Her eyebrows pull together. The look in her eyes is a mix of confusion and something like… sadness.
“Why?” she asks.
A laugh escapes me, soft, bitter, self-deprecating. “Because you deserve someone who’s never had to write to you from behind bars.”
She steps toward me, not away. Not back. Closer. Close enough that I can smell cinnamon and pine on her sweater. Close enough that if I reached out, my fingers would brush her wrist.
“I never asked for perfect,” she says. “Just honest.”
God help me.
Her voice.
Those words.
The way she says them like she’s letting me in, not letting me down. I want to kiss her. I want to pull her against me and bury my face in her neck and ask her how the hell she found me in all that darkness.
But I don’t. Not until she tells me clearly that she wants that too. Not until I know this isn’t just adrenaline or gratitude or winter magic messing with our heads. She looks down at her feet. Then back at me.
Her cheeks flush softly. “I saved you something,” she says.
I blink. “You… saved me something?”
She nods, disappearing inside for a moment. My hands clench and unclench as I wait, half terrified she won’t come back. But she does. And she’s holding a small, square box wrapped in brown paper. Tied with twine. A tiny card hanging off the edge. She holds it out to me.
“I saw it and thought of you,” she says quietly.
My fingers brush hers as I take it. The warmth of her skin is a shock to my system. I look down and read the card.
“So, you always find your way back. – M”
My throat tightens so hard I have to swallow twice. A compass. Because she wants me to find my way back. To her. I look up at her again. Her breath clouds softly in the winter air. Her eyes search mine as if she’s waiting for something, for permission or acceptance or belief.
“Can I come in?” I ask, voice low.
Her lips tremble. Not with fear. With relief. She doesn’t answer with words. She steps forward, just a small step, and wraps her arms around my waist, pressing her face into my chest like she’s been waiting a year to breathe right.
And I hold her. I hold her like something precious, something I never thought I’d be allowed to touch. I bury my nose in her hair and inhale the scent of cinnamon and safety and something that feels dangerously like home.
She clutches the back of my jacket like she’s afraid I’ll disappear if she lets go. I close my eyes and rest my chin on her head. For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like a mistake. I feel found. When she finally pulls back, she keeps her hands on my jacket, fingers curling lightly in the fabric.
“Come inside,” she says softly.
And I do. I step into her apartment, into the warm glow of Christmas lights and the scent of cinnamon and pine, into a space that feels like something I’ve been traveling toward my whole life without knowing it.
And as she shuts the door behind us, as the cold stays outside and her warmth wraps around me again, one thought settles deep in my chest: I made it back.
To her.
To something real.
To something worth becoming better for.
And when she smiles at me, small, shy, beautiful, I know one more thing:
I’m never letting go.
Thirteen~Cinnamon and Stillness
