Page 40 of These Tears

I have to.

I scowl at the stranger in the mirror.

I don’t like her sneer.

8

The visitors’ room closes in on me. It didn’t feel like this before. Today the air sits stale and heavy in this concrete box, and Elias still isn’t here.

They leave me waiting for ten long minutes before the locks finally grind loose and the door swings open.

He ducks beneath the frame as he enters.

His gaze finds me at once and doesn’t let go as George marches him to the table.

‘Can the chains stay off?’ I ask quietly as the uniform bends over towards the hook on the floor, and Elias settles in the chair.

‘Clearance was for the birthday only,’ George mutters, clipping on the restraints before straightening and tipping his chin at Elias as if he wants trouble. One taut second stretches between them. The two men do not break eye contact. George is the one who finally looks away, turns and leaves.

Only after the door shuts does something in Elias’ posture ease. Barely.

His gaze stays on his hands. He doesn’t look at me.

The quiet festers between the walls. Metal links knock softly together with a thin, ugly sound.

‘I’m sorry I ruined your birthday,’ I whisper softly.

His eyes lift straight to mine. ‘You didn’t.’

Words knot at the back of my mouth. I don’t know how to apologise and admit, in the same breath, that I have already gone and done worse – meddled where he told me not to.

‘I’m not very good at letting things go,’ I say instead. ‘I don’t think you belong here, and I acted on that feeling.’

‘Always those feelings with you.’ There’s no bite in it. Not even a warning.

Our hearts beat away the seconds. His gaze dips to my mouth and the yard flashes through me. His lips on mine. His breath caught on my tongue. I wonder if the same memory sits behind his eyes nows.

‘I need to stay here, Leah. For reasons that are hard to explain,’ he says quietly.

‘Well.’ I let out a breath. ‘Then we’ll have to agree to disagree.’

Reaching for the chain twisted against his wrist, I ease it away from his skin, because it looks like more than one of those things holding him there.

When I start to pull away, he catches my hand and gently draws it back. His palms close around it, warm on either side, and keep it there. His thumb rests against the back of it without moving, and I feel every point where his skin meets mine.

In the hush. No words. Only breath.

And heat.

‘Sometimes you have to endure things,’ he says, ‘before you can be truly free.’

I nearly ask what things. But the contact sinks into my skin and turns my mind away from it.

‘What would you do if you were free?’ I ask. ‘Where would you go?’

He raises a brow. His mouth curves and brightens his face. ‘Somewhere warm inside, with snow falling beyond the windows,’ he says, eyes slipping past me into a vision only he sees. ‘Fishing. Hunting. Building.’ He holds his breath for a fraction as the image in his mind fully blooms and says, almost absently, ‘Somewhere where the only sounds are crickets in summer, and blizzards in winter.’

I let myself fall into the offering. Into the quiet of it. His words sketch out a life stripped back to woodsmoke and frost. I see him there with sleeves shoved up, palms roughened by work instead of iron, breath clouding in the winter air beneath a sky too wide to cage him. No chains. No burdens. Only the steadiness of something plain and honest.