What She Keeps

1. Prologue

The green cotton clung where her skin was warmest, stretched across the heavy slope of her breasts and catching under the soft fold beneath them. Linda sat on the edge of the bed with her knees parted just enough for the gray sweatpants to pull tight between her thighs. The fabric had ridden up on one side; the pale inner curve of her leg showed above the cuff. Afternoon light lay flat across the wooden floor and the half-full laundry basket. She did not move to straighten anything.

Her hands rested between her knees, fingers loosely linked. The mattress dipped under her weight. She shifted once and the sheets answered with a low, papery sound. Heat had gathered in the room from her body alone—the faint salt of her underarms, the warmer, quieter scent that rose from the open neck of the shirt when she breathed. A single strand of hair had slipped from the bun and stuck to the side of her neck. She left it there.

Somewhere down the hall a door closed. Footsteps crossed the living room, paused, then continued toward the bedroom. She kept her eyes on the floorboards. The air between her legs felt thicker than the rest of the room. When she exhaled, the green shirt moved with her, the underside of one breast brushing the cotton in a slow drag that left her nipple half-stiff against the fabric. She did not adjust it.

Marcus stopped in the doorway. She heard the grocery bags settle on the floor. He did not speak. She felt the weight of his attention the way she felt the waistband of the sweatpants—present, ordinary, already too close to skin. Her pulse sat low in her belly, steady and thick. One thumb stroked once across the inside of her own wrist and stopped.

The silence held. Outside, a car passed and was gone. Inside, the only sound was the small, wet click of her tongue against the roof of her mouth when she swallowed. She stayed exactly as she was, hands between her knees, shirt clinging, the soft press of her own body against itself already answering the fact that he had not turned away.

1. Chapter 1 – The Groceries

The grocery bags settled on the floor just inside the doorway. Marcus stayed where he was, one hand still on the doorframe, watching the way the green shirt pulled across Linda’s chest when she breathed. She had not looked up. The gray sweatpants sat low on her hips, the waistband folded once, the fabric stretched taut over the soft weight of her thighs where they pressed together. A faint darker patch had formed at the center of the crotch from the heat of her body; she had been sitting long enough for the cotton to take the shape of her.

“Ray’s still at the plant,” he said. His voice came out lower than he meant. “Said the line’s backed up. Don’t wait.”

She nodded. The motion shifted the loose strand of hair against her neck. Sweat had gathered in the hollow above her collarbone and darkened the green cotton there in a ...