"I'm not living well."
"No," Clara agreed. "You're not. You're barely living at all."
"Then what's the point?"
"The point is that you could. Live well, I mean. If you chose to."
"I don't know how anymore."
"Then learn."
"From whom?"
"From me."
The words hung between them, an offer and a challenge and something else, something tender that neither wanted to name.
"You?" Gabriel asked, and there was something almost like hope in his voice.
“I’m excellent at living,” Clara said, chin tilted in that infuriating, irresistible way of hers. “I’ve survived poverty, abandonment, stolen boots, and your employment. I daresay I am tolerably proficient in the matter.”
Gabriel’s mouth curved. “Those are all terrible things.”
“And yet,” she said, softly defiant, “I survived them.”
“Through sheer stubbornness.”
“A valid survival technique.”
“It’s not living well, though.”
“It’s living,” she countered, eyes glinting. “That’s the first step.”
The air between them felt thick, and too close. Gabriel’s reply faltered somewhere behind his ribs as his gaze dropped, first to her lips, and then to the way her hand rested in his.When had that happened? He didn’t remember reaching for her, only the sudden awareness of skin against skin. Her hand was smaller, cooler, the faint tremor in her fingers betraying that she felt this too.
“This is breaking the rules,” he said quietly, his thumb brushing the edge of her knuckles before he could stop himself.
“Which rule?” Her voice was low, curious, like she wanted to hear him say it.
“No touching.”
“You’re correct.” But she didn’t move. If anything, her fingers tightened slightly around his, the faintest pressure that felt like a dare.
He should have pulled back. He knew that. He knew the danger of this, the peril of letting want bleed into something visible,but she was too close, and the scent of her faint floral soap was entirely overcoming his senses.
“We should stop,” he managed, though his thumb was still tracing circles over the soft skin of her wrist.
“We should,” she echoed…and yet her body leaned toward him in an inviting manner.
The fire snapped softly in the grate, the only sound in a room that had somehow become unbearably small. Her pulse fluttered beneath his touch, rapid and alive, and Gabriel found himself staring at her mouth again seeing how her lower lip quivered slightly when she was fighting what she wanted to say.
“Clara?” he said, barely above a whisper.
“Yes?”
“I am truly pleased you are here.”
The words left him rough and unguarded, too full of meaning. Her eyes lifted to meet his, wide and luminous, and for a long, dizzying moment she didn’t speak. Then her lips parted, just enough for a shaky breath to escape.
