I don't have a follow-up. I just needed to say his name. I needed him to hear it in my voice and understand that whatever he thinks he's taken from me, whatever he believes he's done,I am still here. I came up this mountain of my own free will and now that I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. No revelation, however brutal, is going to change that.
His gaze drops to my mouth.
It stays there for one heartbeat.
Two.
Then he kisses me.
We're still arguing as we kiss; we're just doing it with our bodies instead of our words. All that force and frustration and fear go funneling into the only outlet we have left. His mouth finds mine and his hands drop from the wall to my jaw, both of them, tilting my face up while his body presses me into the stone. The wall is cold against my back and he is burning against my front. I'm caught between those two temperatures, suspended, annihilated.
I grab the front of his sweater with both fists. Not to push him away but to pull him closer. I pull and he comes willingly, closing whatever gap remained, until there is absolutely nothing between us. My brain and ankle are both protesting, as is the lingering knot on my forehead, but I don't give any of them a lick of attention.
He's a good kisser. Slow at first, hesitant, like it's been a long, long time since he's done this, but what he lacks in familiarity he makes up for in presence. He swallows down my gasps and parts my lips with his tongue, cradling me against him the whole time.
It's not like I haven't been kissed before. At the time, I actually considered some of those kisses to be half-decent. College boyfriends, bar mishaps, Jaden, a wild night out with some colleagues…
This erases all of it.
This is the asteroid that wipes out the dinosaurs.
Everything that came before is extinct.
14
CAROLINE
The kiss ends the way all extinction events end: abruptly, and with a survivor who immediately wishes it hadn't.
Afon goes from cradling me and showing me whole new worlds of what two mouths of capable are doing to each other, to ripping off of me like I'm a hot stove and storming to the far side of the hut. Which, it must be said, is really not that far away. I could still reach out and poke him in his burly chest if I wanted.
"Afon—"
"Don't talk, Caroline."
He's found his way into the corner behind the rickety table. That's hilarious, because that table couldn't stop Wolf, let alone whatever just happened.
"That was a mistake," he says.
Cool. Cool cool cool. Love that. Every woman's favorite post-kiss debrief.
It's almost angry, how it comes out of his mouth. Like the insulting aspect of the words themselves weren't enough, so he needed to add some extra sizzle to them.
"It didn't feel like a mistake," I say.
"Well, it was." He drags a hand down his face. As it passes, I see that emotional concrete harden back in place, covering over whatever was just alive in his eyes. "It won't happen again."
"Could we maybe discuss?—?"
"There's nothing to discuss."
With that, he does the most Afon thing imaginable, which is to put on his jacket and go outside. Into the dark. Into a wind chill that could flash-freeze a side of beef. Because in his eyes, hypothermia is preferable to standing in a room with me and a feeling at the same time.
The door shuts behind him. Not a slam—he's too controlled for that. Just a firm, terribleclick.
Wolf lifts his head from the floor and looks at me.
"Don't even think about offering an opinion," I scold him.
