own need straining against my hip, his breath across my chest as my head tips back and I cry out—loud, broken, defenseless.

Henry presses a kiss to my temple. “Hold still.” He stands, disappearing as I drop an arm over my forehead, elbow cocked toward the ceiling.

I try to slow my breathing, calm the tremors coursing up from my core to my throat.

Henry, Henry, Henry. I can’t make out what song plays, now, over the speakers. I can’t form a coherent thought at all.

I hear rustling, his footsteps. When he lifts my arm from over my eyes, I smile up at him with what I can only imagine looks like a drunken lack of muscle control. “Come here,” he murmurs, helping me to my feet.

He’s pushed the coffee table aside and layered a pile of throw blankets and pillows on the floor in front of the fire. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen; when I look up at him, flushed and carefully gauging my reaction, it makes me want to swallow him whole.

“So much for ‘a bed, next time,’?” I say.

Henry’s hand wraps around my hip, his chest pressing into my bare back. I feel him against my tailbone and every muscle in my abdomen aches. As his hand sinks lower, he says, “Do you want to go all the way upstairs?”

I shake my head and turn in his arms, fisting my hands into the bottom hem of his shirt to draw it up and over his head.

Henry lowers me to the floor, where the blankets are velvet-soft on my bare skin.

He runs a warm palm over my hip, my rib cage, my breast, teasing one nipple between his thumb and finger.

“I know you wanted to take your time,” I say, reaching under his waistband. I close my fingers around the length of him and he flexes into my palm. “But I don’t know how much longer I can wait.”