Chapter 18: Clause Eleven

Juno's POV

"Say that again," Ronan said.

It was a quarter past nine on Thursday night. He set the grocery bag down on the top step. An orange rolled out, dropped one stair, and stopped against Grant's shoe.

Grant still had a hand pressed to his cheek. My palm had left a print there, white at the edges and red in the middle. He lowered it and gave Ronan the look he saved for waiters who got his order wrong.

"I said ask her what she does at three in the morning."

"She told you to go."

"This is a private conversation, Sayer. Between me and my wife."

"Ex-wife," I said.

Neither of them turned. I was used to that.

Ronan came down the hall at a walk. The old boards creaked under him one at a time, and Grant backed up until his shoulders met the wall beside my door.

Grant's eyes dropped to the bag. An onion, a box of pasta, a bottle of red with the price sticker still on.

"Groceries." He laughed, and it came out wet. "That's sweet. Do you know what you're buying? Did she tell you what she does for me? Night after night?"

My fingers closed on the doorframe.

He was guessing. He had one word he had sent to a ghost and half a bottle of scotch, and that was all he had. But drunk men finish their sentences, and he would finish this one in this hallway, in front of the one man in New York who had sworn to take everything Ledger owned.

"Finish it," Ronan said. "I want to know which word I break your hand for."

"At three in the morning she sits in my kitchen with a laptop, and you should ask her who she writes to."

Ronan caught the finger Grant was jabbing at his chest and bent it back.

"She doesn't sit in your kitchen anymore," Ronan said. "She sits in mine."

Grant's voice cracked up an octave. Ronan walked him along the wall by that one finger, two steps, three, until Grant was clear of my door and had stopped talking.

Ronan took it for what it sounded like, an ex-husband who couldn't stand to lose. He didn't hear the laptop. For three years he had been hunting one name, and the answer had just been shouted at him in a hallway, and he had been too angry on my behalf to catch it. I let it pass, and I would be ashamed later of how grateful I was.

Grant swung with his free hand, wide and slow. Ronan leaned out of its way and hit him once in the mouth.

The sound was short and wet. Grant's head knocked against the plaster, the hall light rattled in its fitting, and when his chin came forward again his bottom lip was open and blood ran down onto his white collar.

He touched it. He looked at his fingers. He had the face of a man who had never been hit, and as far as I knew, he hadn't.

Ronan took a fistful of his coat and held him to the wall.

"You come to this door again, you leave in an ambulance. Nod if that's clear."

Grant nodded.

Ronan let go.

Grant went down with one hand on the banister and the other over his mouth. Near the bottom he missed a step and said a word I had never heard him say. A minute later I heard a car door shut on Clinton Street.

Ronan shook out his right hand. Two knuckles had split on Grant's teeth, and a thin line of blood ran toward his wrist. He didn't wipe it off.

My own palm was still ringing. I had never hit anyone, not even as a kid, and I couldn't get my fingers to stop.

"That's an assault," I said. "He'll use it."

"Let him."

"Sloane will use it."

"Then she can explain why her brother was in your building at nine at night, drunk, with his hands on you." He picked up the orange. "I'd pay for that hearing."

"How did you find this address?"

"You put it on the confidentiality agreement Marcus sent. You returned it at five." He dropped the orange into the bag. "You moved in today. I figured the fridge was empty."

"So you brought me dinner."

"I was going to cook it."

"You can cook?"

"No."

I laughed. It came out sharp and shaky, and the corner of his mouth moved.

He carried the bag in. I locked the door behind him and kept my hand on the deadbolt a second longer than I needed to.

Four of the six eggs had cracked on the way up. He set the carton on the counter beside the wine and took in the room: bare walls, stacked boxes, one armchair, my mother's law books drying along the windowsill with their covers curling.

Blood dripped from his knuckles onto my floor.

"Sink," I said.

"It's fine."

"You're bleeding on the only clean thing I own."

He went. I turned on the cold tap, took his wrist, and held his hand under the water. It ran pink down the drain. His hand was twice the size of mine, and his pulse beat hard against my thumb.

"Ten million dollars," he said, watching the water. "I heard that from the stairs."

"Then you heard me say no."

"I heard you hit him." The tap ran. "Before that, I heard him ask you to come home, and then I heard nothing for about three seconds."

"You counted?"

"I was climbing." His voice roughened. "He put his lips on you."

"He tried."

"In front of me. One more step and I'd have broken his hand."

His fingers flexed under the water and the knuckles opened again. I shut off the tap, wrapped a dish towel around his hand, and pressed down.

"Did you think I'd go back?"

He didn't answer. His eyes went to my lips, to the spot Grant had missed. Grant had never been jealous of anyone. It had never crossed his mind that another man might want me.

"If I wanted Grant's money," I said, "I would have stayed married to it."

"I know."

"Then what is it?"

"He had you for five years." He said it to the towel. "And tonight he thought he could walk up your stairs and take you home."

I pressed harder, because my hands needed a job.

He took the towel away with his good hand and dropped it in the sink. Then he kissed me.

At the Marlowe Hotel, I had grabbed him first. Tonight he didn't ask. He put a hand along my jaw and kissed me, deep and slow, and I pulled him down by his wet collar and kissed him back.

He lifted me onto the counter. The egg carton rocked, and a cracked egg slid off the edge and broke on the floor, and neither of us looked down. I locked my legs around his hips and pulled him against me. He was already hard through his jeans, and I rocked against him before I could talk myself out of it. The sound he made went through my whole body.

"Tell me to stop," he said against my throat.

"Don't you dare."

His hand slid under my sweater, hot on my ribs, and climbed. He cupped my breast through the lace and dragged his thumb across my nipple, once, slowly, until it went tight and I gasped into his hair. He pulled the sweater over my head and dropped it on the floor. He unhooked my bra with one hand. When his lips closed over my nipple, I arched off the counter and held his head there with my fingers in his wet hair. With my other hand I got his belt open and slid my palm inside his jeans. He was hot and hard and heavy in my hand.

"You're going to fucking kill me," he said into my skin.

I dragged his shirt up over his head, and the scar was right there under the kitchen light, long and pale across his ribs.

He had never told me where it came from, and I had never asked, because a question from me would have bought me questions back. But I knew what I had done to him three years ago. I had taken his company, his money and his marriage, and tonight he stood in my kitchen with blood on his hands for a woman he believed ran errands for a ghost.

I had written clause eleven. His hands were on my waist.

"Wait," I said.

He stopped. All of him, at once. His forehead dropped to mine and we stood there breathing hard, my bra hanging open, my sweater on the floor, his belt hanging loose.

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No. You didn't do anything."

He pulled back far enough to see my face, and whatever he saw made him take his hands off me. He picked my sweater up from the floor and held it out, looking at the ceiling instead of at my bare chest. I took it and pulled it on.

"Is it him? Are you still in love with him?"

"No." I laid my hand on his chest. His heart was slamming under the wet shirt. "I haven't been for a long time."

"Then what?"

"There's something I have to tell you."

The sentence was ready. You've spent three years hunting Ledger, and you just had your lips on her. I wrote clause eleven. Everything you lost, you lost to me.

"Ronan, listen to me."

Headlights swung across the ceiling.

Down on Clinton Street, a car was pulling out from the curb. The beams slid over the boxes, over the two of us, and went on. Ronan was at the bay window before they faded.

A dark sedan sat across the road with its engine running. Behind the windshield, a small square of light glowed, a phone held up and aimed at my window. As he watched, the screen went dark. The sedan pulled away.

"Camera," Ronan said. "Somebody's had a lens on this window since before I got here." He turned. "Who knew you were in this apartment?"

I thought of a girl on my stoop, mascara to her chin, begging me to keep her visit secret. Somebody had watched her walk in.

"Tatum," I said.