Page 63 of These Tears

He stirs, a trace of soap and heat drifting towards me as he lifts his hand to take mine.

My breath stumbles as the camera falls to rest against my stomach, momentarily forgotten.

Every sensible thought I have tells me to pull away: he threatened a plane full of people. He made me panic. Trapped me beside a window.

My hand remains in his anyway.

He catches my fingertip and places it against the clear film where the ink begins, then traces it along the chain himself – over his wrist, up the sleeve over his forearm, across the hard rise of muscle beneath the fabric, and towards his shoulder.

He keeps guiding me, following what I can no longer see, until he stops above his heart.

The heat radiating from his body throws me off balance.

I pull back too quickly when his grip eases.

The moment splits.

‘The other arm’s the same,’ he says, lifting it barely above the armrest before letting it fall again. He doesn’t show the design there.

This thing between us – it’s barely a truce. Beneath it, something is gathering, and I can already feel its roar ringing in my ears.

‘What does it mean?’ I ask, tilting my head towards him.

He shrugs, eyes drifting past the aisle, far away from him and me. As if watching a memory walk past.

I raise the camera again. Frame his profile. Snap.

He turns his head. Looks directly at it. The sadness clings stubbornly to his face.

A staccato burst of noise, need and delight comes from the shutter.

Elias’ heart is etched on that face. His chains, his pain, his smile and his fears. I devour them through the barrel like a woman starved.

He doesn’t recoil. Not even after I clip the lens protector back into place and let my weapon rest against my thighs.

‘Got your fix?’ he asks with a half-mocking tilt that tries – and fails – to mask something else.

I don’t bristle. I know what I’m like when inspiration hits: not entirely present. Not entirely sane. I’ve been known to climb to the top of a building because a cloud looked better from that angle.

‘Yes,’ I reply, brushing absolutely nothing from my trousers just to keep my eyes off his.

‘Good,’ he says, succinct as ever, but there’s a heaviness pressed into that single syllable. ‘Ghosts are like that. They gnaw at you until they drive you mad. Until you give them what they want.’

The silence trailing those words isn’t really silence. It throbs between us like a low electric current threatening to take us under.

‘No one knows that better than I do,’ he adds, almost to himself. Then, turning his eyes towards me again: ‘I’ll let you quiet yours whenever you’d like. However you need to.’

I straighten, breath catching on the words.

Let you – it tangles in my sternum and grows thorns.

He’s not letting me go.

A beat passes.

I wait for the condition. There has to be one – the hook hidden somewhere inside the offer.

‘If what?’