Page 45 of The Edge of Never

“I dinnae need feeding.”

Their smile widened.

“Stop being a grump, Thane.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but Kit was faster and shoved the chocolate into it. They were clearly trying not to laugh when they tried to snatch their hand back.

Without thinking about it, I leaned forward and nipped their forefinger with my teeth in retaliation.

Kit sucked in a breath, staring at me with shock. Their pupils dilated until only a thin ring of ice blue around them remained.

The tension thickened in the air, leaving me wanting to do more. To run my tongue over their fingers, suck them into my mouth and taste their skin.

Fuck.

Instead of doing that, my head flopped back against the built-in pillow of the mat, and I bit the chocolate between my teeth. Caramel seeped out of the sides and landed on my tongue. I couldn’t fault their taste.

Whenever my mother had boxes of chocolates at home, I would always hoard all the caramel-filled ones before my sister could get a hold of them. Sheona always gave me hell over it when we were kids. I’m not sure she appreciated having a younger brother who got away with everything. I wasn’t the favourite child now. I hadn’t been for a long time.

Kit’s hand hovered between us as if they weren’t sure whether to pull away or move it closer.

“Ye gonnae hoard the rest of the bar, or am I allowed more than one piece?”

They shook themself, dropped their hand and stared down at the package in their lap. After a minute, they picked it up, broke off another piece, and popped it into their own mouth.

“Only if you say please.”

Kit smirked.

I watched their mouth. Their tongue darted out to lick their bottom lip. My brain fixated on it, wondering what it would feel like against me. How hot their breath would be while their tongue ran down my… no, no, no! Their tongue is not going near any part of me. Why the fuck can’t I control my thoughts around them?

“Please.”

Kit relented and shared the rest of the bar with me. We hadn’t eaten lunch, so the food was welcome. We could have eaten more, but I had a feeling Kit was concerned about how much we had. I was too. Three days of food wouldn’t be enough if no one came to find us.

The avalanche worried me more than I’d let on to Kit. If our group got caught in it, that worsened our odds significantly. We had no way of knowing. It meant we couldn’t exactly rely on rescue. And I would have to make plans accordingly if the weather didn’t let up.

When we were done with the chocolate, Kit squeezed onto the mat beside me but didn’t get in the bag. They still had their clothes on, so I hoped they were warm enough. As evening fell, the temperature would drop, and they’d have to get in the bag with me. The thought of another night with their body pressed against mine made me want to groan. It wouldn’t be a problem if I could control these fucking feelings I had towards them.

The truth was… I couldn’t. And that scared me more than our precarious circumstances.

Fifteen

Kit

Thane and I had spent the rest of yesterday afternoon in a companionable silence. At dinner, we shared another of his ration packs before I made one last trip outside and then joined him in the sleeping bag. To combat the awkwardness of us being pressed so closely together, I told him about some of the most interesting and unique tattoos I’d done. In return, he explained more about his job. They were safe topics.

We had been walking around the edges of charged conversations about our pasts, trying to navigate a way through this situation without revealing too much. I honestly didn’t know how much longer I could keep that up.

It wasn’t like me to have such mundane, benign conversations. I hated small talk and the mandatory getting-to-know-each-other topics. What did it matter? If you didn’t get to the deep stuff, how would you truly know the other person?

Maybe I was a hypocrite since I didn’t let many people see the real me. I’d trusted all the wrong people in my life. It made me withdraw. Be wary about who I interacted with. Too many people abused my willingness to be honest and open. To get along with others and make them happy. I mean, fuck… I’d tried to give my best friend the thing she wanted the most in the world. A baby. And I was a failure at that. At a lot of things. So, why should I open up to anyone else? Why should I make others happy when it had only made me miserable?

People were a minefield to deal with, especially when your brain was wired differently from the vast majority of them. The rules of society I’d meticulously learned weren’t always applied universally. It made things confusing and downright frustrating. I muddled through life as best I could, trying to figure shit out until I realised I would never win. So I stopped trying. I started being afraid. And Sienna only made my fears worse. If I couldn’t trust the friend I’d had for most of my life, then how could I trust anyone?

However, when it came to Thane, I didn’t know what I was so afraid of. I wasn’t trying to make him like me. Maybe he could be a bit nicer to me considering I’d saved his life, but I wasn’t interested in having him think I was a decent human being.

It was funny how for most of my life I’d masked around people just to get by, but with him, I didn’t feel the need to even try. Well, I didn’t want to have a meltdown in front of his face, but I hadn’t hidden what Sienna liked to call my weird, quirky side from him. But to me, those parts weren’t weird or quirky, they were just me. The real me. A me very few people got to see.

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