“I don’t want a martyr,” I say into his jacket. “I want a man.”
“Good,” he says, voice rough and oddly light. “I’m more useful as that.”
I laugh, helpless and glad. The sound floats up into the dark. He shifts just enough to see my face. He doesn’t kiss me. He doesn’t have to. His eyes do it—slow, reverent, unashamed. My lips part on instinct and he groans under his breath.
“Soon,” he says.
“Soon,” I echo.
We sit like that for a long time—hands linked, shoulders pressed, fire warming our shins. I read a few more letters. The café lights sway overhead. A fox slips along the ridge line, pauses, watches us with the weary curiosity of a neighbor, and ghosts away.
I slide the last letter of the night back into its envelope and tuck it under the stack with care.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “Don’t thank me for making you cry.”
“I’m thanking you for letting me see you.” I squeeze our joined hands. “And for not running when you saw me again.”
His mouth curves. “I’ve never been fast enough to outrun you.”
“You never tried.”
“Fair.”
We stand when the fire dials down to orange bones.
“Want me to walk you home?” he asks, like we’re thirteen and our mothers are waiting.
“Yes.”
The night leans in around us as we go. The snow creaks. Our boots find the same rhythm we used to have.
“I’ll bring pancakes the next morning we both have off.” He grins.
“Bossy,” I laugh, just to feel his eyes darken.
“You love it,” he says, and for the first time in a decade, I don’t flinch at a future tense.
His hands slide up my ribs and then stop. “If I take you inside,” he says, words careful, breath not, “I’m not promising to stop at the door.”
My body goes liquid with the image—his mouth, my back to the wall, the sound I’d make inside my throat where he could hear it and nobody else could. I sway. I catch myself on his shoulders, grip, admit nothing out loud and everything with my fingers.
“Axel,” I say, a warning and a plea.
He steps back one inch. One. His control is obscene. It turns me on and makes me want to throw it into the snow and stomp it.
“Soon,” he repeats. “No more running?” he asks.
“I’ve done enough of that,” I answer. “Besides.” I tilt my head up and lick my lower lip just to watch his pupils track the movement. “You’re very efficient at catching.”
“Don’t test me,” he murmurs.
“I plan to.”
He huffs out a laugh and squeezes my hand like a promise. Axel releases my hand with a last stroke of his thumb across my knuckles that I will feel for hours. He nods once, soldier-precise, then tips his head toward the dark sky a moment before turning to leave.
My mouth still tastes like him. My chest feels lighter and tighter at once. And somewhere in my stomach, a coal I’d let go cold wakes and glows and refuses to go out.
