Page 275 of The Lies We Play

His skin is warm. Real. There is faint scruff beneath my touch, rough enough to remind me he is not a memory. Not a face on a screen. Not a voice through a burner phone. A man. My husband, though the word is still too large to hold without cutting myself on it.

I don't let myself look at his mouth.

I look at his eyes, which is worse.

He is looking at me as if I am something he was told twice not to want and decided to want anyway.

I lean in and kiss his cheek.

Not the center.

The corner.

Where the line of his cheek meets the muscle that runs toward his mouth. Close enough that if I moved a quarter inch, my mouth would be on his.

We both feel the quarter inch.

Neither of us crosses it.

My lips press against warm skin, and I leave them there.

Longer than a kiss on the cheek between two men in any other context would be allowed to last. Long enough for the room to register it. Long enough for Creed’s breath to catch and stay caught. Long enough for my own breath to leave me in a slow, uneven release, I have no intention of taking back.

His hand comes up.

Slow.

His palm settles against the back of my head, at my nape.

He doesn't pull.

He doesn't push.

He only rests his hand there, the pressure small and devastating, as if he is marking the moment inside himself. As if this is enough because it has to be. As if enough has always been a lie, and he is choosing to believe it for my sake.

I don't move my mouth.

I don't let it slide that quarter inch and find the corner of his.

I want to.

I will not.

When I pull back, it is not far. My forehead almost touches the side of his head. His hand stays at my nape for one more second after my mouth leaves his skin, then lowers with the same controlled reluctance, the same careful departure of a man who refuses to take more than he was given.

He says nothing.

I say nothing.

We stand for one breath in the impossible inch between our faces.

Then I step back.

Fully.

Out of his space.

Leaving is torture.