Page 194 of Across His Line

“I know.”

“And now you’re not.”

“No.”

He doesn’t tell me he’s sorry, or that he’s different now, or any of it. He just stands there inside my hands and lets both of those things be true at the same time, because they are, and I don’t know what to do with that except hold onto his face.

“I’ve never done this.”

His eyes move over my face. “Done what?”

He isn’t teasing me. I can tell. He wants to know exactly what I mean, so he doesn’t get it wrong.

“Kissed anybody,” I say.

Something in him changes. Not soft. Sharper, almost. Like somebody coming awake all at once. His whole attention, which was already on me, gathers up and narrows.

“Never?”

I shake my head.

The room is so quiet.

“Will you show me?” I say.

He doesn’t move.

He looks at me for a long time from about a foot above me, and I can see him holding back.

“Are you sure?” he says.

I nod.

He still doesn’t move.

“Tess,” he says. Just that. Low.

I know what he’s asking. He needs the word.

“Yes,” I say.

And his hands come up.

Slowly. So slowly I can watch them. One of them goes to my waist, through my open coat, through Kylie’s black top. The other one comes to my arm just above the elbow and rests there. He doesn’t pull me in. He doesn’t move me anywhere. He just puts his hands where they are and leaves them and waits.

I start to shake. I don’t mean to. It isn’t fear. I’ve known what fear feels like in my body my whole life, and this isn’t it. It’s too much. His hands on me because I asked for them. The first time I’ve ever asked anybody’s hands to touch me. It comes up through me in a long tremor from my knees to my shoulders, and I close my eyes and breathe.

He feels it. His hands stop. They don’t leave. They just go perfectly still on me, on my waist and my arm, not tightening, not pulling away, waiting to find out what it means.

I breathe in and out.

Then I lean into his hand just a little. Just my weight against his palm on my waist. Toward him.

I hear him let out a breath.

His hand on my arm moves up along my shoulder to my neck. His fingers come to rest under my jaw, and his thumb comes up to my cheek, and there’s a piece of my hair there, a loose one, and he moves it back off my face with his thumb, carefully.

I keep my eyes closed. I can feel him looking at me. And then he kisses my forehead.