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Privacy and cookie detailsHe has six weeks left in his vows. She refuses to become his reason for leaving.
Lavinia wants the man whose temporary vows keep him out of reach. She will not be his secret or the reason he leaves the life he loves.
Completed · 20 chapters · 1h 50m
SteamyIntense chemistry. Sensual intimacy.Heat guideYearning · Tender · Witty
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Dear Maeve,
I moved a chair because I was tired of pretending I stayed late for the washing-up.
Lavinia Daulton moves a chair out from between herself and Hugo Bennion because she is tired of pretending she stays late for the washing-up. Hugo is thirty-nine, a religious brother in temporary vows, and the unguarded laugh she wants from him is becoming harder to forget. He has six weeks left in his term. They have never kissed, and neither intends to begin a hidden romance. Lavinia, thirty-six, has a flat, friends and a life she likes. She has also learned how easily a woman can call silence independence. Hugo loves the community he may leave. He must make his own decision about its future, with work and a home arranged whether Lavinia chooses him or not. She will not become proof that leaving was right. An old love song, an empty hall and the ordinary mornings Hugo would miss bring them close without making the choice simple. He wants this particular woman, not an escape from a life that mattered. She wants his touch and a future in which she can ask for what she needs. When the distance between them can finally be crossed, both will have to decide what wanting each other is worth without turning love into a guarantee.
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Hugo had six weeks left in his vows. He told me he wanted to touch me, and then he stayed exactly where he was. I was grateful. I was also furious with how much I wanted him to cross the space I had made.
At the centre’s social evening, I chose an old love song he called an act of aggression. I sang louder. He laughed and joined in, quite badly. I have heard that laugh in my head on evenings when I ought to have been enjoying the quiet of my own flat.
He loves the life he might leave. I know because he told me about its ordinary mornings, and I could not make them sound small even to myself. I will not be his secret practice at another kind of life. Nor will I ask him to call me the reason for a decision that belongs to him.
That ought to make waiting simple. It doesn’t. Every time I hear the side door stick, I know whose footsteps will follow, and I have to decide whether to turn towards them.
Lavinia
From Before the Last Bell
Read this if you want the wait to be a promise he keeps without asking her to justify leaving it.
Read this if you want attraction held at a real boundary, then tested by the life beyond it.
Slow burns where the waiting is the point