Her eyes fluttered open. For half a second, her face was so close I couldn't focus, but then everything sharpened: the shimmer of tears at the edge of her lashes, the flush high on her cheeks, the way her breath stuttered through her parted lips.
"Sorry," I said, not even sure what for.
She shook her head, a shaky exhale leaving her in a laugh. "Don't be." Her hands were still locked around my neck, her thumb worrying at the hair at my nape.
I wanted to kiss her again. I wanted to keep kissing her, to drag her into my lap and stay there until we'd erased all memory of ever being on opposite sides of anything.
“You always do this,” she whispered. “You leave me alone just long enough to forget, and then you come right back and pull me under.”
She was so raw, it almost hurt to look at her. “You always let me,” I said, the words scraping up from somewhere bent and hungry. “You don’t even fight it.”
She smirked, lips wet and swollen. “I fight it every day, Caiden.”
I could have kissed her again, but I let the silence stretch instead, let her knees rest against my hips, let her pulse steady through the warm skin of her wrist.
Then, slowly, she unpeeled herself from my lap, sitting back on her heels. “We should get out of the bathroom,” she said, voice tight, shy. “Before Dante thinks we’re killing each other.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” I said, getting to my feet and reaching to help her up. She took my hand, let me pull her close one last time. “You okay?”
She nodded, eyes shining. “I’m okay.” Then, softer. “With you, I think I’m okay.” I thought about how many times that wouldn’t have been true, how many times I’d been the reason she wasn’t okay.
Amelia stepped out of the bathroom first, and I saw the outline of Dante still spread out on the couch.
I took a moment to allow my breath to slow down, to replay and savor what just happened between the two of us. I wasn’t sure if it would happen again. I hoped it would, but I also flinched at the thought of it becoming too real.
The next few hours folded around themselves, dense and slow, a pall settling over the cabin as the sun bled out behind the pines. Dinner was leftovers, a succession of mismatched plates and pale slabs of lunch meat that Dante assembled into sandwiches with the focus of a scientist.
Amelia sat at the table, knees hugged tight to her chest, swaddled in a hoodie so immense it nearly blotted her out. I took the seat at the end, swallowing the urge to pull her into my lap again, to keep her there until she melted into bone and breath.
Dante moved with ease between fridge and table, clearing away the last of the stew, wiping crumbs, refilling water glasses as if the world might tip off its axis if he didn’t keep it all perfectly balanced.
Nobody said much. The clink of forks and the hum of the old refrigerator were the only sounds for a while, and every silence felt like a test I was doomed to fail.
Amelia picked the crusts off her sandwich, eyes fixed on the table. Dante’s gaze flicked between us, as if monitoring the tension.
“How’s the face?” Amelia asked finally.
I shrugged, prodding at the cut. “Doesn’t hurt.”
A thin smile, then she went back to dissecting her sandwich, the careful autopsy of someone who couldn’t stomach eating or the silence.
“You guys want to play something?” Dante said, too bright, the question ricocheting around the table like a stray bullet. “Cards, a board game, or we can just hang out and try to relax.”
I could tell she was winding down, already half folded into herself, her eyes barely open in the low light of the kitchen. "I think I'm going to turn in," she said, voice shaky with exhaustion. "I'm running on fumes, and my brain's not even here anymore."
Dante leaned into where she sat, concern etched in the set of his jaw. "You want me to make you some tea, or?—"
She smiled, soft and apologetic. "I'm okay, really. Just need to not exist for a bit."
She got up, wobbling a little before steadying herself on the counter. The hoodie hung past her thighs, the borrowed sweatpants bunched at her ankles, her hair wild and dark from the shower.
I wanted to say something, to offer her a better reason to stay up, but even I could see she was a ghost at the end of her own night.
She drifted down the hall, closing the door behind her. I listened to the hollow tick of the lock, the way her footsteps went silent on the thin carpet.
For a moment, neither Dante nor I moved, both of us floating in the wake of her absence.
Dante cleared his throat. "You going to sleep too, or what?"
