Free Here to Stay by Suanne Laqueur Page A

to dance, he might even say yes.
    As he packed his bag his last night in New Brunswick, he left the shoes in Daisy’s closet
    “Are you crazy?” she said. “Take them.”
    “Nope,” he said. “These stay here.”
    “I trust you, if that’s what this is about.”
    “I know you do. And they’re staying here.”
    He led her around Barbegazi that night, intent on making love in every room. From the obvious to the absurd. Laughing up against the linen closet door and then shivering on the basement steps. He overlooked nothing.
    “I want you to walk around this house and see me everywhere,” he said, pressing her to walls, floors, piano keys, cushions and counters. Marking his territory with a vengeance.
    “This is your home now,” she said, leading him back to her bedroom. “I want it to be your place, too.”
    The candlelit air pulled apart, gossamer threads of aching need stretching across the hours.
    “God, honey,” she said, stretched out on her back at the corner of the mattress, her arms long over her head. Her silky legs rested on his shoulder. He curled an arm around them like a cello, running his mouth along her calf.
    “You’re so good,” she whispered, pulsing around him.
    “Only with you,” he said. “I’m best with you.”
    Their shadows danced across the walls and ceiling. The flickering light caught in the tender curve of her throat and the gold fish curled in its hollow. The coiled heat in his belly reversed direction and spiraled down, heading for the warm wet that had no name. His awareness swelled, pressed against his eardrums. A wave of furious release tumbled down from his head as the intense, squeezing pressure rocketed up his spine. He checked the impulse to thrust, to force it over the top. He held still. Let it rip through him like a slow-motion bolt of lightning.
    “Erik,” she said, one last time before her voice disintegrated. The spiral threaded out and his insides caved in after it. Teeth clenched, eyes screwed shut and the world exploding behind his eyelids, he dropped his head down on his chest as he came into her and she came down on him.
    “Stay awake,” she whispered in his arms afterward. “Let me fall asleep first.”
    He’d been about to ask for the same thing. Sleep was too much like leaving and he didn’t want to be awake without her. So they tried hard to fall together, breathing and blinking and eventually drifting away.
    The morning dawned grey and chilly and they moped over tea in the kitchen, picking at toast.
    “Don’t come with me to the airport,” Erik said. “It’ll be like fucking Casablanca and I can’t handle it. I don’t want you driving home upset afterward. Let Will take me.”
    “All right,” she said, drawing a deep breath. “I guess I’ll take the tree down.”
    “Oh, that’s not depressing,” he said, grimacing. “At all.”
    She shrugged. “Why be miserable when you can be wretched?”
    The last minutes slipped through their fingers like sand. He kissed every inch of her face. It was twisted up with bravery and despair and he was positive he was going to die walking out of here.
    “We’ll be all right,” she kept saying, her smile fighting to stay ahead of the tears. “We’ll figure it out. I know where you are now.”
    He touched her necklace, then her ears where the matching pearls he bought her for New Year’s hung from her lobes.
    Don’t leave me, he thought, even though he was the one going.
    How am I even doing this?
    He had come back to her, given her his heart, showered her with his love and his gifts, and now he was walking away again. He hated his life, wanted to trash it like a hotel room. The years thrown away were sour on his tongue. Regret was an iron cannonball in his stomach. Every hair on his forearms up like a barb and wailing don’t want to don’t want to don’t want to don’t want to...
    Both Will and Lucky came to Barbegazi to orchestrate the extraction.
    “Say goodbye now,” Lucky said