Chapter Text
Christine lay awake, unmoving.
Erik slept behind her, his breath steady at her shoulder, his arm heavy and familiar across her waist. The room smelled of them and hotel soap and him, something darker underneath, something she would later recognize as memory clinging where it could.
I need to get out of here.
The thought pressed insistently, even as her body refused to cooperate. She stayed still, afraid that the smallest movement would wake him, afraid that if he did she wouldn’t leave at all. Her skin felt hypersensitive, as though it were still listening.
She could still feel the way his thumbs had traced slowly down her spine the night before, unhurried, reverent, finding the clasps of her bra with the same instinctive precision he used on harp strings. The soft click. The release. Fabric loosening, then surrendering, sliding down her arms and pooling at her feet. She remembered the way his hands followed, warm and sure, mapping her like something he intended to keep. Fingers gliding down the rest of her spine, circling her waist, thumbs pressing lightly into the hollows of her hips as if he’d always known exactly where they belonged. Her jeans… God. The way he’d hooked his fingers into the waistband and tugged, just enough to ask without words. The scrape of denim over skin. The breath she hadn’t meant to let out when they fell away from her.
Christine squeezed her eyes shut. Stop. But her body refused to listen. Memory kept coming in flashes, sharp and disobedient: his mouth at her shoulder, the quiet sound he’d made when she turned toward him, the way he’d said her name like it was something fragile he was afraid to drop. She could still feel it all layered on her skin, like warmth that hadn’t yet faded.
That was the problem. She shifted carefully, testing his hold. His arm tightened reflexively, pulling her closer even in sleep, his face pressing briefly into her hair. The instinctive intimacy of it nearly broke her.
This is goodbye. The certainty settled heavy in her chest. Not dramatic. Not panicked. Just true. If she stayed long enough for him to wake, if she let morning make them real again, she would lose her resolve. She would listen. She would explain. She would let him believe this could be something other than what it was. And she could not survive that.
Slowly, carefully, she lifted his arm and slid free, her body protesting the sudden absence of heat. The bed dipped softly as she stood, the cool air raising goosebumps along her arms where his hands had been.
She dressed quickly, not looking back until she reached the door. Erik slept on, open and unguarded, one hand curved around empty space where she had been.
* * *
Erik woke with her name on his tongue. Not spoken but felt. A residual pressure in his chest, as if the sound of it had been lodged there all night and hadn’t yet dissipated. He reached out automatically. Empty.
The bed beside him was cold, the sheets smoothed flat in a way that made his stomach drop. He sat up slowly, already knowing, already bracing for the truth his body had sensed before his eyes caught up.
She’s gone.
For a long moment he just sat there, breathing, letting the quiet settle around him. The room felt too large without her in it, stripped of the charge that had filled every inch the night before. He closed his eyes, and memory rushed in, uninvited and unforgiving. Not his hands. Not the act itself. Her.
The way she’d gone still at first, as if she were listening to something inside herself, unsure whether to trust it. The way her breath had changed when she finally did, breaking, catching, turning uneven like she was losing a rhythm she hadn’t known she’d been keeping. He remembered the sound she’d made when she came undone, not loud, not theatrical, just his name, breathed into the curve of his shoulder like a confession she hadn’t meant to say out loud.
The way her body had arched toward him then, not away. Not hesitant. Open in a way that felt instinctive, honest. As if whatever walls she’d brought with her had simply dissolved. His jaw tightened. That wasn’t obligation. That wasn’t grief reaching for comfort. That wasn’t a moment borrowed and returned intact. That was surrender.
He could still feel the weight of her afterward, the way she’d collapsed into him boneless and warm, breath slowing, fingers curling into his skin like she was anchoring herself. The way she hadn’t pulled away when the world crept back in. The way she’d stayed. There’s more to us.
The thought landed solidly, not hopeful but certain. He swung his legs out of bed, standing, pacing once as if motion might help him burn off the truth humming under his skin.
She could tell herself whatever she needed to get through the day. He understood that now. Grief bent people. Fear narrowed them. But what had happened between them, what he’d felt in her body when she stopped guarding herself, that wasn’t something you misinterpreted.
“I can’t let you go,” he said quietly to the empty room. Not as a plea. As a decision. This wasn’t strategy. This wasn’t desperation dressed up as romance. This was knowing, bone-deep, that what they’d shared had crossed some invisible threshold.
He dressed quickly, purpose sharpening his movements. Whatever she was about to face today, she wasn’t facing it alone. Outside, the city moved on without waiting for him. Erik intended to catch up.
* * *
The church smelled like old wood and lilies left too long in water.
Christine stood in the vestibule with her father, greeting friends and visitors, and untangling her past, fingers laced so tightly together her knuckles ached, the murmured prayers washing over her without meaning. In the front, the closed casket gleamed softly under the lights, too polished, too final. Her aunt’s name was etched into brass like a decision that could not be appealed.
She was holding it together by habit alone. Then the door opened.
It wasn’t loud. Just the faint creak of hinges and the hush that followed, an instinctive pause in the room, like everyone had inhaled at once. Christine felt it before she saw him. The air shifted. Her spine went rigid.
Erik stood just inside the doorway, rain-dark coat buttoned neatly, hair combed back with care that felt misplaced here. He looked wrong in this place of wilted flowers and small-town grief, like a piece of another life stitched into the wrong scene.
Their eyes met. The shock hit her so hard it knocked the breath from her lungs. “Erik, this means the world to us that you would put your new life on hold to be here.” The sound of hope thick in his voice, and of course Christine heard it… felt it. Her eyes slid closed as she permitted a quaking sigh to escape. He’s trying to keep me here.
Erik extended his hand as her father squeezed Erik’s arm again. “It means a lot,” he said, already turning away, already trusting Christine to handle whatever came next.
She did not. Instead, she stepped aside, gesturing him out of the flow of people with the ease of someone who had done this before. Managed space. Directed traffic. Contained things.
“I just wanted to…” Erik began, but his voice was lost. Her eyes flicked toward her family, the casket, the waiting expectations.
“I know,” she interrupted softly.
“I don’t know where I fit,” he admitted quietly. Almost immediately regretting the words. This wasn’t fair.
“I can’t do this now, not here,” she swallowed hard. “I can’t… I don’t…” she struggled as the words she wanted to scream into that room fell like a rock into the pit of her stomach. “I need to get back.” She couldn’t look at him, otherwise she’d fall apart.
* * *
The parking lot was almost empty. Christine’s father waited in the car with the engine running, hands folded over the steering wheel, eyes forward. He didn’t look at them. He didn’t need to.
Christine stood with her coat pulled tight, the chill cutting through her in a way she welcomed. It helped her stay present.
Erik lingered a few steps away, as if unsure whether closing the distance would help or break something. “This feels different,” he said finally.
She nodded. “Because it is.”
“The woman on the airplane,” he said carefully. “She didn’t hesitate.”
Christine looked down at the gravel beneath her feet. He absorbed that in silence. It cost her everything. “You’ve known me two days,” she finally said. “That version of me exists when I’m not carrying everything else.”
“Was she real?” he asked.
She looked up at him then, eyes bright but guarded. “Yes,” she said. “And she doesn’t get to stay.” The words landed between them, heavy and final. “My life is back east,” she said after a moment. “In New York.” He nodded once. “And yours,” she added, softer now, “is starting over here.”
“I know,” he said.
There were a thousand things he could have said then. He felt them crowding his chest, pushing at his ribs, demanding release. He said none of them. Christine waited, just a beat too long, as if hoping he would fight her harder.
He didn’t.
“I have to go,” she said.
He stepped aside without thinking, giving her room to pass. The movement felt like a betrayal even as he made it.