Page 170 of Break Me

His lips press softly to mine. I hold onto the warmth of his mouth against mine. The shape of him so close. The way his hand is still at my back, steady and unyielding.

I let it settle into me, deeper than breath, deeper than thought, hoping that if I take enough of it in, it’ll stay. It’ll linger somewhere I can reach even when everything else is gone.

Praying I can take this part of him with me.

There’s a breath, a quiet one and then⁠—

“Okay,” he says.

That one word costs him everything.

When he pulls back, he doesn’t go far just enough that he can reach for the blanket at the edge of the bed, drawing it up and around me with careful, deliberate movements.

Then his arm comes back around me, as he gathers me closer into him. I settle against his chest, the movement pulling a soft breath from me as I find the familiar place beneath his chin, the place I’ve always fit without thinking.

His heart is beating beneath me.

Strong.

Unwavering.

I focus on that, on the steady rhythm of it, even as I feel mine faltering.

Outside, snow is falling, slow and steady, each flake drifting through the quiet as if it belongs to something older than the moment we’re in. Something that’s always existed and will continue long after this night has passed.

The moon hangs low above us, pale and luminous against the dark, its light spilling over everything in a way that feels almost unreal. For a moment, it feels like we’ve stepped into something untouched.

The air is so still I can almost hear it. The soft hush of snow meeting the ground. The faint whisper of it brushing against the trees. The quiet rhythm of it settling into the night like a breath that never quite finishes.

Everything slows.

Everything softens.

The world has drawn itself in close, holding this space open for us, letting everything else fall away until there’s nothing left but this fragile, sacred stillness that’s been waiting for us to arrive.

The sound reaches me before the sight of it does. The quiet, steady movement of water threading through the stillness of the night, constant and unbroken.

He slows as we reach it, as if his feet refuse to take the last few steps, because getting here means something neither of us can take back.

And still he brings me the rest of the way.

He lowers himself carefully at the edge of the creek, settling onto the ground. He keeps me in his arms, drawing me closer as he shifts, settling me across his lap, one arm wrapped tight around my back, the other braced just enough to keep me steady against him.

The cold should reach us here. I can see it in the frost along the edges of the water, in the snow gathering at the bank, in the way his breath leaves him in soft, visible clouds that disappear almost as quickly as they form. But he doesn’t react to it.

“I remember the first time I saw you,” I say finally, my voice quiet but steady, the words coming easier than anything else has tonight.

I smile as the memory rises slowly and clearly.

“I’d just gotten home from school,” I say. “I remember dropping my bag by the door and hearing voices in the kitchen. I didn’t think anything of it at first.”

My breath drifts, but I follow it.

“I walked in, and you were standing there like you belonged,” I whisper. “Like you’d always been there. As if it were the most natural thing in the world for you to be in my kitchen.”

I let out the smallest breath of a laugh, softer than before, and it takes me a second to find the next breath.

“You didn’t even notice me,” I add. “You were talking with Knox, leaning against the counter like you’d done it a hundred times, and I just stopped.”