She tilts her head back, eyes bright and searching. “Did I?”
I answer her by kissing her. Not rough. Not hungry, but slow, grounding. Like I’m stitching her back together with my mouth. She makes a sound low in her throat, the kind that hits every weak spot I have. My hand slides into her hair, the other gripping her hip, pulling her closer. If she asked me to stay forever, right now, God help me, I would.
She presses her forehead to mine, breath mixing with mine. “I don’t want to think.”
“Then don’t.”
I walk her backward until her hips meet the edge of the bed. She falls softly, pulling me with her, and the mattress dips beneath our weight.
What happens next isn't frantic. It's deliberate. The kind of slow that feels like paying attention to something you've been blind to for so long.
Her shirt slides off her shoulder. My fingers trace the line of her collarbone, a question asked in touch. She draws a sharp breath when my hand moves along her thigh. She arches when my mouth finds hers again, and I taste the answer she's been holding back.
The room is all shadow and scattered light from the flickering motel sign outside. Red, then dark. Red, then dark. It paints her skin in intervals, there, then gone, then there again.
I slide my cut off my shoulders and lay it next to us on the bed. Aria’s fingers find the hem of my shirt and she pulls it off like a silent surrender. When fabric falls away, when skin finds skin, the temperature in the room shifts. Everything heightens.
I map the landscape of the curve of her waist, the flutter of her pulse at her throat, the way she trembles when I whisper her name against her shoulder. Every response is a language I'm learning to speak fluently again.
She pulls me closer, and the space between us disappears entirely. We move together like a conversation finally spokenaloud, like a truth that's been waiting underneath everything else.
Her breath catches against my throat. My name breaks open in her mouth. The world outside, the snow, the threat, the photo, the danger, all of it dissolves.
There's only the rhythm we find, the heat we generate, the way we fit together like we were designed for exactly this moment.
Time stretches and compresses. Her fingers dig into my shoulders. Mine tangle in her hair. We're both trembling now, suspended in something that feels inevitable and impossible all at once.
When the wave finally crests, it's quiet and devastating. She whispers my name like a secret she's kept too long. I murmur hers like it's the only word that matters.
When we come back down from bliss, she lies against my chest, fingers tracing the ink on my arm. The snow falls harder outside the window. The motel sign continues its rhythm of light, dark, light, dark.
I tilt her chin up. “Talk to me.”
She shakes her head. “If I talk, I’ll stay.”
I swallow hard. “Aria…”
She gives me a sad, crooked smile. “This can’t be real. You know that.”
“Feels real.”
“That’s the problem.” She sits up, pulls on my flannel again, and hands me the takeout bag she must’ve grabbed earlier.
“I got food,” she says softly. “Figured you didn’t eat.” She’s right. I didn’t.
We sit on the bed, sharing noodles and fried rice, stealing glances when we think the other isn’t looking. She wipes sauce from my mouth with her thumb. I kiss the inside of her wrist. We laugh once, awkward and too tender.
When the food is gone, she leans her head on my shoulder.
“This is the last time,” I say, because I have to.
“Yeah,” she whispers, not believing it. “Last time.”
Neither of us moves away.
When she finally falls asleep, curled against me, I ease out of the bed, tuck the blanket around her, and throw on my jeans, socks, and boots. I holster my gun at my hip and step outside into the cold, lighting up a cigarette.
The night is dark. Snow crunches under my boots as I walk toward the SUV. Halfway there, something tugs my attention left.
