Nick #3
But then my mouth is on hers, and nothing else matters.
She kisses the way she does everything, with intensity and focus, a kind of fierce concentration that makes the rest of the world fall away.
Her hand comes up to the back of my neck and her fingers dig in, pulling me closer, and my hands find her waist, her hips, the curve of her back.
She tastes like red wine and tomato sauce, and she makes a sound against my mouth that undoes something I’ve been holding together for twelve years.
Laura. This is Laura’s mouth. Laura’s lips, which I memorized years ago and thought about day after day once she was gone.
I held onto the memory, the taste and the feel of her, desperate to keep her alive at least in my mind.
Now, here she is, and I’m kissing her again.
This is real. I can hardly let myself believe it’s real.
It escalates fast. Her back hits the edge of the counter, and I press into her, one hand braced on the countertop behind her, the other tangled in her hair.
She pulls at my shirt, her hands finding skin, and the contact sends a jolt through me that’s almost painful in its intensity.
I want her. I want her so badly my hands are shaking, and for the first time since Prague, it feels like she might want me back.
Not as a play. Not as a tactic. Just this—raw, real. No thinking. No plotting. Feeling.
Until she pushes me away with both hands flat against my chest, arms locked, creating distance.
She’s breathing hard, and so am I. Her lips are swollen, and her eyes are bright, and she looks at me with something that isn’t anger and isn’t fear but might be worse than both.
“Why do you keep fighting this?” I ask in a rough voice.
“Are you kissing Ivy?” she asks. Her voice is just as rough. “Or are you kissing Laura?”
The question lands like a blade between my ribs. Because that’s the question, isn’t it? The one that’s been underneath everything since the moment I found her in Prague. When I look at her, who do I see? The girl I lost, or the woman she became? The ghost, or the reality?
I don’t step back. I step forward. My hands find the counter on either side of her, boxing her in, and I lower my face until it’s inches from hers. I can feel her breath on my lips. I can see the pulse hammering in her throat.
“Can’t it be both?”
Something flickers behind her eyes. Not a memory. Something that might scare her worse than any memory could. “I don’t know yet,” she whispers.
That ends it. Not with a bang, not with a fight. With a step backward and a silence that fills the cabin like smoke. She walks to the living room once I let her go. I stay in the kitchen and grip the edge of the counter until my knuckles turn white.
We don’t talk much for the rest of the night. She sits on the couch and stares at the fire. I clean the kitchen a second time because it gives me something to do that isn’t going to her, pulling her against me, and kissing her again until she stops asking questions neither of us can answer.
When it’s late enough that the fire has burned down to embers and both of us are running on fumes, I break the silence. “We should get some sleep.”
She stands without argument, which tells me how exhausted she must be. We walk down the hall to the bedroom, and she surveys the bed after stripping down to her bra and panties without hesitating.
Then she looks at the headboard. “There’s nothing to cuff me to,” she observes.
She’s right. The headboard is a solid piece of wood, smooth, no bars, no gaps. Nothing to loop a handcuff through. The bed frame is low to the ground and equally useless.
I pull the handcuffs from my bag and hold them up. “I’ll cuff you to me this time.”
She stares at the cuffs. Then at me. “You’re joking,” she deadpans.
“I’m not.” I sit on the edge of the bed and click one cuff around my own left wrist. Then I hold out the other, open, waiting. “Just in case you get any ideas about smothering me with a pillow.”
Something moves across her face. For a second, the corner of her mouth twitches. “I would never.”
She’s a liar. “Whatever you say.”
With a smirk, she sits on the bed next to me and extends her right wrist. I close the cuff around it, careful of the irritated skin from before, leaving it as loose as I can while still being secure.
The chain between us is short—maybe eight inches of slack.
Enough to move, not enough to reach anything useful.
We lie down on opposite sides of the bed, facing away from each other, connected by a strand of metal that clinks softly every time either of us shifts. The room is dark except for the faint glow of moonlight through the window, reflecting off the lake.
“Goodnight, Laura,” I murmur.
A long pause. Then, so quietly I almost miss it: “Goodnight, Nick.”
It’s the first time she’s used my name.
I lie in the dark and listen to her breathe, and I hold on to that single word like it’s the first crack of light under a door that’s been locked for almost half a lifetime.