31 #2
‘The heater kicks in if the temperature drops to a certain level,’ Elias murmurs as he turns towards her.
Standing this close, the movement sends a curl of his cologne my way, and I have to clear my throat to stop his scent from lodging there and doing things to me that absolutely do not need doing.
‘Power and water will hold until morning,’ he adds as he starts after Sunna.
Inga’s already reaching for me when Elias’ warmth abandons my side. ‘It was wonderful to meet you!’ she exclaims, drawing me into an embrace.
I exhale when her arms wrap around me. It’s not because I feel comfortable around her – a stubborn, ugly piece of me still wants to hold something against her. But because I’m tired.
I’m so… tired.
Of the horrid past, of the weighted present and of the inevitable future.
‘Good night, Anders!’ I call over my shoulder.
‘Sov godt,’ he mumbles and catches himself mid-stride. ‘I mean, sleep well!’
I mutter a quick thanks, wave at Markus, and veer towards the end table to get my camera before heading after Elias and Sunna.
The telephone winks at me as I reach the next area. It hangs on the wall halfway to the bedroom. Passing beside it feels like moving around an explosive device.
I refocus instead on Elias’ back as he walks ahead, ducking beneath the last doorframe.
As I step over the threshold, my gaze goes where fear sends it first.
The bed. Narrow.
The window. Small, curtained, already blind with snow.
The door behind us – Elias in it, standing with his arms crossed and a scowl that might be the reason even shadows had withdrawn into a corner.
My attention then goes to Sunna and I register the black cast-iron stove, old but well-kept. Its door clicks shut with a warm clang as she rises and wipes her hands against her skirt. Flames shift over walls panelled in pine and aged to a shade of honey.
‘Anders had started it earlier,’ she says.
Elias sheds his boots, and I follow as if on cue.
My eyes trail along the floorboard lines and up the walls, noting the subtle touches like reindeer antlers mounted by the door.
The camera flickers to life beneath my fingers, and I continue following the rest of the wall through the viewfinder until I stop at a woven red-and-blue ribbon tied around a framed photo of Sunna when she was younger.
A small wooden bedside table sits beneath a curtained window, and beside it, a wardrobe flush against the wall. She opens it and pulls out two thick woollen blankets folded in neat, heavy squares. Elias helps her lay them at the foot of the bed.
My eyes shift to the other end of the room, where the bathroom is visible through a sliding door left ajar – one of those combined shower rooms with a simple setup – similar to the one at Elias’ cabin.
My attention returns to the bed, and I try not to let it show how nervous it makes me, while Elias speaks to Sunna about us leaving in the morning.
The damn mattress is too small for someone like him and me, but it might be just enough if I wedge myself against the wall and forget how easily proximity could turn against me in the dark.
‘Sleep well, dears,’ Sunna says gently, her smile unwavering as she closes the door behind her.
And the silence floods the room until it feels like I’m drowning.
My eyes find him staring at the bed as if he’s trying to burn a hole straight through the sheets.
All the unanswered questions locked behind those eyes snap back into place.
He asks for touch, then punishes closeness.
He craves softness, then crushes it before it can form.
Or maybe it’s not closeness or softness he wants.
Maybe it’s control. Intimacy on his terms only – consuming enough to feel everything, but never soft enough to require anything afterwards.
Do I want to give him that?
Do I want to give him anything at all?
The memory flashes, his face holding everything in while telling me about his past – and it pulls my focus elsewhere before I say something stupid.
‘I can sleep on the floor.’ It comes out of me quickly. I busy myself with the blankets. ‘I’ll sleep on these.’
I don’t catch the movement until the blankets are gone from my hands.
They crumple beside us as he steps in. It isn’t violent, but it’s close enough that I flinch.
His gaze catches on my mouth, then jerks away. Something passes over his face and hardens before I can catch it.
‘You kissed me again,’ he rumbles, almost accusingly.
Our eyes meet. The wound opens between us with vicious clarity. The kiss Siv demanded trembles in the space between us.
‘And you kissed me back,’ I counter, but soften it halfway through. No matter what had occurred up until now, I don’t want to hurt him further.
‘That’s the third time you’ve done that without meaning to.’
I blink.
Blink again.
Oh…
The remembered taste of vanilla cake floods my tongue – the first time I kissed him in that prison yard. Then the time at the airport. My face flushes with mortification as now I’ve seen some of his torn edges. And I wish I hadn’t done it then.
No.
I’d still have kissed him in the prison.
My face burns as the shape of his pain settles over all those memories.
But in this room, there is more than one wound bleeding. And he doesn’t get to yank me back and forth between wanted and unwanted, then make me feel ashamed. I’ve been there before. I’m not going there again.
‘That’s rich coming from someone who jerked off beside me and fed me what came after that. Who chased me in the woods and threatened me with more filth!’
The muscle in his jaw ripples. But in the next breath I watch the hurt go someplace worse. His eyes shutter. Darkness folds over his brows.
I see his shoulders tightening before he takes that first step towards me.
‘Is that what it did?’ he asks in a darker tone. ‘It made you feel filthy?’
The image of him defiling my mouth fades beneath a flare of white-hot panic.
He continues walking, and the room shrinks around the breadth of him.
I step back. Once. Twice. His hand catches the strap of my camera and slides it over my head with a care that seems misplaced beneath his punishing gaze.
He lifts it and fiddles with the settings. Buttons click. The screen lights up his face.
The path his fingers took tells me he’s switched it to video mode.
My gut folds in on itself before he has even set it down.
‘Elias…’ I try, warily glancing down at the lens, then back at him as I try to understand what kind of weapon he intends to turn my own camera into.
He gives me nothing. When he looks at me, his mouth falls open, then closes again, gaze locking on my lips like a man trying not to drown.
Reaching again, he angles the lens—
—directly towards the shower room.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ I snarl quietly.
My mouth parts. I blink rapidly to rid myself of the haze.
‘Demons,’ he says, as though the word is an explanation, a confession and a defence. ‘Filthy ones.’
He starts herding me backwards.
One step.
Another.
The sliding doorframe passes my shoulder, and cold tile replaces the wooden floor beneath my socks. I don’t realise he has backed me into the shower room until his hand lifts past my head and the light snaps on.
White, merciless glare bounces off the tiles, claiming the last of the softness from his face.
My back hits the wall.
‘Luckily,’ he breathes, both hands coming up between us until I can only smell woodsmoke in his hair and fresh pine on his skin, ‘filth can be washed off.’
A beat.
A breath.
His hand disappears below my vision. Click-clack – he lifts the showerhead from its holder on the wall.
‘Elias—’ is the only thing that makes it out of my mouth when he dips his head and tilts my chin with the top of the curved chrome.
‘I suggest,’ he murmurs, ‘you lose the clothes.’
My soul leaves me.
‘They might not dry by morning. You might have to walk around naked, then. And Leah—’ He bends closer. The back of my head presses against the wall as he rests his forehead against mine. ‘—you will.’