10. Zoe
Zoe
I see him without his shirt on the morning of day six and everything I've been carefully not feeling becomes impossible to keep not feeling.
It isn't dramatic. It's six-thirty in the morning and the cabin is cold because the fire died overnight. Ryker’s kneeling at the hearth rebuilding it, kindling in one hand and a match in the other. His shirt is on the back of the couch.
I’m awake. I've been awake for twenty minutes, lying under the quilts with my eyes mostly closed, listening to the rhythm of the cabin.
Today the sequence is different because the fire went out and the cold woke him and he's fixing it before it wakes me.
Except the cold has already woken me and I haven't said anything.
Now I'm looking at his back and I can't look away. Wow.
The scar above his left hip is worse than I thought.
It extends further around his side, the skin pulled tight from deep tissue damage.
But the scar isn't what holds me. What holds me is the rest of him.
The way his shoulders move when he leans forward.
The line of his spine. The width of him at the shoulder tapering to the waist. A body built by work.
Smaller scars I haven't seen before. A circular mark on his right shoulder blade.
A thin line along two ribs. A constellation of small white marks across the upper back.
He’s been hurt. Many times. And the evidence is written across his skin the way the tally marks were scratched into the wall of my rock hollow.
The match strikes. The kindling catches. Firelight flickers across his skin. The wanting is so sudden and so total that I shut my eyes and press my face into the pillow and breathe through it the way he taught me. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four.
When I open my eyes he's pulling the shirt back on. The moment is over. I lie there under the quilts and pretend I was asleep the whole time.
By afternoon, the pretending has become a second job.
Every near-miss registers on my skin. He reaches past me for the coffee pot and his arm moves through the air six inches from my shoulder.
I hand him a plate and our fingers don't touch and the not-touching is louder than any contact would be.
I'm on the stool and he's at the counter and our knees are two inches apart and those two inches contain the entire argument I'm having with myself about what I want and what I should want.
He asks if I want more coffee. I say yes. He pours it and slides the mug across the counter instead of handing it to me. He's managing the same distance I'm managing. He must be feeling it too. Right?
Late in the afternoon, I say something that changes the room.
We're talking about the storm. He's explaining how to read the barometric pressure by watching the smoke from the chimney, and I'm on the stool watching his mouth shape the words and not hearing a single one of them.
"You're not listening," he says.
"I'm not," I admit. No point in lying. The heat in my face would betray me anyway.
He stops talking, and looks at me, and something in the room shifts. "Zoe."
"Yeah."
"If you keep looking at me like that I'm going to have a very hard time being the person I'm supposed to be right now." The honesty of his words steal my breath. He doesn't dress it up. He just says it, his voice thin and threadbare.
"What person is that?" I ask.
"The professional. The one with the badge.
The one who knows that you're in my care and that means something and I don't get to just...
" He stops. Pushes a hand through his hair, a gesture I've never seen from him.
"I don't get to want what I want just because I want it.
That's not how this works. You're here because you have nowhere else to be and I'm the one who brought you here and the power in that situation isn't equal and I know that. I know that."
He says it twice. Like he's reminding himself.
"You're right," I say. "The power isn't equal. You have the cabin and the food and the badge and the medical supplies and the generator and the gun. You have all the power."
He nods. A small, tight motion.
"But you gave me the information about the tracks," I say.
"You told me where the gun was and how to use it.
You let me cook and stand on my ankle and argue with you about it.
You answer my questions with real answers instead of managed ones.
You didn't come to me during the nightmare because you knew that was what I needed even though it wasn't what you wanted.
Every single thing you've done since you carried me through that door has been to close the gap.
To make the power more equal. To give me pieces of the control back. "
I watch the words hit him.
"So don't tell me the power isn't equal," I say. "Tell me what you want. And let me decide if I want it too."
Silence. The fire crackles. His hands are flat on the counter, fingers spread.
"I want to kiss you." His voice is barely above the fire.
"I've wanted to kiss you since the morning you first woke up in my cabin.
I've wanted to kiss you since you told me about the greenhouse and your hands were shaking and you looked at me like I was the first person who ever told you that the thing you want most in the world isn't stupid.
I want to kiss you and I don't have a speech for this, Zoe.
I had a speech. It was about professional boundaries and duty of care and it was very responsible and very correct.
However, right now I can't remember a single word of it because you're sitting three feet from me… and, uh… I’ve completely lost my train of thought. "
I laugh. It comes out shaky and surprised. His face does the thing it did when I called the tea sleepy tea. The seriousness cracking into something younger and human.
"Ask me," I say.
"Can I kiss you?"
"Yes."
He comes around the counter. Slow, deliberate, each step placed with care, giving me time to change my mind. Then he's in front of me, closer than the catching. His hand comes up to the side of my face. His palm rests against my jaw, his thumb on my cheekbone, his fingers disappearing into my hair.
It doesn't feel like an arrival. It feels like recognition. Like a part of me that's been running for months has finally stopped.
He kisses me.
The world simplifies. What's left is his mouth on mine, warm and slow and careful. He kisses me like he does everything. With attention. With focus. His thumb moves against my cheekbone and his other hand finds the small of my back and I lean into him.
The kiss lasts. Long enough for me to feel the shape of his mouth learn the shape of mine. Long enough for the sound I make against his lips to surprise us both. Long enough for his hand to tighten once in my hair, then relax. He pulls back just far enough to rest his forehead against mine.
We breathe. Together. My hands are fisted in the front of his shirt.
"Okay?" he whispers.
And then the fear comes.
Not the panic attack. Something colder and more precise. A voice in the back of my head.
You've known him for a week. You're trapped in his cabin. You have nowhere else to go. The last man who kissed you turned out to be a predator. How do you know this isn't the same story?
My hands loosen in his shirt. I feel the shift in my body before I can name it. The micro-withdrawal. The shoulders pulling inward. Ryker feels it too.
He takes his hand off my face. Steps back. Two feet. Enough to give me space without making it feel like a punishment. His eyes stay on mine. He understands exactly what's happening and he is not surprised and he is not offended.
"Take your time," he says. "I'm not going anywhere."
My eyes close. The voice is still talking, building its case.
But there's another voice. Quieter. The one that noticed the unlocked door on the first night.
The one that watched him feed the fire all night so I wouldn't wake in the dark.
The one that felt him let go when he caught me.
The one that heard him say he found tracks when he could have said nothing.
The one that sat across the table from him last night with her hand in his and felt, for the first time since her parents died, that the space she occupied in the world was not an inconvenience.
Tyler kissed me in the diner parking lot after my shift. He didn't ask. He pulled me toward him by the waist and pressed his mouth against mine and I let him because letting was easier than refusing. Afterward he said, "You're mine now, sweetheart," and I thought he was being romantic.
Ryker asked. He stumbled through a confession that fell apart mid-sentence.
He walked toward me slowly enough that I could have stopped him with a word.
He touched my face the way you touch something you're afraid of breaking.
And when the fear arrived, he stepped back.
Without being asked. Without a flicker of anger or impatience.
The two men are not the same.
I open my eyes. He's still there. Two feet away. Hands at his sides. Face patient and open.
"I'm okay," I say. "I needed a second."
"Take as many as you need. Take a hundred. I'll be right here counting."
I step forward and close the two feet and put my hands back where they were, fisted in the front of his shirt, my face against his chest, and I hold on. For the specific fact of him. This man. This cabin. This moment that I chose with my eyes open and my fear accounted for.
His arms come around me. Slowly. Giving me time. His chin rests on the top of my head. I can hear his heartbeat, steady and sure.