Ari turns, his eyebrow lifted. “What?” he asks, already smug. I grab the front of my shirt and pull him in for one more kiss. “Just shut up,” I mutter against his mouth.
Ari huffs a laugh. “Da,” he says, as if he’s humouring me. Then he drags me back to the bed like we’ve got all the time in the world. I’m half-laughing when he shoves me, and I stumble onto the mattress.
“Careful,” I say. “You’ll damage the merchandise.” He snorts and follows me down, crowding my space immediately, allelbows and knees. We roll, clumsy and lazy, limbs tangling until I end up on my back with him hovering over me, his forearms braced on either side of my head. He looks down at me like he’s deciding something, then leans in and kisses me.
I kiss him back, one hand coming up to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck. He hums quietly, pleased, and shifts his weight so I have to turn my head, laughing when his mouth follows mine anyway. “Greedy,” I mutter, and he laughs lightly.
At some point, it stops being about the way his hand moves, or the weight of his body on top of me, or the way he smells faintly like coffee and smoke.
He’s looking down at me, not smirking or provoking, just watching me like he knows exactly what I’m thinking. His hand pauses on my waist, like he’s caught himself touching something he shouldn’t be, and for a second, he looks almost unsure.
And that’s when it slaps me in the face.
Not like a thunderclap or anything as dramatic. It’s a clean, horrible clarity. The thought pushes through before I can stop it. It’s undeniable, and my stomach drops like I’ve stepped off something high, and now I’m free-falling.
I’m in love with him.
I don’t say it, I don’t even let it show on my face. I lie there with it, breathing it in and out, letting it exist quietly inside me where no one can take it from me yet. He bumps his forehead lightly against mine. “You’re thinking again,” he murmurs.
“I’m not,” I lie automatically. He smiles like he knows better and kisses me once more, and I close my eyes, keeping the truth to myself.
We end up sideways, with his back against the headboard, and me half sprawled across him. His thumb traces slow, idle circles on my ribs as if he’s not even aware he’s doing it.
I press my face into his shoulder, breathing him in, and feel him relax under me, like this — this stupid, gentle closeness — is something he understands better than words.
For a while, we exist just like that, in the quiet knowledge that we’re here, together, and no one’s taking this moment from us yet.
Thirty-Two
Arseny
The road back to base is a ribbon of grey cutting through white. The snow is piled high on either side, trees stripped bare, sky low and colourless, like it’s pressing down on the world. I drive with one hand on the wheel, the other resting uselessly on Caiden’s thigh. The cabin disappears behind us quicker than I expected it to.
Caiden is in the passenger seat, his boots kicked off, jacket unzipped, looking far too relaxed for someone who’s about to be put back into the grinder of reality. He’s leaned back with his head resting against the window, watching the trees slide past like he’s memorising them.
He’s been silent since we left.
The radio crackles, switches stations, then lands on something loud and familiar. I don’t change it. The song fills the silence in the car while Caiden taps his fingers against his knee in time with it, like he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it.
This is the part I hate. I’m good at leaving, I was built for it. I know how to compartmentalise, how to shut doors, and step back into who the world expects me to be. What I hate is this limbo. The space betweenthenandnow. The stretch of road where my body still remembers things and my brain is already trying to erase them.
I can still feel him. The way he fit against me in bed this morning, hear the way he laughed into my shoulder like nothing in the world was wrong. But time was already sharpening its knives.
The music surges, something about time slipping, pressure building, and I swallow, hard, focusing on the mechanics of driving. I focus on anything that isn’t the fact that every mile we put between ourselves and that cabin is one less I get with him untouched by consequence. “You always drive like you’re angry at the road,” Caiden says suddenly.
I glance at him. He’s smiling faintly, his eyes half-lidded, relaxed in a way that makes something flip low in my gut. “I am,” I reply. “It’s inefficient.”
He snorts. “You know most people just... drive.”
“I’m not most people.”
“That much is painfully obvious.”
I exhale through my nose and turn the music down a notch, and the rest of the drive passes in silence. The base looms in the distance eventually, concrete, wire, and routine waiting for both of us. My shoulders tighten instinctively, my body slipping back into the familiar.
The cabin feels unreal now, like something that happened to someone else. I remove my hand from his thigh, and he straightens in his seat, rolls his shoulders, and pulls his boots back on. Watching him do it feels wrong, like I’m losing something.
I hate it.
