“You’re touching.”
My hands still on his arm. The simple statement lands harder than it should—an acknowledgment of what we’ve been dancing around, what neither of us has been willing to name.
“I’m healing.” I force my hands to move again. “It’s different.”
“Is it?”
His free hand rises. Hovers near my face—not touching, just close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his skin. My breath catches. My hands tremble on his arm.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.” The admission comes out rough. Almost angry. “I’ve never—” He stops. Jaw tight.
“Never what?”
“Wanted what I couldn’t take.” His fingers brush my cheek—barely a touch, there and gone. “Wanted someone.”
My body leans toward him without my permission, drawn by that warmth, that intensity, that raw honesty I’m still not used to hearing from him.
“The kisses,” I manage. “In the garden. The cave. We haven’t?—”
“I know.”
“We should talk about?—”
“Should we?” His hand drops. Returns to his side. The loss of that almost-touch leaves me colder than it should. “What’s there to say? I want you. You want me. We’re running for our lives from a clan that wants to breed us like livestock. Talking won’t change any of that.”
He’s not wrong. But the bluntness of it still hits differently than I expected.
“So what do we do?”
He looks at me. Really looks—not with the assessment I’ve grown used to, but with a deeper need. A look that makes me feel seen in ways I’m not sure I’m comfortable with.
“I don’t know.” The words cost him. I can see it in the tension of his shoulders, the tightness around his mouth. “I know how to kill. How to break. How to destroy. I don’t know how to—” He gestures between us. “This.”
“Neither do I.” I return to cleaning his wounds. Focus on the work so I don’t have to meet his stare. “The clan didn’t leave room for any of this. Just survival. Waiting. Pretending.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m tired of pretending.”
The confession hangs in the air. I feel exposed—more exposed than when he cornered me in that storage alcove, more exposed than when I offered him my help in the Womb Chamber. This is something else entirely—choosing to be vulnerable when I don’t have to be.
His hand covers mine. Stops my movement. His palm seeps warmth into my skin, and I can feel his heartbeat—quick, strong, not as controlled as he’d like me to believe.
“Imara.”
I look up. His face is close. Closer than I realized. Close enough that I can see the individual scars, the texture of damaged skin, the way his eyes reflect the fading light.
“I don’t know how to do this right.” He lowers his voice. It becomes something private, something meant only for me. “But I want to learn. With you.”
The words crack something open behind my ribs. A need I’ve been refusing to name because naming it makes it real, and real things can be used against you.
“Okay.” The word comes out barely a whisper. “Okay.”
He leans forward. Slow. Giving me time to pull away, to change my mind, to retreat to safer ground.
I don’t retreat.
His lips brush mine—gentle, questioning. This is a new feeling. Something careful. A first attempt at tenderness from someone who was never taught the word.
