She stills under the touch.
“Isa,” she says, something that hovers between a question and a warning and makes me hesitate for half a second longer than I should because it almost opens the door to a conversation I’m not ready to have.
I take a step forward and I kiss her.
There’s no pause this time, no space to think or measure or decide what this means. My hand tightens at her jaw as I pull her closer, and the second our mouths meet, it’s different—sharper, more urgent, like what we’ve been building up to the past few months is finally breaking through.
She inhales against me, surprised, and then she’s there, her hand gripping the waistband of my leggings as she matches my intensity.
Whatever thought I had about talking—about asking and naming whatever the fuck this is—disappears the second she lunges into me like she’s not going anywhere and the answer is right here in the room with us, has been here all along.
My other hand finds her waist, pulling her flush against me, and I feel the shift in her immediately—the way her body goes boneless against me and the way her breath catches when I don’t give her any space to think.
“Isa—” she tries again, but it dissolves the second I kiss her harder. She makes a small sound against my mouth, and it sends something through me I don’t bother controlling. I move her back a step without breaking the kiss and push her into the refrigerator, grounding both of us in the moment.
This feels like the only thing I can hold on to now.
I need her to stay here.
I need her to stay here.
The thought repeats, louder the second time, like saying it twice might make it real and anchor it into something I can hold on to instead of something that keeps slipping through my hands the second I try to define it.
She shifts against me, her hands still gripping at my waist, her breath uneven against my mouth, and I feel it then—the edge of those three words rushing to spill. The place where this stops being just physical and temporary and starts asking something of me I might not be ready to give.
I slow down.
Not enough for her to pull away or question it, but enough that I can think again and feel the weight of what I almost let happen.
Her forehead presses lightly against mine, and for a moment, neither of us moves. I can feel her breathing, the rise and fall of it, the way it steadies gradually as the moment settles into this quiet normal we both seem to be chasing.
“Isa,” she says again, softer this time.
I know what she’s asking.
Or maybe I don’t know exactly, but I know the direction of it, the shape of the conversation she’s trying to open, and I can feel myself step around it before it even fully forms.
And I don’t know why.
My hand slips from her jaw to her neck, then down to her shoulder, slower now, grounding instead of pulling.
“I got a call this morning,” I say, the words coming out more evenly than I expect.
She stills enough that I feel the shift immediately.
“A call?” she repeats.
“Yeah.”
I step back just slightly, enough to see her face, enough to create the smallest amount of space between us without making it feel like I’m pulling away.
“There’s a skater in Ireland,” I continue. “Junior. Someone flagged him to me a few weeks ago, but I didn’t think much of it at the time.”
Her brows knit together just slightly, trying to follow the sharp pivot and understand why I’m telling her this now, here, like it belongs in the same space as everything we were just doing.
“Huh,” she finally says. “That makes sense. Ireland doesn’t have a permanent skating rink.”
“Really? How do you know that?”
