His arms tighten, just a fraction, like he’s worried the wind might carry me off if he doesn’t.
The panic ebbs, slowly, reluctantly. My pulse is still too fast, but it’s no longer trying to beat its way out of my chest. The fringe of my fear recedes enough that I can feel other things.
Like the way his thumbs are rubbing small circles against my ribs through my jacket, absent and soothing.
Like the fact that his chin is resting against the top of my head now, his beard just barely scraping my scalp through my hair.
Like the way my body fits against his, like it remembers the shape of him from a lifetime ago and has been waiting for the chance to slide back into place.
“This isn’t very ‘one thing at a time,’” I say quietly.
His laugh is a short puff of air against my temple.
“No,” he says. “It isn’t.”
For a while, we just stand there, staring at the snow and not looking at the thousand invisible things between us.
“I’m sorry I ruined your Christmas,” I say suddenly, the guilt popping up as a whack-a-mole I didn’t see coming.
“You didn’t,” he says immediately.
“I showed up in a ditch on your property in a situation that has the word ‘drama’ written all over it,” I say. “That feels like ruining.”
“You showed up alive,” he says. “The rest is detail.”
My throat tightens again, but this time for a different reason.
“I don’t know what to do next,” I admit, the words small. “I know I can’t stay here forever. I don’t want to impose.”
“You’re not imposing,” he says.
I almost laugh. “Your mom had to add an extra leaf to the table for me.”
“She’d add three more if she thought she could feed somebody with them,” he says. “Don’t interpret hospitality as obligation. She does this because she wants to.”
I shift in his arms, turning slowly until I’m facing him.
He lets me go enough that I can move, but his hands stay on me. The porch light casts soft gold over his face, picking out the sharp line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth, the blue of his eyes gone almost dark in the low light.
He looks… tired. Not just the physical tiredness of a long day in the snow. The deeper kind. The kind I recognize in myself when I look in unfamiliar mirrors.
But there’s more there, too.
Hope, or worry. A man standing in a doorway, not sure whether to step through or slam it shut.
“Dallas,” I say.
Just his name. A question and a prayer and an apology all wrapped up in two syllables.
His gaze drops to my mouth for the barest fraction of a second.
The world narrows.
The snow. The wind. The hum of the highway. They all fade to a dull buzz behind the roar of my own pulse.
This is a bad idea.
So, so bad.
