His fingers flex on my hip.
Not a grip—a discovery. Like his hand just realized what it’s holding and is deciding whether to let go or find out more.
I should move.
I should step forward, out of his arm, out of this position that is going to ruin us both if either of us breathes wrong.
I should say something about the horse or the storm or anything at all that puts words between us like a wall we can both hide behind.
I don’t move.
I turn.
Slowly.
Inside the circle of his arm, his hand sliding from my hip to the small of my back as I rotate.
My hands come up to his chest—bracing, balancing, and I’m lying to myself because bracing is the excuse and the truth is I want to touch him.
I want to feel his heartbeat under my palm and know that the hammering I’m feeling isn’t just mine.
It isn’t just mine.
His heart is slamming.
I can feel it through his shirt—the thin Henley damp with sweat and rain mist, the fabric doing nothing to hide the heat of him, the rhythm of him, the way his entire body has gone taut and still in the way I’ve only seen him go still for the horses.
That focused stillness.
That I-will-not-move-until-you-decide-it’s-safe stillness.
He’s treating me like a rescue.
I look up. He looks down.
Six inches between us.
His face is—God.
The mask is gone.
The wall is gone.
Whatever careful, controlled, grief-armored version of himself he shows the world, it isn’t here right now.
What’s here is raw. Open. Terrified.
The face of a man standing on the edge of something he swore he’d never stand on again, looking at the drop.
His eyes move across my face. Not my eyes—my mouth. My jaw.
The hollow of my throat where my pulse is beating so hard he can probably see it.
Back to my mouth. He’s looking at my mouth and his hand is on my back and his heart is hammering under my palm and the rain is a wall of sound that makes this stall the only place that exists.
“Bex.” My name in his mouth. Rough. Low. Scraped out of somewhere deep. A warning and a question and a prayer all in one syllable.
I don’t answer with words.
