I could feel their eyes on me there, and Matt’s trembling excitement.

He entered me. Covered my body. Nothing for Rachel and Nicole to see but his muscled back, his strong thighs and ass, and that most intimate motion that brought him against me, again and again, until we both unraveled.

But that unraveling wasn’t the half of it.

I couldn’t forget how it felt to own him. The fierce, simple trust in his eyes when he told me to do it to him. I’m steady behind you. Words I believed. Words I believed for my life.

“Open your eyes,” he said.

I did, and we were alone.

Chapter 26

MATT

“When did you send them out?” Mike said.

I smiled and shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“To my curiosity, yes.” He shook his head, but he looked pleased, and I felt one of my rare surges of gratitude for my psychiatrist.

I had spent the better part of my appointment describing Saturday night at Four Seasons. I told Mike how I shared my journal with Hannah, and how I whipped her, and how she organized my wildest fantasy into a reality.

“It’s jarred us out of our frustration¸” I said. “I mean with the house-hunting. I feel … refreshed.” I leafed through my journal, which contained no new entries. I studied a bare page. “Some fantasies one expects to remain in the realm of fantasy. I’d thought exhibitionism was one of those. This has been…”

I closed the journal, which had been more than a useful tool.

“Well, thank you,” I finally managed.

“You don’t need to thank me. Without Hannah’s open-mindedness, the journal would have been nothing but a sounding board for your thoughts. Thank her.”

“I have.”

“Good. I don’t mind saying I wasn’t sure about her role in your well-being—whether she was good or bad for you. But that’s clear to me now. She seems very extraordinary.”

“She is,” I said.

“If you would consider a group session or two…” Having triumphed with my aberrant desires, Mike started in on the efficacy of group therapy and marriage counseling. I could only laugh. I felt sure he was right—a few appointments with Hannah, Mike, and me might smooth out our engagement—but I wasn’t ready to talk about children, and I knew we would end up talking about children.

First, I needed to settle that score with myself. Did I want children, or didn’t I? I thought I did. I considered the idea, I imagined the child, my mind lurched through a reel of happy images, and then horror seized me and I recoiled.

Too much happiness … is a dangerous thing.

I’d tried to explain that to Hannah in our story, just as I’d tried to explain it to her when we drove through my hometown in June.

We were happy, I wrote, with this happiness so cosmically unfair … I knew it couldn’t last … that somehow I would have to pay for it.

I e-mailed Chapter 10 to Hannah on Tuesday. We wouldn’t have time to discuss it—I didn’t want to discuss it—because we had a full evening of showings with Marion.

Hannah got home early and changed into jeans and a T-shirt.

We ate a quick dinner of takeout Chinese.

I pulled on my Brooks, my favorite running shoes, and we grinned at one another.

We’d been doing that—grinning dopily at one another—ever since the weekend and Mission Exhibition’s completion. We spoke about it remarkably little. To me it was surreal, a moment in time that too much talk might jeopardize, and it must have been the same for Hannah.

Later, we could process it into writing.

For now, it had revitalized us, just as I’d told Mike, and we were excited to hunt for our future house. Our future home.

I let Hannah sit up front with Marion. First we drove to Pradera, a community of luxury homes in Parker. Hannah frowned at the colossal house, but she listened and held my hand as Marion extolled the four-car garage, the hickory hardwood, granite counters, oversize laundry room, and finished basement.

I loved it.

Hannah endured it.

Next, as we toured a two-story shanty in Longmont, I tried to show her the same courtesy. I sort of smiled at the bland siding, the postage stamp of a yard, and the window through which we could literally pass notes to our neighbors. Awesome.

“Cute place,” Hannah said as we climbed back into the Prius.

I grimaced.

“I want to show you a new listing out in Clear Creek County, different from this and very exciting.” Poor Marion sounded defeated. “Is a thirty-minute commute feasible?”

“That’s up to Hannah,” I said. “There’s not much I need in Denver.”

Hannah shrugged. “I’m willing to look.”

We traveled west, toward Mount Evans. The city receded; flat land gave way to foothills. Sometimes Marion talked up a listing as she drove, but she said nothing about the Corral Creek place. Maybe she hadn’t familiarized herself with it.

We turned onto a dirt road and Hannah glanced back at me.

I frowned and shrugged. No idea.

“Here we are,” Marion said. We pulled through an open gate. The road extended into a meadow toward pine-covered hills. Lodgepole fencing followed the curve of the land as far as I could see. Where was the house?

Spruce and aspen were interspersed through the meadow. The sun was going down, showing the land to great effect. Long shadows and golden light. Fringes of prairie grass shining like torch heads.

I have always had a weakness for meadow landscapes, and I felt my soul expanding to let in that place.