In the armchair, Rafael is laughing at something he said himself, completely unbothered by the silence from the rest of the room, and I drag my eyes away from Enzo before I'm caught.
Too late.
Enzo is already looking at me.
Not the quick, careful glances he's been giving me all evening, the kind where he looks away before I can catch him. This is direct and unhurried, and in the low light of the cabin his eyes are darker than usual, and I know what I look like right now, I know my cheeks are flushed and my breathing is slightly off and I've been staring at his mouth for ten minutes.
He knows what I was thinking.
I look away first, fixing my eyes on my tea like it's the most interesting thing in the room.
"Isabella."
Rafael's voice. Cheerful and completely oblivious.
"Hm?"
"I asked if I can grab that from you." He's gesturing at the throw blanket half falling off the couch beside me, starting to lean across the coffee table to reach it.
His hand closes around my wrist trying to grab it.
I freeze.
Everything in me locks up at once, muscles going rigid, breath stopping in my throat. His hand is warm but wrong, completely wrong, nothing like the hands I've been thinking about, and something primal fires in my nervous system before I can stop it.
"Sorry, didn't mean to?—"
"It's fine." My voice comes out too sharp and I can feel the color draining from my face even as I say it.
Rafael pulls back immediately, his expression shifting into something careful and apologetic.
The room feels too small suddenly. Too loud. I can feel my pulse in my ears.
"Isabella."
Enzo's voice, low and quiet and cutting right through the noise in my head.
I look up and he's already moving, crossing the room without any of his usual hesitation, crouching down in front of me so we're eye level. He doesn't ask permission. He just reaches up and cups my face in his hand, his thumb resting against my cheekbone, his palm warm against my jaw.
The panic dissolves.
Just like that. Just that fast.
My breath comes back and my muscles unlock and the room goes back to its normal size because his hand is on my face and it's right, it's completely right, it doesn't set off a single alarm in my body.
It never does.
That's what I can't stop thinking about as I look into his eyes from two feet away, close enough to see the line between green and grey in his irises, close enough that this feels unbearably intimate in a room that isn't empty.
His touch has never once felt like danger.
Last night in his room, when he helped with my zipper. His hands in my hair, patient and careful in the dark. Outside the bathroom door, his palm on my face, his thumb brushing the corner of my mouth.
Every single time, my body does the opposite of what it does when anyone else gets too close. Every single time, it settles, recognizes something, stops fighting.
I don't know what to do with that information.
His thumb moves slightly against my cheekbone, just a small shift of pressure, and I have to work very hard not to close my eyes and lean into it the way I want to.
