Eleanor wrapped her arms around Daniel’s neck as he lowered her feet to the cold floor. She leaned into him and inhaled his scent—warm and clean with the slightest hint of fireplace smoke—and committed it to memory.
“Don’t worry,” she said, finally letting him go. “I miss you already.”
* * *
Eleanor and Daniel lay in bed Thursday night, their last night, with their arms and legs wrapped around each other so that it was nearly impossible to tell where one ended and the other began. Tomorrow morning the car would come for Eleanor and take her back to the outside world and to him who she missed with every other breath and cursed with every breath in between.
“What will you do after I’m gone?” Eleanor asked, not knowing how else to keep avoiding the topic.
“What do you think I should do?” Daniel asked as he pulled Eleanor even closer than she already was.
“I don’t know. You’ve got money, no job, and it’s fucking freezing outside. Go to Tierra del Fuego or something. I hear it’s nice this time of year.”
Daniel laughed and the movement of his chest from the laugh against her back nearly sent her reeling again. Could he stop being sexy for one moment? “Tierra del Fuego is nearly the southernmost tip of South America, a stone’s throw from Antarctica. It snows there in summer.”
“Wow. Anyway, you should be used to all that cold. I bet it’s pretty there.”
“Yes, I imagine it is. The natives burned fires constantly to ward off the cold—hence the name Land of Fire.”
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Librarian, remember?”
“I keep forgetting.” She reached between his legs and stroked him. “I’m really going to have to renew my library card when I get back.”
“You should,” Daniel said pressing her onto her back and sliding into her. “Watch out for those overdue fines.”
Eleanor laughed softly as she wrapped a leg over Daniel’s back to coax him in even further. “Oh, I think I can afford them.”
* * *
Morning came too early for both of them. Eleanor awoke with her stomach pressed to the mattress and Daniel inside her, gently thrusting. He was too desperate for her to even wait for her to wake up on her own. They made love in silence, mute from the pain of having to part too soon.
Daniel pulled out of her at last with a reluctance they both felt. He ran a hot bath for her and with soap and his bare hands washed all traces of himself off and out of her. Eleanor shivered in the water despite its near scalding temperature. She would have preferred to have gone home dirty from him, stained and marked by him. She was grateful for the few black bruises he’d left on her back and inner thighs and the bite marks on her neck and breasts. She knew in a day or two this strange week with him would fade like a morning dream. She needed the marks to remind her it had happened—Daniel was real and she was more than just a seven-day loan. She had belonged to him. She had.
Daniel packed her things while she dried her hair and dressed. She felt odd letting Daniel pack up her stuff but she let him without any protest. She knew that he needed to feel in control of the situation, that her departure this morning was as much his doing as hers.
Eleanor had just finished taming her hair when Daniel came for her. His voice was low and steady, his eyes quiet. “The car’s here.”
She nodded, not trusting her voice, and gathered her coat and gloves. Side by side they walked in silence down the hallway, down the steps and to the front door. Eleanor reached for the door handle but Daniel stopped her with a hand on tops of hers.
“Daniel, I have—”
“Call me ‘sir.’ One more time at least.”
Eleanor met his eyes and saw them stricken. She felt something hard in the back of her throat. She tried to swallow it but couldn’t.
“Yes, sir,” she whispered.
Daniel closed his eyes and opened them again slowly.
“I won’t ask you to stay,” he said. Eleanor could barely look at him although there was nothing more she wanted to do than memorize every line and angle of his face. “But I want to.”
She inhaled sharply and forced a smile.
“I won’t say ‘yes’ if you do ask...but I want to.”
Daniel smiled back and that smile broke her heart more than any tears ever could.
“Go. Go back to him before I change my mind and keep you here forever.”
“He’d come for me, you know.”
“I do know. That’s the only reason I won’t try.”
Daniel took his hand away from hers and let her open the door. The driver got out and put her bags in the trunk. He held the door open for her and she slipped inside. The driver got behind the wheel as Eleanor rolled the tinted window down.
“I won’t ever see you again, will I?” she asked.
“Not unless you leave him.”
“I won’t,” she said with merciless certainty. “But maybe,” she glanced up at the great house looming behind him, “maybe someday you’ll leave her.”
Daniel nodded. “Maybe...Goodbye, Eleanor. Be good.”
She gave him her most wicked grin.
“Yes, sir.”
The car pulled away and headed slowly down the drive. Eleanor closed her eyes and leaned her head against the cold glass of the window. She would not look back at him. She knew he would still be there on the steps of the house watching her leave him, watching despite the cold, watching until every sign of her had shrunk into the distance and disappeared. That’s where he was. She didn’t have to look back. She just knew it.
Eyes still closed, she felt the car turn left out of the driveway and slam to a sudden stop.
“What the—” Eleanor threw open her eyes and leaned forward. Standing in front of the car in the middle of the road and completely off his property was Daniel. She wrenched the car door open and ran to him.
“Daniel...oh my god...you’re—”
“I lied,” he said reaching for her. “I will ask you to stay. I will and I am. I’m begging you to stay. I need you.”
He kissed and she kissed back, too startled to move, too moved to speak.
She finally pulled away from him.
“Daniel, you did it. You left your house, the property. I can’t believe it.”
Daniel looked at the house in the near distance and laughed as if just now realizing what he’d done.
“This just shows how much I need you. I haven’t stepped foot off the property in over three years but for you...here I am.”
Eleanor held him just a moment longer, pressed her face to his neck and inhaled that scent that was him and only him. And in that one moment longer she saw their life together—the days among books, the nights wrapped around each other, the mornings for anything they wanted...and they would never have to be apart and there would never be another second of waiting for a door to open just enough for her to slip inside without anyone knowing...she could be Daniel’s and Daniel could be hers and all she had to do was say ‘yes.’
“No,” she said and let him go.
“What? No what?” Daniel looked utterly stricken.
“If you were still in there, in your fortress, then I would know how much you needed me. That you’re here, you’re free...it’s proof that you don’t need me at all.”
“Eleanor. Please.”
“I’m so sorry,” she said backing away to return to the car. “I know it won’t help anything but you should know...only leaving him would ever hurt more than this.”
She looked at him one last time before slipping back into the car and saying one terrible word—”Drive.”
The car started forward again and this time nothing and no one tried to stop it.
Three months later...
She was seeing him tonight, all night. The knowledge of twelve uninterrupted hours with him left her dancing through her day. She danced home from work at eight and dropped her bag full of library books on her kitchen table. She would shower and change and in one hour, nine on the dot, she would be his, completely his all night long.
“Ellie?” her mother’s voice called out from behind a closed bedroom door. “You’ve got mail. On your bed.”
“Thanks!” she called back and danced to her room, not curious in the least what bit of junk mail was waiting for her. She glanced at the bed and saw a postcard on the corner of her quilt. She picked it up. On the front was a photo of mountains, snow-tipped and verdant. Now curious enough to care she flipped the card over and read...
Tierra del Fuego is actually quite lovely this time of year. Say hello to Astor and Lenox for me. Love.
It wasn’t signed. Only “Love” and nothing else. But it didn’t need a signature. Daniel...she couldn’t believe he’d actually gone and left his home—gone even to the ends of the earth. The lingering guilt at leaving him so abruptly disappeared at last. He was fine and even more he was free.
Eleanor slid the postcard into a book she’d just finished reading and danced to her shower.
She knew what love was. And it was expecting her at nine.