Winter stayed quiet as she took a deep breath.
“He started yelling at me. Took the money from my hands and threw it back in my face. Accused me of trying to humiliate him, like he couldn’t make his own money, asking me why I spied on him, why I knew the money was missing. Said someone stole it because I must have mentioned it in public somewhere. Said I was good for nothing.” She paused, then lifted her shirt sleeve all the way up to her shoulder. There, where her joints met, was a round scar in the shape of a cigarette burn. “My eye was swollen shut for a week after that, and I told myself it was my fault. My fault, for opening my heart like that. And so after my mother died, after I left for Panacea, I closed it tight. It made me stronger, you know?”
“I know,” he said softly.
Her eyes stayed on the cement wall outside their window, the faint sounds from the night market still echoing out in the dark. “Close your heart,” she murmured, “and no one can tell you you’re worthless.”
He looked away, his gaze distant, lost in his own thoughts.
“You’re not,” he said to the window. “You must know that.”
“I do,” she answered. “But… sometimes, late at night, the voice in my head tells me otherwise.” She swallowed again, focusing on the words struggling to come out. “Winter, I’m here because I’m trying to prove something to myself. What it is, I don’t know. Maybe that I deserve to be here, that I can survive without being tethered to anyone else, no matter where I am or what trouble I’m in. That I don’t need anyone. And then I met you.”
She chanced a look at him and found him watching her patiently.
“I don’t know why listening to you sing that song scared me so much,” she said. “Like there’s a rope attached to you that’s tightening around mywrist. I’m afraid you’re going to tug me into the water, and I’m not going to be able to come back.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I can’t swim,” she answered quietly. “That’s what I’m afraid of, Winter. I don’t know how to follow you.”
“Then don’t,” he replied.
She searched his gaze. “What?”
He moved closer to her, until she could feel the warmth radiating from him. His body brushed against hers. “I’ll come to you.”
She looked up into his face and saw the answer there, the realization that she was bound to him whether she wanted to be or not.
“Winter,” she murmured hoarsely, swallowing, terrified. “Winter, I don’t understand how you can live with an open heart. Everyone hurts you. Why don’t you protect yourself better? Put up walls?”
“What if protecting yourself kills you in the end?” he said. “What if the thing your heart needs most is right on the other side of that wall? I know it’s dangerous to expose yourself to everything the world wants to throw at it, to everyone who wants to take something for themselves. But I still leave it open, just in case something beautiful comes in.”
She didn’t believe his words, not entirely, but a lump rose in her throat nevertheless, lodging there, threatening to choke off her words.
“There are those who see your worth, Winter,” she whispered back. “Not for gain. Not for money. Just for you.”
He searched her gaze, and for a moment, she thought about looking away again, turning her back, and asking him to leave.
“Not everyone you love will leave you behind,” he whispered.
She felt herself leaning toward him, felt him leaning down to her, felt her hand touch his sleeve as he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. The tether between them pulled taut, and she felt the pain of it in her chest as surely as if her lungs had squeezed. But she couldn’t break away now. She didn’t want to.
And then he was kissing her.
He pressed his hands against the sides of her face and kissed her deeply. She didn’t know what was happening, didn’t understand it, was too afraid to disturb it. Her mind buzzed with something akin to panic.
She pulled at his shirt’s buttons, impatiently undoing each one. He was doing the same, tugging off her suit jacket and loosening the collar of her shirt, pulling its tails out from her trousers. She let him slide the shirt off her shoulders and shrugged it away. His shirt was open now, too—she had pulled it down his arms to reveal his bare chest.
His kisses moved from her mouth to her jaw to her neck. One of his hands unhooked her bra and ran along the smooth skin of her back. She felt feverishly hot against his lips.
“What are we doing?” he murmured in her ear. “Syd—what are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, her head tilted back, eyes closed, a small noise escaping her as his lips worked along her neck. “I don’t care.”
There was a warning buzzing somewhere far in her mind, telling her that this would be a mistake, that they would both regret it, that it could end their friendship, this fragile partnership. It felt like stolen time. Wrong, illicit, unbearable. But she didn’t want to care about that right now. The door was closed; their room was silent; no one else was here. And right now, all she wanted was to forget about everything gone wrong in the world. All she wanted was to indulge this fear in her chest, give in to the thoughts that had been tugging at her heart for a year.
All she wanted was him.
