Nell
I wake before him and the clarity is immediate.
I kissed a man I met yesterday. In a blizzard. In an emergency shelter at ten thousand feet. I kissed him like he was the only warm thing left in the world and he kissed me back like he'd made a decision about it — deliberate, certain, unhesitating.
And I want to do it again. I want to do it again right now, with the gray morning light cutting through the window and his breathing still slow and even from the other bunk and the stove burned down to embers across the room.
This is how people get hurt.
Forty-three states. Every one of them had a moment where I could have stayed and didn't. I've been fine with that. I've been so fine with it that I stopped noticing when fine started feeling like a rehearsed answer.
Savannah. Four months in a rental with a garden I actually planted things in. A man who cooked me breakfast without being asked. I left on a Tuesday and my hands didn't stop shaking until the state line.
And Thane — Thane is this mountain. It's in his shoulders, his jaw, the way he holds the mug, the way he talks about the north face like it's a language only he speaks.
He's not leaving Harrow Peak. He chose this place the way he chose that kiss: deliberately, completely, without plans to change his mind.
I'm not staying. I have a car on the road and a life that exists in motion and an editor waiting for copy from three states away.
He wakes. His gaze lands on me across the room — too direct, too open, like he forgot to put the guard back up. It lasts one breath. Two. Then he's moving — swinging his legs off the bunk, crossing to the camp stove, hands busy before his face catches up.
I've made that move. I recognize it from the inside.
He makes coffee without saying anything about last night. Hands me a mug — his fingers brushing mine, warm and brief — and says, "Ridge Road won't be clear until tonight. Maybe tomorrow."
He poured my coffee first. He checked the stove was warm enough before he checked the radio. He's not looking at me for too long — but he's not pushing me away either.
He's just not sure what to do with me.
"That's fine," I say.
It is not fine. It means I am stuck in a one-room shelter with a man who kissed me like the world was ending and is now handing me coffee like I'm a colleague he carpools with.
I wrap both hands around the mug. The warmth is good. Real. I focus on that.
Sergeant has crossed the room and settled his head on my knee. He looks up at me with those steady dark eyes and then looks at Thane — back at me — back at Thane — in a way that feels extremely pointed.
Thane sees him do it.
"Don't," he says to the dog.
Sergeant doesn't move. His tail thumps once against my ankle.
I take a sip of coffee and I don't say anything about last night either. We are apparently both going to pretend that every nerve in my body doesn't know exactly where he is in this room. Fine.
Except it isn't fine. And I have done this enough times — walked into a place, felt something sharp and bright, walked away before it could settle — to know the difference between a thing I can leave behind and a thing that's going to cost me.
This is going to cost me either way. My chest knows it. My hands know it, curled tight around this mug like warmth is something I can keep.
I take another sip and I let myself know it too.