"I'm not his," she said quietly. "I'm not yours. I'm not anyone's."
"You're mine." I stepped toward her. She didn't step back. "You were mine first. In the snow. In the greenhouse. You were mine before he ever touched you."
"I'm not a thing to be claimed."
"Then stop acting like one."
She kissed me.
I don't know who moved first—her or me. One moment we were standing apart, the tension between us thick enough to cut. The next, her mouth was on mine, and I was pulling her against me, my hands fisting in the fabric of my sweater—her sweater now—and the world was shrinking to the space between our bodies.
The kiss was not gentle.
It was desperate and angry and full of everything we couldn't say. She bit my lip, hard enough to draw blood, and I groaned into her mouth. I tasted copper and coffee and something else—something that might have been my father's cologne, still lingering on her skin.
I kissed her harder, trying to erase it. Trying to replace the memory of his mouth with mine.
She let me. For a minute—maybe longer—she let me press her against the potting bench, let me slide my hands under the sweater, let me touch the places he'd touched. Her skin was warm beneath my fingers, soft, familiar. I knew this body. I'dbeen learning it for weeks, memorizing the curves and hollows, the places that made her gasp and the places that made her sigh.
But there was something different now. Something that felt like a door closing.
"Gabriel—"
"Don't." I kissed her throat, her collarbone, the hollow between her breasts. "Don't tell me you're his. Not yet."
"Gabriel, stop."
She pushed me away.
Not hard—just enough to create space between us, enough to make me look at her face. She was crying. Tears slid down her cheeks, silent and steady, and I watched them fall and felt something in my chest crack.
"I can't do this," she said. "I can't be what you want me to be."
"What do I want you to be?"
"Good. Pure. Uncomplicated." She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I'm not any of those things. I haven't been for a long time."
"I don't want you to be good. I want you to be mine."
"I don't know whose I am anymore."
We stood there for a long moment.
The greenhouse was cold. The orchids shivered in their pots. Somewhere in the house, a clock chimed—nine, or ten, or something else that didn't matter. The world outside the glass was grey and flat, the sky the color of old bruises.
I looked at her. Really looked. At the dark circles under her eyes, the pallor of her skin, the way her hands trembled at her sides. She was exhausted. Not just from lack of sleep—from carrying something too heavy for her shoulders.
"He made you his ward," I said. "Gave you his name. And then he—"
"Yes."
"And you let him."
"Yes."
"Why?"
She looked at me. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but steady.
