Page 256 of These Tears

‘You’re not wrong.’ I press myself harder into him. Hating him. Needing him. Understanding too much and not nearly enough. ‘You should have trusted me with the truth.’

‘I know.’

‘No…’ I pull back just enough to meet his eyes, and this time he lets me slip out of his hold. ‘Don’t say it like punishment. Say it like you mean to do better.’

Pale eyes hold mine. Starlight drowns in them. So do I.

‘I should have trusted you with the truth,’ he reiterates. ‘And I will do better.’

It fixes nothing. The months behind us remain exactly what they were. But the truth enters places his lies had occupied and forces them apart by a fraction. My anger stays where it deservedly is, too. Beside it, unwillingly, sits the relief of finally understanding some of what came after he took me.

I lift onto my knees before sense can talk me out of it and curl my fingers into the front of his jacket.

‘You’re important to me,’ I murmur.

His gaze moves over me slowly. From the tangled hair slipping from beneath my hood to the cold-reddened line of my cheek, down to my mouth, then along the curve of my jaw as if he is committing it all to memory.

Dark lashes lower over all that azure, and the breath between us thins to nothing.

His hand rises towards my face. I meet him halfway, tipping my chin into his palm.

Then he takes my mouth with his.

The way he kisses me makes the forest fall away first. The cold withdraws; the fear follows. The heat of his mouth and the resting violence of a man trying not to give more than I can take is the only thing that matters in this moment.

Yes, he is dangerous.

His past is worse.

It’s full of doors I have not opened and truths that may yet cut me.

But for a little while, in this breath, in this single heartbeat, with his hands at my face and my fingers against him, I let fiction become kinder than reality.

He is mine.

I am his.

And in the brief mercy of this kiss, it feels like forever.

A pointed cough cuts through the moment.

Our chins aim towards the tent.

A little way off, Sunna, Inga and the cousins are now gathered near the trees, pretending with spectacular failure not to be watching us. They whisper behind their hands, bite down on grins and look entirely too invested.

Elias and I groan at the same time.

I drop my forehead against his chest. ‘What are we going to do about… that?’

He sighs so deeply it moves through both of us, then looks past my shoulder at the cluster of women still arranging our future.

A full set of heartbeats passes.

‘I hear Iceland is nice this time of year,’ he mutters.

The chuckle bubbles in me first. Then it starts in his chest. Low, reluctant, but unfortunately, catchy. It turns into something warmer than the wool around my shoulders or even the man in my arms.

I tilt my head back to look at him. ‘We’re not running any further.’