Page 110 of These Tears

Have I found the edge of him, the one that might turn my refusal into his punishment?

‘You do,’ he says, but it isn’t cruel. It’s not an override. It’s not even force.

It’s the truth.

His eyes hold mine with that hard shape of ruin as he lowers the pillow beside him.

‘This? This is my demon. I choose your touch. You choose where it goes.’

I choose.

It rebounds through me as if it were a bell struck somewhere in my breastbone.

And something about it begins to sculpt itself into a different shape.

He has put the thing he fears between us – touch – and then handed me the boundary.

The horror of it all is that I understand this language.

He is not erasing my pain, yet has found where it bleeds, and he is pressing his thumb against the bruise too tenderly to call it pressure.

And I feel that low and dark curl of decadence inside me. Because the truth is worse than the words that hold it: I don’t want to fight this part.

Not when he wants my hand where hunger starts and mercy lives.

He waits for me. Patience holds him motionless, but it makes the uncertainty in me all the worse.

And though I hate him for this, for tracing the outlines of the truth, for forcing me into the blizzard, for taking me, for keeping me captive—

That wrongness in me still reaches out for that darkness.

I unclench my fist. Lift my hand slowly.

My hand – not my fear.

My choice – not his appetite.

His chin tilts slightly, exposing more of his throat. His shoulders remain rigid.

I don’t touch the skin.

I don’t touch the ink.

I reach for his temple. Slowly, I run my fingers over the warmth of his hair and thread them through the curls.

His body locks beneath my hand. A tremor runs over him, so slight I’m not even sure it’s there.

His eyes snap shut. His shoulders stiffen further.

As if softness is the thing he never learnt to survive.

‘That wasn’t one of the choices,’ he whispers breathily.

My fingers stop moving but remain entangled with his hair.

‘No,’ I respond. ‘But it was mine.’

His throat works. The ruin on his face is quieter for a moment.