We both stop.
I turn to her. The snow is catching in her hair and on her eyelashes, and her eyes are focused entirely on my face with a quality of attention that I can feel on my skin, warm and specific, like standing in a narrow beam of light.
"I know what it feels like," I say, "to be furious and unable to do anything with it. To feel like nothing you do makes a difference. The feeling of not having control over the things that are hurting you."
She's looking at me. Her eyes are clear.
"But I also had people in my corner, willing to help," I say. "Even when I didn't want them."
The snow falls between us. The cabin waits at the end of the trail, warm and lit.
I extend my hand.
She looks at it. A long moment goes by. Cold air between us. Snow landing in her hair.
Then she takes my hand.
Her fingers are cold and small and the cuts on her palm press against mine. I close my hand around hers and turn toward the cabin and step forward.
For a half-second everything balances on this moment. Her weight on one side, the warmth ahead, and the silence holding it all.
Her fingers tighten around mine.
She follows.
11
OWEN
The office is quiet when she pushes the door open.
I hear her before I see her. Only a few days in this house and I can already identify her by sound alone. The particular weight of her step, lighter than Reid's, more deliberate than Jace's. I don't examine what that means. I look at my screen and keep my eyes there.
She stops in the doorway.
"I made yours the way you like it." She crosses to my desk and sets the mug of tea at the corner. "Strong. One spoon of honey."
I look at the mug. Then at her.
I don't remember her asking and I never told her that.
"Thank you," I say.
This isn't tea. This is her, offering something small and specific and carefully chosen. An apology she doesn't owe.
This morning I was so certain she was going to be happy.
And then she was gone and the three of us were standing in the hallway and the house felt like it had lost air pressure. I didn't move for a long moment. Neither did Reid.
Jace went after her.
Then she came back.
Both of them cold and snow-dusted at the door, flakes still melting in her hair. I felt the relief first. Specific and physical, a loosening that started in my jaw and ran downward through my shoulders, my arms, my hands unclenching against my thighs. She was back. She was all right.
Then I registered that they were holding hands.
I know what I felt. I'm not going to dress it in something more palatable. It was jealousy, clean and brief, and it lasted four seconds before Jace caught my eye over her head and made the smallest possible gesture. A tilt of his chin.Easy.I understood. No fuss.
