Page 146 of These Tears

No jacket. Just the navy jumper hugging his broad chest, a dark patch of sweat between his pecs. My attention catches on his hair, damp at the roots, as though he’s been exercising since I last saw him. His breath bursts out in thick, almost dragon-like clouds. I half expect fire to come out of his nose.

His head whips frantically left and right until his eyes lock onto me. Then his shoulders square. Lips press tight.

The mask is back on.

I give him a second of my attention before turning back towards my camera and – click – capture the stars caught in the branches.

He stands there in his soft slippers with the snow soaking the edges, breathing hard. His gaze fixes on me as though finding me here has hurt him more than the thought of me running away again would.

As I lower the camera, his eyes follow it to my stomach, drop to the boots swallowing my feet, then travel over the stretch of snow between us.

Whatever word tries to come out of him dies before it can become one.

My fingers tighten around the camera. If he is waiting for me to look ashamed, afraid, obedient, I give him none of it.

‘Thought the wolves came to get me again?’ I ask, arching a brow in challenge. The cold makes my voice snappier than I intend.

He clears his throat. ‘Those are my boots.’

I zoom in on his frown – click. My camera finds his outrage worth preserving, it seems.

Flashing a theatrical smirk, I lift my arms wide as if delivering a line onstage.

‘At last!’ I say, keeping my tone low out of respect for the wilderness – Shelley would understand my lack of grit there. ‘The creature finds its voice!’

His mouth doesn’t so much as twitch. Shoulders remain rigid. Arms hanging tiredly at his sides. He keeps staring at me as though he can’t decide whether I’m a mirage or still actually here.

I wrench my gaze away, point the lens aimlessly at whatever catches in the frame. Click. Click. The shutter sounds obscenely loud now that he’s close.

No crunch of snow follows. No shift of fabric. When my nerves can’t take any more of that, I hazard a glance – and damn…

The aurora folds around him until he seems cut from the same piece of sky. A kaleidoscope of light ripples across his face and over the crystals of his eyes.

With a pulse of memory, heat chooses that moment to stir low in my belly.

The taste.

The ache.

The broken sounds he left against my ear.

I let my throat drag it all down in a hard swallow.

He looks like a myth torn out of some northern folktale, carved from ice and grief as he glares at one of my footprints in the snow.

The perpetual sadness hanging off his lashes dissolves some of that heat, though.

I take a picture of him standing like that.

‘Elias,’ I say behind the lens, ‘did you think I ran again?’

His face changes. Something darkens the pale slopes of it.

Click.

‘Or because you thought I was going to get hurt if I did?’

The air crackles.