A bitter ghost of a smile touches his mouth, but he chooses not to disagree. “Then consider it forgotten.”
For a heartbeat, the air softens. Then it tightens again.
Because forgetting is already impossible.
He shifts on the couch, inhaling carefully. “Thank you,” he says. “For helping me up the hill with your Olympic skills. And for the bandage.”
One side of my mouth lifts. “Don’t get used to it.”
Nate huffs a laugh. “Wouldn’t dare.”
And that’s it. Conversation done, boundary set, line redrawn. It should feel like relief.
But it doesn’t.At all.
I stand up fast. “I’m going to - uh - take a minute. Shower. Whatever. Just… don’t walk on that ankle.”
“Ally—”
“Nope.” I point at him. “Sit. Stay.”
His eyes flicker with something that is absolutely not helping. “Yes, ma’am.”
***
The bathroom is warm from the fire’s residual heat, but the tiles are cold under my feet. I turn the shower knob until steam fogs the mirror, strip out of my clothes mechanically, step under the water.
The moment heat hits my skin, I break. Not into tears. Into thought. Angry, jumbled, looping thought I’ve been trying to outrun since last night.
And the snap of panic in my chest when I saw Nate had fallen. The arrow leaving my bow like instinct, like the most essentialkind of muscle memory. Perhaps that moment was the whole reason for my archery career, why fate turned me that way instead of another.
And then…
His mouth. On mine. Not gentle, or careful.
Not asked for.
Just need. Just a wild, overwhelming impulse.
Nate in his purest and most impure form.
“Potato witted dumbass,” I whisper to the wall, scrubbing my hands over my face. I’m not sure if I mean him or me.
But my pulse doesn’t listen, either way. It beats high and frantic, remembering the heat of him, the shock of contact, and the stupid, treacherous shiver that shot through me before my brain slammed on the brakes.
I brace my hands on the wall, head bowed under the spray. I told him we’d forget it. I meant it. But my body…
My body is not on board.
It’s been a long, bleak few months. The training grind. The pressure. The loneliness, even though I was with Josh; that alone was a glaringly obvious sign that something was wrong, even before Olivia and Josh’s betrayal.
Then, after all that, the drive through a raging snowstorm. Landing in a place where every silence echoes too loudly to subdue my thoughts. Finding one person I never wanted to be trapped with, waiting for me here. Being stupidly kind even when he doesn’t have to be.
My jaw clenches. Ihatethis. Hate that I still want things I wrote off years ago. That the attraction didn’t die cleanly, even after hurt and distance and a whole relationship with someone else.
I squeeze my eyes shut. This is stupid. And temporary. Nothing more than isolation and emotional exhaustion and wayward biology. That’s all.
That has to be all.
