Her jaw tightens. “You can’t fix everything that happened back then, Nick.”
“I know,” I murmur, sliding my thumb along her knuckles. “But I can make sure nothing like it ever happens again. I'm not that weak kid anymore.”
Her throat works. She doesn’t pull away.
Silence stretches. The cabin creaks softly around us, wind threading through the trees outside, fire snapping in the other room. This is the kind of quiet that used to mean danger — waiting, listening for the wrong footstep or the wrong voice.
“Last night,” she says finally, finding her words again. “On the couch.”
Every nerve in me sits bolt upright.
“Yeah,” I say carefully.
She swallows, glancing at me then away. Color rises in her cheeks, high and pretty. “I-I don't know….I wasn't thinking. I don't even know if it really happened.”
A humorless laugh escapes me. “It did. I’ve been replaying it in my head since the second you fell asleep.”
She presses her lips together like she’s fighting a smile and a grimace at the same time. “Of course you have.”
“I’ve been replaying versions of it for ten years,” I confess, words tumbling out before I can stop them. “I just didn’t know you would…look like that. Feel like that.”
She draws a shaky breath. My fingers tighten slightly where they rest on the blanket. It feels like a small victory when her fingers curl under mine.
“I don’t know what to do with this, Nick,” she says softly.
“This?” I echo. “Me? Us?”
“All of it.” She stares down at the blanket. “I know I should be fighting you. Hating you. Spending every second figuring out how to get out of here. And I will. I haven’t forgotten who I am. Who I've become after leaving this place.”
“I wouldn’t want you to,” I say honestly, voice thick.
“But…” Her voice drops lower, almost a whisper. “My body doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. And I—” She cuts herself off, brow furrowed. “I've thought about you for years and you’re not who I thought you’d be.”
My heart feels like it stops.She's thought about me?
“Who did you think I’d be?” I ask gently.
“Angrier,” she says after a moment. “Colder. Like him.”
The word “him” hangs between us like a bad dream neither of us can shake off, the man from her nightmares, the man who took girls here and never brought them back and I never even knew about it.
I unclench my jaw. “I’m nothing like him,” I say, low and fierce. “I would burn this cabin to the ground before I ever let it be like that again.”
She really looks at me then. Whatever she sees makes something inside her ease.
“I know,” she says quietly. “That’s the problem. You brought me here and that's the first thing I thought would happen, I thought life was finally catching up to me but I didn't expect…you.”
Our eyes lock. The air gets heavier, charged with something that isn’t fear and isn’t anger, but something deeper and more electric. It’s the way she came apart in my hands last night and the way the pieces are fitting together now.
I lift my hand slowly, giving her time to pull away. She doesn’t. My fingers curl under her chin, tilting her face toward mine.
“Meredith,” I say, barely above a whisper, “if I kiss you right now, are you going to push me away?”
She licks her lips. I watch her eyes flick to the locked door, to the dim light above us, then back to mine and I set the tray back on the bedside table before moving in.
“Answer me,” I murmur, leaning closer, forehead almost touching hers. “I need to hear you say it.”
She doesn’t make me wait. “No,” she breathes. “I want you to kiss me, Nick.”
