Page 35 of Holly & Hemlock
I consider lying, but the truth is harmless. “Fell when I was six. Split it open on the corner of a radiator.”
He reaches out, fingers hovering over my brow, then closes the distance and traces the line, gentle as a butterfly. The callouses are real, but the pressure is feather-light. “You don’t cover it up,” he says, more statement than question.
“Sometimes I do,” I say. “Didn’t bother this week.”
He drags his thumb along the arch, then lets his hand fall away. “I think it suits you.”
I snort, too loud. “A scar suits me?”
His smile gets a little wider. “You’re beautiful. Almost too beautiful. Too perfect. The scar adds something. Makes you, you.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I shrug and pick at a hangnail.
“I was exploring a room I wasn’t supposed to be in. Grandmother’s attic. My father’s mother. I was obsessed with the boxes she never let anyone open.”
He nods, as if this explains everything. “And did you find what you were looking for?”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember what I found. Just the blood, and the yelling, and the way she looked at me—like I’d disappointed her, but not in a new way. Like it was what she always expected.”
Lane looks at me, really looks, and I realize that this story is not news to him. He’s lived some version of it himself, and probably more than once. The silence is no longer dangerous, just heavy, full of everything we’re not saying.
He shifts closer, and the bench creaks under the movement. “You’re not what I expected,” he says, eyes steady on mine.
“And what did you expect?”
His lips twitch, the memory of a smile. “Someone softer. Or harder. Not both.”
We’re closer now, knees almost touching, the stovepainting everything in gold and black. Lane reaches up, brushes a strand of hair behind my ear, then lets his hand settle at the side of my face. His thumb traces the scar again, then my cheekbone.
His hands may be rough, but the touch is deliberate, reverent even. My skin goes hot under the contact, but I don’t flinch. I lean into it, maybe out of defiance, maybe out of need.
He kisses me.
It’s not gentle at first. It’s the mouth of a man who’s spent a lifetime denying himself this, or anything like it. His lips are dry, his beard rough, the pressure almost bruising—but behind it is something careful, a restraint that turns hunger into a question, not a demand.
I kiss back, letting the tension snap. The taste of whiskey and woodsmoke, the heat of the fire and the chill clinging to my skin, all of it collapses into the one point of contact between us. His hand slides into my hair, anchors me there. My own hands find his shoulders, broad and immovable, the muscle beneath stiff and real.
Lane breaks off first, forehead pressed to mine, both of us panting a little, our breath painting clouds in the space between.
“I shouldn’t—” he starts, but I interrupt.
“Don’t stop.”
He laughs, the sound deep in his chest, a vibration I feel in my own bones.
The second kiss is slower, exploratory, and this time I find the gentleness he’s been hiding. His hands are everywhere—my jaw, my neck, the line of my shoulder—and every touch is a promise, a warning, a reminder that for all his control, Lane is just as lost as I am.
The storm howls at the window, but inside the world isreduced to firelight and the shifting pressure of two people trying not to drown.
I let him kiss me until neither of us can breathe, and when we finally pull apart, the only thing left is the electricity humming in the air.
He searches my face for regret. I show him none.
Lane’s hands are at my waist before I can draw a breath. He lifts me off the chair, like I weigh nothing, and sets me on the edge of his worktable. The old wood groans beneath my hips, the grain biting into the backs of my thighs, but it’s pain I’ll relish tomorrow.
He kisses me again, hard, teeth catching my lower lip, and the taste of blood and whiskey is a heady feeling.
His palms bracket my jaw, holding me in place, and I let him. There is no fear—if anything, the intensity of his hunger is flattering, a kind of proof that for at least this one night, I am the only thing in the world that matters to him.
