Chapter 5 Cruz #2
Safe is a temperature.
Tonight we have it set right.
Roman shuts the door with his palm and listens once more for the ice. Deacon checks the fuse box and the roof line on his clipboard.
I hang Isla’s scarf, shake snow from my curls, and look across the kitchen to where Marisa stands with her hands braced on the counter, cheeks warm, eyes soft.
The fire glows low, deep orange where it counts.
There are four of us now.
It feels like standing in the center of a familiar map and seeing the lines redraw around the place where you were always meant to stand.
Deacon gathers the glasses and takes them to the kitchen.
He cleans when he is thinking because it allows his mind to build things in quiet.
Roman remains where he was, a mountain in a chair, the kind of stillness you learn from years of learning what moves and what does not.
I move to the stove, because warmth belongs in hands when a night looks like this, and put a pot on.
Real hot chocolate, not the cheap packet.
Milk in first, slow. Cocoa whisked until the surface shines. Cinnamon added at the end so it blooms. One tiny square of dark chocolate for depth.
I think about adding a hint of chili in honor of certain secrets that live behind false bricks, then decide tonight should be soft and sweet.
Marisa watches from the end of the counter with her fingers wrapped around her own elbows.
The sweater she is wearing has a loose weave that looks like it will hold only if someone keeps an eye on it.
I pour a mug and slide it to her.
Our hands touch for half a breath.
The touch is nothing, an ordinary exchange between people who share a kitchen, and it is everything my body has wanted for a year.
“Thank you,” she says.
“Always,” I answer.
She lifts the cup to her mouth, blowing gently.
I want to be the steam that curls against her lip.
I want to be the warmth that settles in her chest.
She drinks. Her eyes close for a moment then open, softer.
“How is she,” she asks, nodding to the window, where the storm rages outside the lodge.
“Safe,” I say. “And warm. She’ll eat too many pancakes there in the morning.”
“Pancakes sound nice,” she says. There is a smile there that does not hurt. “If your kitchen trusts me.”
“This kitchen already set a place for you,” I say. “It has been waiting.”
She looks down at her mug as if the swirl in the chocolate might tell her what to say next.
Roman shifts his weight in the chair, not a warning, not a claim, just a reminder that he is in the room.
Deacon returns with the last towel and drapes it over a chair back.
He pretends to check the back door latch, eyes quiet.
I set my own mug aside because my hands do not need it.
They need her.
Not to take, not to trap, only to be allowed to rest against the person they missed.
I move closer.
Not fast. Not pressing.
I stand near enough to feel the warmth off her skin through wool. She does not step back.
The courage in that small stillness makes me want to get down on my knees.
“Marisa,” I say, her name wrapped in the way I mean it.
She looks up quickly and I see it, the shine that could turn to tears if a word comes wrong.
I put my palm open on the counter so she can see I am not trying to corner her.
“You do not have to pretend,” I tell her, voice low enough that only we hear it, “that you are not still ours.”
Her breath catches.
Her hand loosens on the mug, then tightens.
She sets it down very carefully on the counter, as if she is placing a breakable thing where it will not fall, and turns toward me with a small nod that feels like a gate opening.
I touch the side of her waist.
The sweater is soft.
The body under it is warm, familiar in a way that makes my ribs ache. She lifts her chin and I watch her decide.
It is not a pose. It is a choice.
There is nothing in me that wants to make this look like anything but the truth.
I lean in slowly enough to be stopped.
She does not stop me.
Her mouth meets mine.
The first press is soft.
I let it be soft.
I let it be careful.
The second finds depth.
Her fingers curl in the front of my shirt, and I feel the need under the caution, the relief under the ache.
I cup the back of her neck and promise to be kind there forever.
She tastes like cinnamon and sugar and the kind of winter that does not leave you lonely.
The fire pops. Roman stands.
I hear the chair legs scrape against the rug.
It is not a threat.
It is the sound of a man crossing a room he has waited a year to cross.
Deacon kills the lamp by the stove with a thumb against the switch.
The kitchen slides into a softer dark that glows from the hearth.
I break the kiss to breathe and to look at her, because I want to see what I am doing to her and what she is doing to me.
Her eyes are wide. There is color in her cheeks that is not from the cold. She does not look away.
“Tell me if I should stop,” I say.
She shakes her head once. The smallest movement. The clearest answer I have ever been given.
Roman’s hand comes to her hip, not claiming, anchoring.
The heat of him changes the temperature of the air.
Deacon steps behind her, close enough that she can feel the line of his body without being crowded.
We do not speak. There is no need.
The room breathes with us.
The storm thickens its voice on the roof.
Somewhere in the henhouse Cleopatra mutters like a queen satisfied that her kingdom is held.
I kiss her again, deeper.
She opens to me with a small sound that I will keep in my pocket for the rest of my life.
My fingers find the hem of her sweater and rest there, waiting for the consent that comes from a shift of muscle and a lean forward.
She gives both.
I slide my palm under the knit and feel skin that makes my head go quiet.
She turns slightly, the motion small and perfect, and Roman’s mouth finds the place where her jaw meets her throat.
Her breath stutters.
Deacon rests his hand on the back of her neck, a gentle weight, a promise to hold steady while we find the pace that belongs to the four of us and no one else.
The mugs sit forgotten on the counter, the chocolate cooling with a skin that will please no one.
The fire throws heat at our backs.
The storm writes white music against the windows. Her hands come up to my shoulders and hold on.
I bring her closer, and the kiss lengthens.
The world narrows until it is only this room, this night, this woman, these men who know how to be careful and hungry at the same time.
She smiles against my mouth, a quick curve that feels like the start of a holiday you are old enough to understand now.
I smile back, then kiss hers until it becomes a sigh.
We do not rush the next movements.
There is time for fast and for wild.
Tonight belongs to the kind of slowness that tells a body it is safe to want what it wants.
I find the button on her jeans, pause, feel the yes in the way her hands curl, then press my mouth to her again as my fingers work.
Roman murmurs something I cannot hear into her skin.
Deacon breathes out like a man who has walked a long way and finally reached a door that opens for him.
The storm rattles once, loud enough to feel in the floorboards.
The lamp by the hearth flickers and steadies.
She is shaking now, a fine tremor that has nothing to do with cold.
I kiss her jaw, her cheek, the place under her ear that makes her whisper my name.
I whisper hers back.
There is a moment, right here, where everything tips.
The night outside is absolute.
The lodge is the warmest place left on earth.
The four of us stand inside the circle of that heat and make a promise with our bodies that we have been making in pieces for a year.
I can feel Roman’s hand tighten.
I can feel Deacon’s breath on the back of her neck. I can feel her heart against my palm.
Finally, we’re together.