The flames were low, coals glowing under ash.I stirred them until they caught breath again, fed them with kindling, then larger logs.Heat rolled out in sharp waves, bright enough to paint the room in amber and chase back some of the shadows.
The work helped.It demanded just enough focus to keep my mind from circling everything said at the table.Why she had lived.Why her family had died.The answers neither of us could change.
I knew she was behind me before I heard her.A shift in the air.A subtle change in proximity.She’d moved to the chair nearest the hearth again, drawn toward the growing heat.I didn’t look at her, but my senses tracked her anyway.
I stayed kneeling, letting the warmth hit my face.For one moment, I let myself breathe without scanning the room for threats.
She touched me.
Her fingers brushed my jaw—light, hesitant, warm enough to shock me still.I turned and she was right there, her face close, her expression unreadable and startled in equal measure.
“You had soot,” she said.Barely more than a breath.
Her hand trembled.Mine didn’t move.I didn’t think I could have pulled away even if I tried.
For a moment, neither of us did anything.Just silence, heat, breath.Her eyes fixed on mine, green and wide and full of things I didn’t know how to navigate.Her lips parted slightly, not an invitation exactly, but something vulnerable.Something human.
We leaned in.One of us.Both of us.It didn’t matter.
Our mouths met.
The kiss wasn’t cautious, but it wasn’t wild either.It landed somewhere in the middle—driven but controlled, hungry but restrained, careful because anything else risked breaking us both.Her fingers curled against the back of my neck.My hand found her waist, pulling her closer, eliminating space I hadn’t realized mattered.
Every rule I’d lived by dissolved in seconds.
Then reality shoved itself back into the room.Every detail hit at once—who I was, what I’d done, what I had taken from her, what power imbalance existed in every inch of this place.
I tore myself away.Too fast.Too hard.Her breath hitched when I did.
I stood because staying near her was impossible.My hands curled into fists on instinct—not to strike, only to keep them from reaching for her again.
“You don’t kiss men like me.”My voice sounded scraped raw.“You shouldn’t.You can’t.”
I didn’t wait for her response.I crossed to the window and pressed my palms to the cold glass until the burn helped clear my head.Outside, snow erased the world.Inside, the fire didn’t care about the damage happening in its glow.
She stayed behind me, still near the hearth.I could hear her breathing—quicker than normal, matching my own.The silence between us wasn’t the tense stalemate of earlier days.It was worse.Close.Charged.Wrong.
She said my name once, soft.
“Don’t.”I didn’t turn around.
The storm rattled the shutters.The fire snapped.I kept my eyes on the white blur outside until she finally moved away from the hearth.The quiet sound of her settling onto the cot hit harder than raised voices ever could.
I stayed at the window.She stayed under the blankets.Two people sharing a single room but separated by everything that mattered.I could still feel her mouth on mine, still hear the sound she made when the kiss deepened, still feel the way she’d held on to me like she didn’t hate me for a fraction of a second.
It didn’t matter.
I had killed her family.I had taken her choices.Nothing about this could be clean or right.There was no version of this where I got to want things from her.
The storm kept swallowing the cabin.The fire kept burning.And we stayed on opposite sides of the room trying to carry something neither of us should have to carry.
Eventually, dawn would come.And when it did, nothing that happened here tonight would make tomorrow easier.
Chapter Eight
Mia
The silence wasn’t the same anymore.It didn’t feel like the first days—me calculating angles and him pretending not to watch me.It didn’t feel like the silence after that kiss either, sharp enough to cut.This one sat heavy and cold in the room, full of things neither of us wanted to touch.
