37 #2
Elias stays near the wall at first. A cousin presses a mug into one of his hands. Another tugs him into a quick side embrace he stiffens through but then accepts in the end.
His eyes find me each time. My smile seems to soften the rigid line of his shoulders.
They call him Jakob here. But I begin to understand that the name is not a lie. It’s a different history. One he accepts. One he welcomes.
I deflect most questions, asking about Elias and his life here.
Over cake, the stories start coming loose.
Small ones first.
Elias as a boy standing too straight beside his father and brother when the Cranes came north on timber business. Arthur Crane had sourced wood through contacts here, Anders explains, though his mouth tightens around the name and the rest of the cousins shift uncomfortably.
The Cranes came rarely then, mostly when contracts had to be looked over, prices argued and product assessed.
Isak had been older, charming when he needed to be, bored when he didn’t. Elias had watched everything. Learnt quickly, too.
‘He listened more than he spoke,’ Sunna says, setting another plate with a piece of the birthday cake in front of me despite my protests. ‘Always noticed if something was broken. He would fix latches, hinges, children’s toys…’
Elias looks down into his mug as if he might find somewhere to hide in it.
I look at him through the steam of tea rising from it, as Inga holds up another layer of him to the light.
A laugh goes around the table after each small story.
Elias doesn’t join in, but his ears go faintly red – a stark colour against his complexion. And then he inches closer to the group until he settles right next to me.
He looks at me as another story unfolds, lacing his fingers through mine.
Your touch – it echoes soundlessly between us.
The ache that opens in me is almost unbearable.
He hands me his mug, holding my gaze. And I drink from it with a soft smile. His lips twitch in response and I watch his shoulders relax further.
Nothing is easy. The stories don’t redeem him, but they give him a shape beyond prison walls and court articles. Beyond the chains and nightmares.
A boy in the wilderness. A young man returning to his mother’s land because this place and her people had given him something close to breath.
And then—
Inga rests her elbow on the table, chin balanced on her knuckles, eyes bright with mischief now that worry has loosened its grip.
‘Uh-oh,’ says Elias.
‘So,’ she drawls, looking between him and me where I sit slightly too close to him with my arm coiled around his forearm. ‘Have you considered having the wedding here?’
My insides turn.
The room moves around me as Ron’s face shimmers into my vision and then disperses.
I touch my ring finger and roll it without letting go of Elias’ arm.
I’m staring at the woman as if she has spoken in a language I don’t understand.
Elias’ hand comes down over mine, absolute enough to stop the frantic twisting of my band without drawing eyes.
Chairs scrape and shift as people turn towards us, giving the conversation their full attention.
Fucking Inga.
Elias’ thumb presses once over my knuckles. But it doesn’t feel like a warning. More like an anchor. For both of us.
A beat passes.
Then he lifts his gaze to his cousin, and a slow, careful smile reshapes his mouth. ‘Things have been… hectic.’
I can hear the effort in the rasp, though. Something I probably wouldn’t have even noticed before.
‘Moving fast,’ he adds. ‘We haven’t discussed anything properly yet.’
It is the wrong thing to say in a room full of family eager for celebration. And then there is the tiny, inconvenient detail – our engagement is a complete and utter lie.
I lower my gaze and breathe through the stone on my chest.
Inga brightens as though Elias has given her permission rather than delay, launching immediately into how weddings in their family used to be done – food enough for everyone, old silver brought out for the occasion. Another cousin counters with the outdoor place near a ridge.
Anders grunts out an opinion. Sunna laughs. Elias deflects. Voices overlap, warm and eager and harmless, but the sound begins to thin until just pressure remains in my ears.
They start ringing.
The room shakes and tilts gently around the topic, and Ron’s phantom weight tightens around my finger beneath Elias’ hand.
‘Help me with the wood,’ he suddenly says, and I hear him only because he sits closest.
I follow without meaning to, labouring across the hallway and almost looking behind to see if I’d left my toes behind.
He hands me my coat as I put on my shoes, and we take the back exit, past the mangled door that he tied to the doorframe with wire so curious eyes wouldn’t witness the wreckage within.
We don’t stop moving until the warmth and the voices of the house have dispersed behind us.
He guides me towards the stacked logs at the side of the cabin, one hand light at my back, then leans against them as if he only brought me out here for a task and not because he felt me coming apart.
For a few seconds, silence is all he gives me.
I put a few feet of distance between us, rolling the damn ring again.
The softness shudders across his cheeks and bleeds away. His eyes cool. His mouth settles into that hard, beautiful line I know too well, and the man who kissed me in the kitchen disappears behind the one who survived by anticipating every blow before it landed.
‘You need to learn to keep the mask on,’ he says quietly.
I twist at the waist to look at him. ‘The mask?’
His gaze cuts to the house behind him. To the windows already glowing gold against the snow where the evening begins to drag. To the silhouettes moving behind the glass, laughing and eating and planning a wedding that will never happen.
‘When people are watching,’ he says.
The sound that spits out of me is not far from disbelief. ‘They’re your family, Elias.’
His jaw flexes.
‘The people closest to you,’ I press, heat rising through the panic. ‘We’re lying to them. About us. Me. You. Everything.’
His eyes turn severe. ‘Sometimes lies are the only reason people survive.’
The words detonate furiously inside me.
His eyes close. The sight of him retreating anchors me before my anger spirals off. Because he’s back in that horrid limbo where every hand is a threat, every truth ammunition and every open door only another way for someone to sneak in and cause chaos.
His arms fold tighter, weight shifting away from me one damned inch at a time.
My outrage loosens instantly. Enough for me to cross the small distance between us.
He goes still, opening his arms for me as I step into him. I wrap my own around his waist, giving him time to refuse, then rest my cheek against his chest.
Beneath the thick fabric, his heart is far from steady despite what his face claims.
‘I’m not good at masks,’ I murmur.
His breath shifts over my crown and stirs my hair. ‘I know.’
‘I don’t want to lie to people who look at us like that.’
He breathes in silence. The trees answer with the whisper of their branches catching wind.
‘You need to learn,’ he says, but the command has already cracked around the edges. ‘Because masks are necessary in this world.’
We stay like that. For barely a second but almost an eternity. Breathing each other in, taking heat from one another.
By the time we return inside with some wood to disguise the absence, the evening has folded itself back into warmth as if nothing ever happened.
Presents are pushed towards me: a small pouch of dried herbs, handmade blankets, a knife Anders insists is practical and Sunna insists is alarming. Coffee gives way to more cake with berries and spice.
One by one, people begin retreating into the night.
Anders and Inga are the last to go. Inga is still talking about wedding colours while Elias steers her towards the door with a look of grave suffering and one hand at her shoulder. ‘Out. Out. Out,’ he reiterates dryly. She only grins at that.
When the final snowmobile fades into the trees, silence comes back differently.
Far from empty. Further from safe.
I stand in the middle of the cabin with gifts and wrapping cloth on the table, drink still warm in my blood, and the taste of too many lies sitting beneath my tongue.
Because I am still here. With Elias.
Still wearing a story we wove out of nothing – and wearing another man’s ring.
I thumb the band again. Turn it once.