"The dust won't settle," I say. "Daniel won't let it."
"Maya." The soft sigh that scrapes the inside of my skull every time I hear it. "Maybe if you hadn't—"
"Mum."
She stops.
I breathe through my nose. My feet are numb.
"I know you don't understand," I say. "That's okay. Tell Dad I'll call."
I hang up before she can answer.
I stay where I am.
The cold has moved from discomfort into something that demands a decision I'm not yet ready to make.
The snow on the pines is thick and clean. The sky is the blue of a morning that has decided, after days of refusing, to be generous. No clouds. The light sits flat and bright on the white branches and I stand in it and I breathe and I wait.
After a call like that one, after my mother's soft voice and her careful words and her quiet insistence that I share the blame for what was done to me, there is usually an urge. Old and reliable. It wants my left forearm. Wants to leave a mark there, something small and specific and mine. A pain I chose to replace the one it was imposed on me.
I wait for it.
The urge doesn't come.
I stand on the frozen porch and my feet go numb and the urge stays quiet.
I'm still looking at the treeline when I hear the door open behind me.
Jace. He comes out and stops beside me. He looks where I'm looking, out at the pines and the blue above them. He doesn't speak. Doesn't fill the silence with anything. He just stands there.
"Sorry I left you with the dishes," I say.
"It’s all good." A beat. "Everything okay with your mum?"
I'm still clenching the phone. "Yeah."
He stays where he is, looking at the trees.
Then he turns. The knuckle of his index finger finds my chin, lifting my face toward his. Not rough. Not tentative. Direct.
He looks at me.
"You can tell me," he says. "If something's not right. You know that."
I do know that.
I nod.
His hand stays.
"I know," I say. "But I don't want to talk right now."
His eyes stay on mine.
I look at his mouth.
And I close the distance.
