Page 76 of Gave Proof Through the Night

I have never in my life been held like this. Not once. Not by anyone.

Something behind my ribs, something I’ve kept locked down since I was nineteen, gives way all at once, and the floodgates open completely. A full, ugly, shoulder-shaking cry, the kind that comes with sound effects, hiccupping and wet and completely without my permission, right there against Jeremiah Precio's chest.

He freezes.

“Hey. Hey, hey, whoa.” He pulls back enough to look at me, hands coming up to frame my face, thumbs already swiping under my eyes.

“What happened? Was it the song? I can turn it off…”

“It’s not the song.”

“Did I say something? Do something? Because I will absolutely apologize, I just need to know what for.”

“Jeremiah.”

“Because I really thought this was going well, and if I somehow ruined a hockey rink birthday party, that’s a new personal low.”

“Jeremiah.” I laugh, wet and hiccuping, which does nothing to convince him I’m fine. “It’s not the song or anything you did wrong.”

“Then what?” His thumbs are still moving, gentle, useless against the steady leak of it, his brow pulled into a knot of genuine alarm. “Talk to me. Please.”

“I’m not sad.” The words come out thick, half-laughing, half-sobbing, an absolute mess of a sentence. “I’m happy. I don’t… I’m not sure I’ve ever been this happy. Ever. In my whole entire life. And it’s just.” I gesture vaguely at all of it, the rink, the empty stands, his hands still cradling my face. “It’s a lot.”

He goes still again, studying my face, and I watch the alarm drain out of him slowly, replaced by something that cracks his whole expression wide open.

“Happy tears.”

“Happy tears.”

A laugh punches out of him, relieved and a little wrecked around the edges. “You scared the life out of me.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” He wipes both thumbs under my eyes again, careful and unhurried, cupping my jaw reverently. “I’m happy too. Just so you know. In case that wasn’t obvious from all the screaming.”

“It was obvious.” I press my palm flat against his chest, right over that too-fast heartbeat, and feel it kick harder under my hand. “Very obvious.”

“Good.” His hands settle around my face, thumbs resting just below my cheekbones like he’s memorizing the shape of me. And the noise of the rink, the fading song, the distant hum of the ice compressors, all of it goes soft and far away, like someone turned the whole world down to a whisper just for this.

“I really want to kiss you right now.”

My pulse trips over itself. Every single thing in me goes quiet at once. The cold, the ice, a lifetime of careful distance, all of it gone, replaced by his thumb tracing one slow line along my cheekbone and his eyes not moving off mine for even a second.

“What are you waiting for, Zesty?”

Then his lips slant over mine and he’s kissing me, slow and unhurried.

One hand slides from my jaw into my hair, fingers curling loose against my scalp. The other flattens against my back and pulls me in until there’s no cold air left between us at all, and I forget, entirely, that we’re standing in the middle of an ice rink.

I forget the skates, the empty seats in the dark, the fact that gravity still technically applies. There is only this. His mouth, warm against mine. The scrape of his jaw. The unsteady thud of his heart under my palm, no longer trying to catch up to mine, just matching it, easy, like it always meant to.

I rise up onto the toes of my skates, chasing more of him, and he makes a low sound against my mouth that undoes something in my chest.

His thumb traces the curve of my jaw. His mouth moves like he’s committing mine to memory, deliberate, again and again, and every time I think it’s slowing down it only deepens, pulling a soft sound out of me I’ll unpack later.

Every nerve ending I own lights up at once. It’s majestic. There’s no other word for it.

I don’t know how long it lasts. Long enough that my knees have gone soft and unreliable. Long enough that when he finally pulls back, just far enough to breathe, I chase him half an inch before I catch myself.