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“Yes. We were friends,” he eventually says, startling me.
“That’s nice,” is all I can seem to muster in response. My stupidity earns no more questions from me. In my defense, I don’t have a lot of friends to learn social normalities. Marg isn’t much of a chatter box, and most of my interactions with others include running or silently observing.
After a few quiet moments and a few more strokes down his face he turns the tide toward me. “What about your family? Parents? Siblings?”
I’ve never been good at the details of my childhood. Mostly I don’t want to relive it, and each time I have to tell someone, the memories are as fresh as the day they happened. Not that I have had many people to tell, and Marg asked only once. But he answered all of my inquiries, the least I could do is offer the same.
“I never knew my father. My mother died when I was twelve.” His blue eyes dart to mine, looking for emotion I purposefully armored away. The pain of my loss, of the distance between me and Mother— it’s too overwhelming when I open that door.
He reaches a hand up as if he wants to touch me, to soothe away the truth. But he must think better of it because he slowly drops it away. My face heats as he continues to stare, and a rare discomfort edges its way into my mind. Was I embarrassed that an almost stranger wanted to comfort me, or am I upset he didn’t?
He isn’t an almost stranger, I suppose. We have been together longer than I have been with anybody, besides Mother and Marg.
I’m reminded of that first night in the woods when he walked from the trees, his muscular form and blue eyes highlighted in the moonlight. Our tussle the next day as I thought he was stealing Prue. Those eyes full of fire when I said he wasn’t capable of telling the truth, and then as I tried to unsheathe his sword. His strength as he fought off Silas’s men, and fought with Tess on my behalf. The way he saved me as I fell from the trellis at Sir Crane’s estate.
Letting our time together replay in my mind has made me feel more uncomfortable than I was before. I shift on my feet, clearing my throat as I begin the delicate work of shaving around his neck, leaving little room for talking.
When I finish, the last swipe of my blade leaving its final soft streak behind, he hands me the small cloth from his shoulder. The air around us feels heavier somehow, my breathing a little more labored. But I pretend it is as it always has been between us, merely tolerating each other at best.
I wipe away small bits of soap from my fingers, then turn to use the clean side of the cloth to wipe away any left-over residue from his face. But the strangeness never leaves, as much as I wish it to. It’s as if those personal glimpses into our lives has shifted something between us. I glide my fingers across his face, feeling for any roughness that I may have missed. But his skin is warm and smooth, my hand moving effortlessly across his jaw and neck.
He follows my gaze as I finish, and I’m again brought to the realization of how close we are. Roan reaches up, not shying away this time, tucking a stray piece of hair behind my ear, his thumb lightly brushing against the yellowing bruise on my jaw. My breath hitches against that brief, heated graze against my skin. His fingers skim my neck, trailing my arm until he finds my hand. A dizziness drags through me, and I have to close my eyes until it passes.
“Thank you,” he says, taking the towel from my grip. My mouth won’t even form words in response.
Neither of us move after that, his eyes darting briefly to my lips, then back up to meet my own. Something inside of me tells me to wrap my hands around his neck, to run my fingers up through his hair just to see how it feels between them.
I hated this man just a few days ago. Everything about him. Everything he stood for.
Is it possible for one powerful emotion to swing so rapidly to its counterpart? For hate to become… to become what exactly? No, No. I barely know the man. And he’s someone I still despise in so many ways. But I can’t deny that something has sprouted inside of me. Something hot, forceful, and persuasive. Something that has nothing to do with hate at all.
I try to take a steadying breath as the storm of his presence threatens to pull me under. His eyes swirl with a fire that is neither anger or anguish, but something else entirely. Something similar to only a couple mornings before when he was banging frantically on my door at the Santanas.
The way he looked at me then— I thought it was a softening, a tolerating of my presence where before there was only annoyance and frustration. But now… now I wonder if it was something else entirely.
Part of me wants to jump headfirst into the blaze I realize, as I unknowingly move my face closer to his. Some invisible tether pulling me toward him without my conscious consent. The heat of his breath mixes with my own, and another wave of dizziness has me reaching out for something to steady me. His hands slide around my waist, gentle but sure, a mighty pillar to keep me from falling over.
“Are you okay?” he asks me, his voice bringing me back to reality. My imagination is a tenuous link to what’s happening between us, but his words anchor me back to the moment.
His hands are strong as they grip me, and my traitorous body is responding to him in a way that is both disturbing, as I’ve sworn to hate this man forever, and alluring. An impulse wants me to lean into him, to his touch. My heart is beating wildly as he keeps his hands planted on my hips, even after the dizziness has waned. I’m taken over by something other than logic and reason as I continue to stare into his eyes, their blue gaze sinking me deeper and deeper the longer we stay unmoving.
It feels like hours have past, but only seconds exist in this moment. Each breath moves us closer. I suddenly wonder what it would feel like for our lips to—
Prue whinnies in the distance, startling me and pulling me from my passionate trance. Realizing how intimately our bodies are settled into each other, even closer than before, has me taking a quick step back, his hands falling from me as I jump away to put some distance between us.
What in the Four Kingdoms just happened?
“Well then,” I examine his face from afar, “no cuts.” I twist the dagger in my hand, a shaky laugh escaping from my pounding chest.
“I’m sorry. I never meant to…” he begins, slowly standing.
“No, no. Don’t apologize. It’s my fault. I… I don’t know what came over me. I felt a little dizzy, and… well I’m fine now,” I say, a bit of color rising to my cheeks. We stand across from each other, toggling between staring at each other and trying to find anything else to look at.
“I will go see if I can find us some breakfast for the morning,” he finally says, a sternness to his voice, his muscles tense. He grabs his bow from his pile of things, crunching through dead leaves and forest debris. “You should get some rest. It will be another long day tomorrow.” He walks off into the distance, leaving me alone with my idiocy.
When I find movement in my frozen limbs, I grab my mostly dried bedroll, having been soaked the night before from yet another rainfall, and move it away from the fire so the cool night air can work against the flush of my skin.
I want to both relive what just happened, and forget it entirely. But I guess I opt for the former. I replay the events in my mind over and over. The way he moved my hair and put his hands around my waist to steady me.
