Chapter Seven #3
I stayed in the living room. My back found the wall beside the TV and pressed against it, and I didn’t slide down.
Standing was better. Standing meant I was ready.
My arms locked tight over my ribs, and the trembling had started in my hands and was working its way up my forearms into my shoulders, a fine, constant vibration I couldn’t seem to stop no matter how hard I held myself still.
The mug was on the kitchen counter where I’d left it.
I walked over and picked it up just to have something to hold, my fingers wrapping around the ceramic -- seeking warmth, seeking something solid to anchor against the shakes.
The mug was cold. The dregs had dried in a dark ring at the bottom, and I set it back down without drinking because my throat had closed too tight for swallowing.
He came back and stopped in front of me.
Not beside me, not at an angle -- directly in front, close enough I had to tilt my chin to meet his gaze.
He looked at me. Actually looked. Not at the back door, not at the window over the sink, not at any of the exit points or ingress routes his brain was probably still mapping.
At my face. At my eyes. At the place where the muscle in my cheek jumped under the skin.
I swallowed the first crack before it could reach my mouth.
My chin lifted a fraction of an inch -- the old reflex, the one that had gotten me through the two years before my grandmother took me in, and every year after where breaking down still felt like a risk I couldn’t afford.
Don’t let them see it. Don’t give them the satisfaction.
Stand up straight. Look like you can handle whatever comes next even when you’re pretty sure you can’t.
My eyes stung, hot and swimming before I could stop them, the pressure building at the bridge of my nose, and my breath had gone uneven, catching on the inhale in a way that sounded dangerously close to a sob if you listened hard enough. I swallowed. My throat clicked.
“I can’t keep doing this,” I said.
The words came out before I could catch them.
They weren’t a question or a complaint wrapped in a pretty package.
They were the truth, raw and unbeautiful, stripped of everything except what it was -- the admission that I was tired, that I was scared, that two break-ins and slashed tires and yellow tulips on a porch step had worn something down in me I wasn’t sure I could rebuild.
Roulette stepped closer. One step, closing the distance between us until I could smell the coffee on his breath and the leather of his cut and the faint, clean scent of soap that lived in the hollow of his throat.
He reached up slowly, giving me time to move if I wanted to, and brushed a strand of hair back from my face.
His thumb grazed my cheekbone, the callused pad coarse against my skin, and then his hand stayed there, cupping my jaw, his fingers warm against the side of my neck where my pulse hammered.
I didn’t pull back. My body, which had spent the last few weeks braced against every unexpected touch, every sudden movement, went perfectly still. Then his hand came back to my waist, light, present, asking nothing.
The space between us closed. Not because he stepped forward or because I leaned in.
It just happened, the natural result of two people standing close enough to feel each other’s breath and neither of them choosing to step away.
His forehead lowered toward mine. I could see the individual lashes around his eyes, the faint stubble along his jaw that he hadn’t bothered to shave this morning, the small scar at the corner of his mouth that I’d never noticed before because I’d never been this close to his face.
He kissed me. Slow. Intentional. His mouth was warm and tasted like coffee, and his hand stayed at my jaw, his thumb moving in a small, unconscious stroke along my cheekbone that cracked me open from the inside.
I gripped the front of his shirt, holding on with my fingers twisted in the cotton like I was afraid he might disappear if I let go.
His other hand settled at the small of my back, palm against my spine, and the weight of it grounded me in a way nothing else had in weeks.
The kiss ended. Neither of us moved apart.
His forehead dropped to mine, and I could feel his breath against my mouth, slightly faster than it had been a minute ago, and my own came in shallow pulls that didn’t quite reach the bottom of my lungs.
I exhaled against his lips. He exhaled against mine.
Our foreheads pressed together. His hand was still on my jaw, and my fingers were still tangled in his shirt.
The only sound in the room was the soft rush of our breathing and the distant hum of the refrigerator cycling on in the kitchen.
No declarations. No explanations. No promises whispered into the space between us that neither of us was ready to make.
He didn’t say he’d keep me safe. He didn’t have to. The steadiness of his hand on my spine said it for him. His careful check of every window said it.
I closed my eyes. His thumb traced the line of my jaw one more time, and I found myself leaning into the touch as the tremble in my hands slowly began to subside.