Page 227 of These Tears

‘I’m not good at masks,’ I murmur.

His breath shifts over my crown and stirs my hair. ‘I know.’

‘I don’t want to lie to people who look at us like that.’

He breathes in silence. The trees answer with the whisper of their branches catching wind.

‘You need to learn,’ he says, but the command has already cracked around the edges. ‘Because masks are necessary in this world.’

We stay like that. For barely a second but almost an eternity. Breathing each other in, taking heat from one another.

By the time we return inside with some wood to disguise the absence, the evening has folded itself back into warmth as if nothing ever happened.

Presents are pushed towards me: a small pouch of dried herbs, handmade blankets, a knife Anders insists is practical and Sunna insists is alarming. Coffee gives way to more cake with berries and spice.

One by one, people begin retreating into the night.

Anders and Inga are the last to go. Inga is still talking about wedding colours while Elias steers her towards the door with a look of grave suffering and one hand at her shoulder. ‘Out. Out. Out,’ he reiterates dryly. She only grins at that.

When the final snowmobile fades into the trees, silence comes back differently.

Far from empty. Further from safe.

I stand in the middle of the cabin with gifts and wrapping cloth on the table, drink still warm in my blood, and the taste of too many lies sitting beneath my tongue.

Because I am still here. With Elias.

Still wearing a story we wove out of nothing – and wearing another man’s ring.

I thumb the band again. Turn it once.

38

Elias stays at the door with his hands braced against the frame, listening until even the echo of the last snowmobile is gone.

Then he closes it slowly. The latch settles with a soft click that, for some reason, sounds louder than all the locks in the forbidden room.

I turn from the table, wrapping cloth still crushed in my hands, and find his face stripped of every trace of dry humour and softness.

The silence pulls my skin taut. Heat answers anyway, as it always does when his eyes turn cold, but all that attention settles on me.

I edge backwards on instinct until the counter catches against my hip.

His eyes hold mine as he crosses the sitting room, each measured step tearing another piece of the space between us. Behind him, everything we’ve lied about tonight recedes into nothing.

‘The ring,’ he says, lifting his palm between us.

Panic spiderwebs up my neck. My mouth opens, but I swallow the refusal back and reach instead for the anger I have kept under a lid all evening.

‘You want me to take it off?’

His fingers curl once in soundless demand.

I tip my chin up at him. ‘Then those chains never come on you again.’

A shadow passes over him. His open hand lowers barely an inch.

I almost regret saying it when his throat works around the answer and his lips part. ‘Fair.’