He shrugs, but he’s shivering. I reach for the towel, but he snags it back, grinning.
“Get that ass to the living room,” he says. “Fireplace’s on. There’s a bottle of red with our names on it.”
He leads the way. His bare feet slap softly on the hardwood, and when we reach the living room the fire is already roaring, light flickering wild on the glass and the stone and the animal skin rug in front of the hearth. He drops onto the couch, grabs a thick blanket and sprawls out like he owns the place, then pats the cushion beside him.
I join him, stretch my legs, and he immediately moves in close, tucking his knees up and letting his head fall onto my shoulder.
It feels… right.
Hepours the wine, a deep, almost black pour, and hands me a glass. We sit like that for a while, the only sound the snap and pop of the fire, the hush of snow falling outside.
I sip the wine, let it burn and then bloom sweet. Landon makes a face at his, then takes a bigger swallow.
“You look good domesticated.”
I shake my head. “Don’t even start. I may have to kill you just for suggesting that I could be tamed.”
He grins. “It suits you.”
I snort. “I’m a weapon, Landon. Not a housecat.”
He laughs, then tucks his head tighter against my arm. “You’re a weapon who likes soft things. That’s what makes it scary.”
We drink in silence for a while. The fire burns lower, the wine disappears. He talks, softly at first, about stupid things—movies he watched as a kid, the time he got lost in a mall and convinced himself he’d been abandoned, the way his mother used to leave him little notes in his lunch.
I love the way he talks, listening to the cadence of his voice more than the words. It’s grounding, the way he spins a memory out of nothing, then laughs at himself for caring about it. I want to tell him my own memories, but most of them are classified, or too ugly to share, or so distant they feel like someone else’s life.
Eventually, he asks, “What about you?”
I stare into the fire, watch the logs collapse into a red lattice of embers. The urge to deflect is strong, but I resist.
“I don’t know,” I say.
He nudges me. “Come on. You had to have some memories you want to share.”
I think about it. About the few moments of childhood that weren’t drills or punishments or waiting for the next bad thing.
“When I was five, I wanted to be a pilot,” I say. “I liked the idea of being above everything else. No noise, no chaos, just sky.”
He smiles, soft and sad. “You’d have been good at it.”
I shrug. “Maybe. Doesn’t matter now.”
He finishes his wine, sets the glass on the floor, then looks at me.
“It matters to me,” he murmurs. “You could have been anything. You still can.”
I look at him, at the way the firelight paints his skin in stripes of gold and shadow.
I set my glass down, then turn to face him fully.
“Not anything,” I say. “But maybe I can be more than just what they made me.”
He reaches for me, runs a hand through my hair. The touch is gentle, unhurried.
“You already are,” he says.
I let him pull me in, let him kiss me slow, let him taste the wine on my tongue.
