Page 111 of These Tears

Worse somehow.

‘Again.’

The word has the weight of a command, but there’s barely enough voice behind it to carry one.

And I run another slow sweep, combing the thick, soft strands.

His next breath leaves him unevenly, catching once on the way out before his weight sinks a fraction deeper into the mattress. His eyes never open to meet mine.

Carefully then, as if one wrong move might turn this into something wrong, he lowers himself onto the pillow.

The duvet shifts as he pulls it over his hips, then over me too, covering us both in the same quiet motion.

Why can’t I stop touching him?

His eyes open then close again – each blink slower than the last as my fingers move over him and he seems to realise I’m not asking for anything back.

So I keep going. Slow and rhythmic and gentle.

Terrified for him and me.

Minutes pass. His breathing lengthens by degrees. The muscles loosen one after another until the weight of his head settles fully into the pillow. In this moment, he looks nothing like the man who took me and more like the one I used to imagine before I knew what his freedom would cost me.

And isn’t that cruel?

That I should hate him. I should be lying here rigid with revolt and disgust, counting his breaths only so I can know when it is safe to move.

In a single day, he has stripped away piece after piece of me.

I watch him sleep.

The blizzard still lives in my skin. My fingers, however, still won’t leave him.

But none of this changes what I have to do in the end.

I can pity him and still leave him.

I can want to understand him and still want to survive him.

I can want the fantasy of him and still resist him.

My gaze drifts past him to the window, where snow falls in thick, soundless layers, burying the darkness beyond the glass until the world is erased. There are no roads. No lights.

No shape of a path leading anywhere but deeper into the white hell.

And as the storm presses its pale fingers to the window to witness Elias Crane sleeping beneath my hand, I finally understand the true horror of this place: there is no away.

20

The fire crackles away until the small hours, snickering in the dark. As though even this place finds me ridiculous. Each sharp snap of a log feels like it’s slicing through another fraying nerve; each hiss where sap meets flame shrieks me back into consciousness just as sleep dares to reach for me.

The light fades slowly, ember by ember, until the fingers of early winter begin creeping across my cheeks.

Elias is asleep.

I haven’t been able to drift off, mainly because at some point, he pulled himself closer and grasped my hair gently.

One broad palm lies sprawled over my upper thigh, anchoring me as if I’m the thing preventing his body from drifting off into nothingness.