Page 300 of The Lies We Play

Then he kisses me.

Slow.

So fucking slow it feels like he is giving my body time to remember before asking my mind to catch up.

His lips move against mine with aching restraint. He doesn't press me back. He doesn't take. He waits inside the kiss, and somehow that is what opens me. My hand rises to his chest, to the edge of his gear, useless against all that protection, and still I feel the man beneath it.

Something in me lights.

Not memory.

Deeper than memory.

Recognition with no picture attached.

My mouth knows him.

My body knows where to breathe.

The kiss goes through me like a door opening in a house I thought had been demolished.

For half a second, I'm not in the small room beneath the arena.

I am somewhere else.

A roof.

A bar.

A bed.

A hand around my wrist.

A woman laughing.

Creed saying my name in the dark.

Then it is gone.

I make a sound against his mouth.

Creed freezes.

I catch the front of his jersey before he can pull back.

“No,” I whisper. “Don’t stop.”

He exhales.

I feel it.

Then he kisses me again.

This one is not careful in the same way. It is still controlled because Creed is Creed, because he will always leave me a door cracked open, but there is heat in it now. Ten years of it. Grief. Want. Anger. Devotion. His hand slides to the back of my neck, fingers pressing into my hair, and I understand with a certainty I don't know how to explain that this is not a new thing beginning.

This is an old thing waking up.

My soul, if I still believe in that word, doesn't remember gently.