Page 311 of These Tears

Brute’s head appears from behind the bed, one ear folded and his expression mildly offended by me not paying attention to him first. The rest of him follows in a slow stretch before he squeezes between the boxes of old letters from Elias, trots over, and presses his broad skull into my palm.

I scratch between his ears, receiving one wet huff of approval, then step around him and lower myself beside my man.

‘Still can’t believe you kept all these,’ he murmurs as his gaze travels over the boxes, the faint smile on him deepening into something almost boyish.

‘They’re important to me.’ The mattress sinks beneath me. Elias turns onto his side, one arm sliding beneath my neck until I settle against the heat of him.

‘More important than this, I hope.’ He lifts the paper in his hand and lets it flutter to the floor, as his palm flattens over my spine.

‘You know I wanted to go north before I ever met you,’ I say gently, looking at the photographs overhead. ‘The Sámi project – the people and communities I’ll be working with, the landscapes…’

His fingers stop moving against my shoulder blade.

‘The work will take me away for a week at a time.’

His molars grind again.

‘But I’ll come back,’ I reason. ‘Every time.’

His eyes search my face.

‘I promise I’ll always be trying to get home to you.’

The tension loosens. The word home hooks into both of us and pulls us closer.

His hand leaves my back and slips into his pocket. When it returns, Frida’s ring lies in his palm. The metal catches the afternoon light and holds it alive.

There’s a long silence at first. Just his breathing evening out and the hard beat of his heart so close to mine that, for a moment, I can’t tell which one is which.

‘You know what I am,’ he says. ‘What I’ve done. What I’ll probably still get wrong.’

‘Frequently,’ I agree.

His thumb strokes once across my bare ring finger, but he doesn’t rise to the joke.

‘I won’t promise I’ll be harmless.’

‘I’d hate to see you bored,’ I murmur with a smile.

When I realise I’m not able to rattle the seriousness out of him, my shoulders settle.

‘I can promise, though, that no one will take you from me.’ He finally meets my eyes. ‘Not even you.’

The air in my lungs turns molten. Everything inside me melts clean off. Perhaps it’s the way his voice roughens around the promise. Or the naked certainty in his eyes.

I nearly open my mouth to remind him that I am not a possession to lock away. But a traitorous sensation spreads through me, because underneath all that darkness is a man still grateful that I came back.

And a man still terrified that I might not stay.

He lifts the ring towards my finger, then stops before the silver touches my skin.

And waits.

For someone who has spent his life taking first and surviving the consequences later, that small pause feels larger than any vow.

‘Leah.’

My name. A question stripped of philosophy, jokes, threats and excuses.