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“Why do you keep them?”

I think for a moment. “For Milo.”

His gaze then drifts to the album on the bed. A few minutes pass as he goes through some of the pictures there. His eyes meet mine while I observe him get lost in memories I don’t like.

I speak before he even has to ask the question, “I hate having my picture taken."

“Why is that?”

I shrug slightly. “I… I don’t have many pictures of me when I was a kid.” I grab the album from his hands carefully and look at the ones Edna took from when we were younger with Hayzel. The way some bruises would still show but she would lie and tell me that I still looked beautiful and she wanted to take a picture of me. “I don’t look happy in any picture.”

He takes them back, and stares at them before letting out a long breath and turning back to me with a smile. “Let me do something.”

“Sure.” I nod and watch him grab Hayzel’s small camera and walk toward me.

I frown. “No.”

“Yes.”

“Damien. No.”

“Yes, Mireya.”

I stare at him and he completely ignores my objection. He places the camera on the desk, sets the timer. Blue opens one eye, as if participating in the collective decision to betray me today.

I remain motionless when he speaks again, “Come here.”

Before I can decide whether I was going to move or not, his hand is already there, warm against my wrist, steady as he pulls me toward him, closer than I was before, close enough that my knees bump into his and I have to catch myself on his shoulder, which only makes it worse because now I can feel him everywhere at once.

His hand, his breath, the way he doesn’t rush to let go.

His fingers slide up and settle against my face, thumb brushing the corner of my mouth.

“Don’t do that,” he says softly, almost amused.“Look at me.”

And I do, without thinking.

I don’t even realize I’ve pressed my lips together until his mouth is on the corner of mine. Soft and gentle. A kiss there. Then another on the other side. And I smile…that smile that always comes too quickly when it's him, as if my mind agrees to yield if it's in his hands.

“There,” he whispers. “Better.”

The camera clicks somewhere behind him, counting down, but it feels far away.

“Now focus on me, little miss sad eyes,” he adds, softer this time.

And I don’t know when it happens, I don’t know what changes, but something does, something small and quiet inside my chest. My body is not tense anymore, and the smile is still there, for him.

His expression changes the second he understands. And then he kisses me, like it was always going to happen the second I let go enough for him to reach me. His hand still holds my face, his thumb is still there like he doesn’t want to lose the shape of that smile even as it disappears into the kiss.

The flash goes off at the exact same moment, and for a second everything freezes. The light, the breath in my lungs, the way my hands tighten slightly in his shirt without me meaning to. And all I can see is him, too close and not close enough at the same time.

He pulls back barely, enough to look at me, and there’s this quiet, almost disbelieving exhale that leaves him. Satisfaction and pride.

“Now you have one,” he murmurs. “A picture where you actually look like you.”

I don’t answer. I can’t, because I’m still somewhere between the flash and the way his mouth felt against mine, still trying to gather myself back into something that makes sense, so instead I look down, back to the jeans in my hands, to the stars I was sewing like they could anchor me again.

I can still feel him, and when I glance up again he’s already looking at me, like he never stopped.