“You were always easy to read for me,” I continue.“Always.I knew when you wanted space.I knew when you needed me to step closer.I knew when you were faking a smile at work.I knew when something scared you.”
Her eyes glisten.“And now?”
“And now I know you’re trying to stay calm even though everything in your world just got torn out by the roots.”
A tear slips down her cheek.I wipe it with my thumb, slowly, gently, deliberate.
She doesn’t pull away.“How can I trust you,” she whispers, “when I don’t know you?”
I hold her gaze, letting her see everything I’ve been hiding for months.“Your body remembers,” I tell her softly.
Her breath catches as she leans closer to me.
“And so does mine.”
Silence crackles between us, hot, intimate, electric.Her eyes shift to my mouth for a split second.I see it.I feel it.
She wants something she doesn’t understand yet.
I almost lean in.I almost give in.
But she’s injured.Confused.Vulnerable.
And I already hurt her once.So I step back.Barely.Just enough to break the moment without snapping it.
“We should get you back to the cabin,” I murmur.
She nods slowly.“Okay.”
But before I can turn fully away, she reaches out and grabs my fingers, hesitant but purposeful.
“Ledger?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let me out of your sight.”
My voice breaks as I vow.“I won’t.”
We drive back to the cabin in silence, not the bad kind.The charged kind.The kind that says something broke open today, and once the memories catch up, it’s going to hit us both like a freight train.
And I’m not sure which scares me more—losing her again … Or having a second chance.
Twelve
Kelly
My Body remembers him even when my mind can’t
By the time we pull up to the cabin again, my nerves are stretched so tight I feel like they might snap.
The ride back wasn’t silent but it wasn’t not silent either.It was full of things unsaid between us.Thick, heavy things that sit between us like heat on a winter morning to defrost a windshield.
Every time Ledger shifted, I felt it.Every time he glanced at me, I felt that too.And every time I closed my eyes, flashes of something half-remembered flickered through my mind.
The gently way he always grips my wrist.
His hand on my waist.
