Chapter 15: I Move First

I took the cloak, and I did not put it on.

"I thought you'd stay," Hamish said. His voice was rough. "When they cried for you. I thought you would turn around."

"I know you did."

"I'd have understood it."

"I know that too." I stepped close to him, and the frost on his shoulders melted where I stood. "I didn't turn around."

"No."

"Do you see that?"

"I saw it from the road. I watched you walk out of that gate."

He stood with his hands at his sides, careful, because of our rules.

"You are allowed to be angry about the five years," he said. "I'd rather you were angry and here than gone."

"I am angry."

"Good."

"I'm angry and I'm here," I said. "I'm moving first."

I dropped the cloak on the frozen ground and put both hands in the front of his coat.

He bent his head and I kissed him, hard, and he made the low sound in his chest that I had been hearing in my sleep for a week.

We did not talk on the way down the ridge.

He kept his hand at the small of my back, and I kept mine locked in his shirt, and at the cabin door he reached past me and shouldered it open.

The stove was banked red.

The quilt was still tumbled where we had left it that afternoon.

He turned me by the hips and put my back against the door.

"Say it," he said against my jaw. "Tell me what you want. I want to hear all of it."

"I want your coat off."

It hit the floor.

"I want your shirt off."

He pulled it over his head in one move, and the lamp showed me the smooth skin where his scar had been.

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