30 #2
I drift to the serving table where Inga and Sunna are speaking with two other women over plates of flatbread and bowls of something steaming, and I busy myself with useless things.
A napkin needs straightening. Cups moved around.
Finally, I accept a ladle for the fresh compote. Every few breaths, my eyes go to him.
More people arrive as the evening unrolls, carrying knitted hats and wrapped parcels, small bags of biscuits and folded hand-made blankets. They stop by Elias on instinct.
Some seem to forget what the family members closest to him know: a hand lands on his shoulder. A word is murmured against his cheek.
Each time he stiffens a little, nodding without lifting his eyes for long, his mouth giving nothing away.
At some point, his jaw locks hard enough that it makes mine hurt.
He pushes to his feet, gives the newest visitor a half-smile that never reaches any living part of him, and drags both hands through his hair until the dark waves stand wild around his temples.
Beside me, Inga stops mid-sentence. ‘Uh-oh.’
I follow her gaze.
Elias has gone a sickly shade of pale.
It takes half a cowardly second for the decision to form. Another half for my heart to leap into my throat as I make that first step.
Approaching the men, I plaster on the warmest smile my genes allow and stop beside Elias and another tall man.
‘Excuse me. Hi!’ I smile. They mirror my expression. ‘Leandra, Jakob’s fiancée.’ Hands are shaken, exclamations exchanged. ‘I have to steal him away for a moment, I hope you don’t mind.’
They rumble in amusement as I meet his eyes.
He tries his best to keep up the pretence. But he’s too tired. I know he is, because I am, too.
I turn my palm up between us and let it hang. I don’t reach for him.
It takes a moment. Not long enough for someone to find it odd, but enough for me to feel what the effort costs him.
His gaze drops to my palm as if I’ve pointed a blade at him instead.
I nearly lower it.
But then his shoulder stiffens, his arm lifts and his fingers close around mine.
At first, they’re cold and rigid, but as the warmth starts seeping through the contact, they tighten with a pressure that feels like balance.
I don’t look back to see who notices, simply tug him away from the fire, from the hands and voices and all the kindness pressing too hard against him.
The trees accept us and drown out most of the noise from behind. At the edge of the clearing, a felled log sits half-buried in snow. I loosen my grip the moment we clear the first line of trees towards it, but he doesn’t pull away.
So we walk like that, my hand relaxed around his, his fingers deciding for themselves how much pressure to give back.
Lowering myself first onto the bark, I leave enough space for him to choose again. My hand remains where he can keep it or let go, and he remains standing, glaring at the spot where they meet.
‘I don’t need your pity,’ he says flatly, but without a bite.
‘I’m not offering any. Just a breath.’
Further ahead, voices rise and undulate through the clearing until they evaporate between the trees.
His gaze moves to mine.
‘Choose,’ I murmur, and his chin tips slightly. ‘Five minutes of quiet with me, or the fire.’
He realigns his jaw as he glances at the flames briefly. A second passes before he releases a hard breath and sits down beside me.
For a while, we’re just quiet. The log is cold beneath me, the bark scraping roughly over the thick layer. His hand is no longer in mine, and somehow it feels like loss.
It isn’t until his breathing steadies that I decide to open my mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say at last. The trees claim half of it, so it comes out weaker than I mean to.
He tenses, but I don’t turn towards him or touch him. I let the words fall where they fall. ‘I want to apologise. For everything, for—I should not have said it like that. Any of it.’
His mouth moves once before sound follows. ‘Don’t give me that. You weren’t meant to know.’
The answer sits there without cruelty in the notes, which somehow twists the knife.
I incline my head, staring at the snow churning beneath my boots.
The old Leandra wants to explain things, to make him understand that I would never have thrown the words if I’d known where they would hook into.
But the shape of his shoulders stops me.
So I just stay still and present.
‘I didn’t take you because I lost my mind,’ he finally says.
I don’t respond to that because that frightened, furious part of me had wanted it to be that simple.
My back straightens as I let my gaze drift towards the bonfire in the distance.
His stays on the ruined prints around our boots. ‘I could make it sound noble, say there were reasons. Timing. What you knew and what you didn’t. I could even say you walked into the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of it would even be true.’
‘It is true, if you think about it.’
He scoffs but doesn’t smile even as his spine relaxes.
‘You were leaving,’ he says. An old fact laid bare between us. ‘You gave me a goodbye on a piece of paper with some photos of you, and while I thought that was for the best, reality bit me in the arse quick enough.’
My mind snags.
Photos of me?
It comes back with a hot rush of mortification: the prints from the Reservoir. Anna at my side. The ordinary evidence of a life I had been trying to choose without him in it.
So they did end up with him.
How pathetic it must have looked. Like I was some lost romantic staging a goodbye.
I swallow the excuses, though. ‘What do you mean?’
He looks away into the dark and draws a deep breath. Snow begins to fall between us. Laughter carries from the small bunch ahead, absurdly ordinary after everything that had come to light.
‘We need to get back. It’s not polite,’ he mutters.
I promised not to probe him. I promised not to ask questions. But still—
‘Hey,’ I catch him just before he stands.
Our eyes lock.
The blue in them has always chilled me. While beautiful, it was prison blue. Distant blue. But I see the strain in them now. The boy trapped behind the frost, tired of being read wrong.
‘Choose,’ I say. ‘My touch or theirs.’
The skin between his brows gathers as he studies me. Then the tension there eases slightly.
‘Or… none at all,’ I add. Give him a moment. ‘We can go back to the cabin.’
He stares at me long enough to make it almost a physical thing. And as I see the shadow on his face retracting by a fraction, my shoulders thaw.
His lips press into a stubborn line. His gaze touches my lips, then returns to my eyes.
‘“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”’
I huff a quiet breath. ‘Nietzsche was a dickhead.’
His eyes move from mine.
‘Stop letting him have the last word,’ I put in.
‘It may not be necessary – what you offer,’ he says as he glances towards the bonfire again. ‘I’ll keep away from them.’
‘You think they don’t notice it?’ I ask as we start towards his family. A guitar begins to thrum across the cold white cover, and someone is singing already. ‘You, withdrawing?’
His face hardens. ‘They know I don’t like to be touched.’
‘People forget that kindness can still land like a threat. And though touch can be a comfort,’ I exhale, ‘to some it’s… something else.’
He holds his breath until we reach the crowd. His eyes shift towards the nearest reaching hand, then back to me. Someone calls Jakob’s name. Another voice teases him about us disappearing. By the time we reach the fire, his expression has settled into that practised public blankness.