Page 29 of Kavan

"I know you would." My eyes are streaming. "I don't have blood that chooses. I have a brain that has been very carefully arranged for thirty-one years to want to be somewhere else, and it broke, and you broke it, and I'm not being kind and I'm not obligated and I have never been more certain of a translation in my life."

He reaches over and puts his hand along my jaw. His palm covers half my face. I turn into it. His thumb moves once across my cheekbone, and every place in my body that has run on adrenaline for a fortnight goes quiet.

"Say it," he says.

"I love you. Obviously. Keep up."

He makes a sound that isn't a laugh, and then he kisses me.

He's careful for two seconds. Then I get a fistful of his collar and pull, and the careful part ends. For a while the world is nothing but the pressure of his mouth, the heat of him, his hand sliding back into my hair to hold me exactly where he wants me. He's enormous, and he's shaking very slightly, and he kisses like a man who has been keeping score of every day since the cliff.

When we break, I'm half in his lap and both his arms are around me.

"Ten days," I say into his throat.

"Fifteen tomorrow."

"You are the most disciplined person I have ever met."

"I'm aware."

"Don't be disciplined about this part."

He goes still.

"Sophie." His voice drops. "You need sleep. You have three hours⁠—"

"Kavan." I pull back just enough to look at him. His pupils are blown wide. The rain drums softly above. "I don't want to sleep. I want the rest of it. I want you. Now. Because I don't know if we get the morning."

He says nothing for a long five seconds.

"You've been running on adrenaline for two weeks. Your body isn't⁠—"

"For the first time in two weeks, with you, right now, I feel safe. Not adrenaline. Not fight-or-flight. Safe. And I want to be here, in this body, in this room, before the universe finds something else to throw at us. Please."

The word breaks in my throat, and he hears it.

He makes a sound, low and ruined, and his hand slides up into my hair and cradles my skull. "Say it again."

"Please."

"You need to be certain."

"I am certain." I shift, straddling his lap properly, the weight of me settling over his thighs. I feel the tension running through every muscle in his body. "I'm not being kind. I'm not being obligated. I'm choosing you, right now, exactly here, and if you keep asking me to confirm it I'm going to start throwing things."

The laugh that leaves him is small and broken, and it takes the rigidity out of his shoulders.

"All right," he says. "All right."

Then he lays me back on the terrace.

The dark glass is cold against my spine through the thin field shirt. The chill bites through to my shoulder blades as he covers me. He takes his weight on his forearms, one bandaged, the other trembling from the effort of holding himself up.

"I won't hurt you," he says. It isn't a promise. It's a statement of fact.

"I know."

His mouth finds my throat.