He sets the slack length on the ground and pulls another piece forward, snipping again, freeing me in quiet severs.
I look up into his eyes, but his brow is pinched, his gaze honed in concentration.
This massive, formidable, powerful man who can claw his way back to life with a talon through his chest … he’s cutting my hair, so utterly focused I think the sky could fall and he wouldn’t even notice.
A smile tips my lips, another tear slipping down my cheek.
His gaze shifts, narrowing on my mouth, then up to my eyes, something flashing in the depths of his. “There she is,” he whispers—the words so quiet I wonder if he meant to say them aloud.
If he even realizes he did.
He pushes to a stand and moves around the back of me while cool relief swirls inside my chest, soothing all the raw and ruined bits like a balm.
The blunt metal edge tickles my spine every time he opens the shears to capture another piece, kindling my skin with a burst of goosebumps as he cuts … cuts … taking healthy bites of my hair. Littering the grass with tainted twirls of gold.
I picture coils of thorny self-hatred withering in their place; each snipped strand a severed touch.
A loosened smile.
A purged lie.
Each tumbling tangle a weight lifted from my laden soul, pulling weeds of regret from my ribs, my heart.
He snips another heavy length free, and I feel it tumble down my back while another thorny vine wilts inside my chest, loosening my lungs.
My breath.
“I’m not very good at this.”
I smile again. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
He moves around me, and I tuck the smile away before he can see it. Crouching, he frowns as he reaches behind the back of my neck, then pulls what’s left of my hair forward, and I can tell he’s trying to be gentle by the way he moves—like a giant cradling a mouse, careful not to squish it by accident.
“It’s much shorter on the right,” he murmurs. “If you hate it, I can even it up …”
I see the unsaid words in his eyes. In the way he smooths the strands with a proud sort of fondness.
He likes it.
That alone makes me want to keep it this way.
“No, I love it.” I comb my fingers through the sides, the left still long enough to reach my armpit. “I’m not changing a thing,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
He nods and sets the shears down, crouching by the stockpot to stir the stew. Oblivious to the fact that he just loosened one of the many chains bound around my chest.
Oblivious to the fact that I just fell even more in love with him.
We’re two monsters in the dark, painful secrets lodged between us like dual-tipped spikes. I can’t move any closer without hurting him, and I won’t.
Not again.
The stew bubbles and steams, flames licking the underside of the stockpot. I toss another piece of wood on the fire, sparks erupting.
Sitting on a log, elbows set on my knees, my gaze shifts toher—watching the flames, toying with a piece of grass.
My heart thumps high in my throat.
With less weight dragging them down, those loose waves frame her face in this fiercely wild way that gives her a cutting, exotic air.
