I lift my camera, framing the shot—water, light, the faint mist rising like breath from the earth. But when I click, the image feels empty.
Flat.
Too far away from what’s really moving inside me.
“Here,” he murmurs.
He moves behind me, not touching, but close enough that warmth radiates through the layers of our coats. My pulse jumps. He nods toward a rocky outcrop a little closer to the water.
“Try from there.”
I move, placing each step carefully over the frost, adjusting my lens, crouching slightly for the angle.
Click.
Better.
Not enough.
I lower the camera and look back at him.
He’s watching me with an expression I can’t unsee—open, steady, hungry and quiet all at once.
Something inside me breaks open.
I walk toward him. Slowly at first. Then faster, until I’m close enough to touch him, close enough to feel the warmth of his breath on my cheek.
“Kendrick,” I say softly, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
His hand lifts, brushing my jaw with his knuckles. The gentlest touch. The kind that undoes me.
“You don’t have to know.” His voice is low, rough. “You just have to be here.”
I swallow hard. “I’m leaving soon.”
His thumb strokes my cheek. “I know.”
“This is… complicated.”
“I know that too.”
“And you still?—?”
“Yeah,” he says, the word pulled straight from his chest. “I still.”
It’s not a sentence. It doesn’t need to be.
My breath catches. “Kendrick…”
He closes the distance, his mouth brushing mine once—barely a kiss, more like a question.
I answer it.
I kiss him, hands sliding into his jacket, fingers curling in his shirt. He exhales sharply against my lips and pulls me close, arms wrapping around me with a certainty that makes my knees tremble.
This time is different.
This time is slow, deep, reverent—like he’s touching me with intention, with meaning, with everything he’s been trying not to feel.
