Page 36 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

After the axe throwing, Eve came home with me.

We didn’t talk much in the car. She texted Earl, who was visiting a cousin in Des Moines, and had a quick call with her PhD student, Chris, who I apparently still hated, judging by how I fixated on her every word and mood during the brief exchange.

After that, she leaned back and watched the few wisps of clouds marring the night sky.

Her upturned jaw and the slender column of her throat in profile made my mouth go dry.

As we drove from Iowa City to the edge of the state, her energy slowly shifted from content to expectant.

I was just trying not to crash the car.

Like everything else in my life, sex was never as simple for me as it was for other people. Just being near someone exposed me to caverns of emotion and dark, gritty need. Being inside them was to be swallowed by the cavern.

In my twenties and early thirties, I’d opted into the risk of that escape as casually as I could.

Bar servers were the best bet, women who showed up at 3:00 a.m., knocked back a shot of whiskey, and dropped a trail of clothing from the kitchen to the bedroom with as little fanfare as serving the next round.

Their minds were studded with all the idiots and assholes of the previous hours, petty grievances they wanted to forget in a tide of alcohol and rush of nerve endings.

They needed the escape as much as I did.

Things shifted, though, as the dreams took over my life, as the shadows grew longer and drainpipes and ditches and barns swallowed more people I couldn’t find in time.

Alcohol and pills numbed me for a while, but the nightmares always waited on the other side.

When I tried to escape through sex, I felt worse.

I resented the women who’d unknowingly given me a glimpse of their functional realities, the un-haunted worlds they took for granted, and was either rude to them afterward or sat on the back porch drinking until they left.

I became just another asshole in their night.

I’d never been with someone like Eve, who was so far out of my league even the staff at the axe place noticed.

Tonight she wore bright sneakers and a jumpsuit that on anyone else would probably look prison-issue.

Eve could have stepped off a runway in it, and the zipper that ran up the center of the whole thing easily took up forty percent of my concentration the entire night.

I wore a black T-shirt and jeans, and judging by the tone of her concentration on me all night, it was the right choice.

I pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. We sat in the dark for a minute, neither of us making a move to open our doors. Tension ballooned in the space between us until I was ready to crawl out of my own skin.

“Thanks for tonight.”

“Was it all right?” She seemed strangely anxious. It wasn’t an emotion I was used to from Eve. “I know it was in public, but I thought it might be better with Max and Shelley there.”

“It was great.” I had to sit down a few times and escape to the bathroom once, but it was manageable. And it was with Eve, which made it worth any bad moments that came my way. “I’m glad you and Shelley are friends.”

“She’s going to start a group chat. She mentioned a brewery tour for our next double date. Strictly outdoor patios.”

“Max will be on board.”

“And you?” She turned to face me, reading me as I read her.

“I’ll be there if you are.”

The anxiety melted away, replaced by something more restless as she opened her door.

Inside, I mixed drinks while Eve put on music. After bubbling with me during Covid, she knew my house almost as well as I did. It was a strange, domestic feeling, watching her move so easily through spaces I’d kept carefully empty. When I walked out of the kitchen, though, she’d disappeared.

“Kendrick.”

The voice came from the loft. The only thing up there was my bed. Blood rushing, heart kicking up, I brought the drinks upstairs.

Eve stood at the railing overlooking the living room. She took both glasses and set them on the ledge, then threaded a hand through my hair and worked her way down to my jaw. I fought the urge to rub against it like a goddamn cat.

She pulled me in, humming her approval. Her thoughts spiraled from my mouth to my arms and chest and lower, before lingering on the two-year journey from her front porch, where she’d shoved me into a pile of slush with a baseball bat, to this moment, where no one else in the world existed.

I framed her face in both hands and murmured, “Who would’ve thought?” before leaning into her.

The kiss started slow, then shifted and deepened.

We moved against the railing, backing each other up, changing positions, fighting to get closer.

It was incredible how easily we shifted roles, negotiating the give-and-take like we’d been doing it for years.

Breaking away, I brought her hand to my mouth.

“I need you to talk to me. Tell me what you want and what you don’t.” I bit the base of her thumb. She inhaled and her body dilated, the nerves humming to life.

“I don’t want you to stop.”

“Let’s revisit that one later, because I’m planning to sample every square inch of you.” I moved to her wrist and felt her pulse quicken. “It might take a while.”

“Good.”

I sat on the foot of the bed, pulling that criminal jumpsuit zipper open to her waist and tasting each slice of skin on the way down. When she shrugged the whole thing off, my brain whited out.

The rest of our clothes scattered. She ordered my shirt and pants off, told me where to kiss her, where to bite, moaning when she lost the words and showing me with her hands instead, taking my request for instructions to heart.

When I had us both panting on the bed, we paused, eye to eye, a breath apart.

An ocean of need churned between us and I couldn’t separate which was hers and which was mine.

It didn’t feel like the escape I’d always sought. It felt like home.