Page 123 of These Tears

‘Get off m—’ I start, voice cracking, and then it breaks into a sound I can’t hold back when he pushes slightly harder against me, just enough to make me yelp.

His body locks.

‘Stop talking,’ he rumbles, as if the word costs him effort. ‘Just… stop talking.’

His entire frame vibrates as though he’s fighting himself.

The air between us is but steam and silence, broken only by the violent thud of our heartbeats.

‘Everything you do or say in this moment,’ he whispers, ‘will determine how this unfolds.’

I swallow hard, throat tight, not daring to move. My lips part with a soundless breath. A bead of melted snow slips from my cheek and freezes cold against my jaw.

He swipes it with his free hand and snatches my jaw before he angles my chin up. And my mouth is his for the taking.

I brace.

My whole body quivers.

But it doesn’t come.

‘Where were you heading?’ he asks, voice strained. ‘The mountains? The lake?’

I squeeze my eyes shut.

It’s humiliating.

And true.

He shifts the tiniest bit, and I give a quiet, involuntary moan. Both my body and my mouth seem to have forgotten whose side they’re meant to be on.

He studies me a little too long, gaze moving from where he kissed me to my eyes to the wet streak of my tear and back to my mouth.

Then he leans in and his words drag over my cheek. ‘I see. You liked the chase, didn’t you?’

A sob catches in my chest. My fingers curl in his snowsuit until my nails ache.

‘Please…’ I whisper, but I don’t even know what I’m asking for. More space. Less space. Anything that would make my body and my mind agree again.

His breath stutters as he presses his cheek into the hollow where my shoulder meets my neck.

‘Don’t beg,’ he rasps. His fingers tighten once against me, then loose as if by force. ‘Please don’t beg. Please don’t beg.’

Our bodies remain suspended in whatever this is.

We both know it’s not right. But there’s something sickly sweet in how wrong it is, and it leaves me unable to tell whether I’d pull away if he actually gave me the chance.

‘Where were you going, Leah?’ he repeats when he looks at me again, still gasping, voice rough from exertion.

‘Away,’ I whimper, the word cracking.

He gives a sound that almost sounds like a laugh, but it’s too broken and intimate to be humour.

‘This is away, sweetheart,’ he says, and the softness of it feels like the most truthful thing he’s ever said to me. ‘No getting further away than we are.’

Sweetheart.

As he pulls away, his eyes drop to my mouth.