The city streaks past in smears of light, and I hold on.
I hold on, and it's mine, every second of it.
My arms. My grip.
I could let go any time I wanted, and he'd feel it and ease off, and I don't let go, and knowing that I could is the reason I don't need to.
The wind's loud enough that I don't have to talk, and I don't have to watch anything because he's the one watching the road.
For the whole ride back, I let myself have one thing and one thing only—the warm solid weight of him under my cheek, and my own two arms choosing, mile after mile, to stay right where they are.
He cuts the engine in the courtyard and neither of us moves.
I've still got my arms around him and my face against his back.
The quiet after the engine dies is enormous, and I don't want to let go.
I make myself sit up. He turns on the seat to face me. We're close. His face is right there in the dark.
"Mila." Careful. Always so careful with me, and I used to hate it, and tonight I don't. "I'm not going to do anything you don't?—"
"I know." I get off the bike so I can stand in front of him. He swings his leg over and comes up too, and there's a foot of cold air between us and one light burning over the garage. "I know you won't. You've spent this whole night not."
"Yeah."
"That's the reason," I say.
And I close the foot.
I lay my hands flat on his chest, the way I did in the sunroom, except tonight I don't pull them back.
I go up on my toes and I kiss him.
It starts soft, because I'm out of practice and because everything in me is braced for it to turn into something I can't steer—and it doesn't.
He lets me have the wheel.
His hands come up slowly and settle light on my waist and stay there, not gripping, not dragging me in, leaving it to me how far this goes.
So I decide.
I lean into him and feel a low sound break out of him against my mouth, and his hands tighten by a fraction.
It's still mine, all of it, still every bit mine, and that's the thing that takes me apart.
I get my arms up around his neck, and he wraps me up then—finally—both arms all the way around me, he pulls me in tight against his chest, and I let him.
I want it. I've wanted it since I came through that damn gate. I just wasn’t admitting it to myself.
Then his hand spreads open across my back.
Right over the worst of it. The scars through the thin green fabric, the ropes and ridges of them, and I feel him feel them.
Feel his palm go still against them, and everything in me seizes and waits for it—the flinch, or the pity, or the careful glass hands.
I pull back far enough to see his face.
"They're ugly." Flat. Getting out ahead of him. "I know what they feel like under a hand. You don't have to?—"
