Page 22 of Steel's Secret
I pull him closer, deeper, until there's no space left for ghosts or grudges or the people we pretended to be. Until there's only the two of us, breaking and remaking each other in the firelight.
The storm howls. The world outside ceases to exist.
When the shaking starts, his or mine, impossible to tell, it tears through us both. A wave cresting, then crashing. I bite down on his shoulder to keep from crying out, and he holds me like I'm the only solid thing in a world gone liquid.
Aftermath comes slowly.
Our breathing synchronizes. His weight settles, grounding me to the moment, to the choice we just made. Sweat cools on overheated skin. The fire pops, settling into embers.
He lifts his head, and his eyes are different now, stripped of everything except truth. "I never stopped…"
"I know." I touch his face, my thumb brushing his jaw. "I know."
Snow continues to fall outside, erasing our tracks, rewriting the landscape into something new.
The storm doesn’t stop, and neither do we. Between the whispers and the silence, between touches that blur the lines we swore we’d never cross again, the hours disappear. The wind screams, the fire dies, but the heat doesn’t fade. When we finally slow down, it’s not exhaustion that takes us, it’s surrender. The kind that feels like breathing after drowning.
For a long time, there’s nothing but the rhythm of our hearts and the sound of snow against glass. No past, no ghosts, no club, just this. Just us.
We stay tangled together all day and night as the fire burns low, learning every new scar, new groove, and dip in our skin. We part only for food and water, which Steel found in the back room.
Dawn arrives like an unwelcome witness. Gray light creeps through the frost-etched windows, turning the garage into something caught between dream and waking. The fire's died to ash and ember. The storm's fury has gentled to a whisper of wind through pine.
Steel and I are lying on a twin bed in the back of the garage, his flannel draped over my shoulders, my legs wrapped around his waist. Neither of us has moved. Neither of us wants to be the first to break the spell.
His thumb traces lazy circles on my hip bone. Back and forth. A meditation, a claim, a question he doesn't know how to ask.
"We should," he starts.
"Don't." My fingers thread through his hair, still damp at the temples. "Don't do that thing where you rationalize this away."
His jaw tightens. "Aria…"
"Steel." I force him to look at me. Really look. "I'm not sorry."
Something in his expression fractures. Relief, maybe. Or terror at what that means. He drops his forehead to my shoulder, and I feel him breathe out one long, shuddering exhale that seems to empty his lungs of years of holding back.
"I'm not either," he whispers against my skin. "God help me, I'm not."
The confession costs him. I feel it in the way his hands tighten on my thighs, the way his body goes rigid with the effort of admitting what he's spent so long denying.
I tilt his face up and kiss him softly this time. Slow. The kind of kiss that saysI see youinstead ofI need you, though both are true.
When we finally pull apart, the world's gone solid again. The garage is cold. Our clothes are scattered like evidence of a crime we'll never regret committing.
"Come on." I slide off the bed on unsteady legs. His hand shoots out to secure me, and the tenderness in the gesture undoes me more than anything that came before.
He rebuilds the fire while I find my jeans and his shirt. We move around each other with a careful choreography. Too aware, too raw, dancing around the enormity of what just shifted between us.
The kindling catches. Flames lick upward, painting the room in amber.
He stands, wipes his hands on his jeans, and finally meets my eyes. The vulnerability there steals my breath. He looks younger somehow. Like he's shed a skin he'd been wearing too long.
"What happens now?" His voice is rough, uncertain.
I cross to him, rise on my toes, and press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. "Now we figure it out."
Steel’s arms stay around me long after the fire starts to crackle again. The world outside looks clean, untouched, like maybe we could start over.
