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“Here, let me at least go first and help you up,” I tell her. I brush past her, hauling myself up before reaching down and pulling her up by her elbows until we’re both on the edge of a small, rounded ledge, tall enough to look over the tops of the trees.
And that’s when I see it.
It takes my breath away.
Above the mountains, across the fjord, are the northern lights.
Abstract splashes of glowing green and white, like a moving watercolor painting on a canvas of stars.
“Holy shit,” I say, my voice coming out in a hush, as if I’m afraid I might scare it away. “This was here the whole time?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she says. “Ella told me we might be able to see it tonight, but not so well from the cabin.”
“Well, fuck,” I say, trying to take in the supernatural magnitude of the display. “This is…this is really something.”
“I figured you’d never seen them before,” she says to me, unscrewing the Scotch bottle with her gloved hand and having a shot straight out of the bottle.
I manage to tear my eyes away from the lights and look at her, and fuck if she isn’t even more beautiful than that. “I think I want to kiss you,” I tell her. The booze talking.
Her forehead creases with a wry look as she hands me the bottle of Scotch. “You shouldn’t.”
Shouldn’t…but not don’t.
I take the bottle from her, my gaze locked on hers, trying to read her, trying not to get any signals mixed up, even though that seems impossible when it comes to us. All we are is a bunch of mixed signals.
“You mean to tell me, Laila Bruset, that you brought me all the way here to this prime make-out spot, under the bloody northern lights, and expected me not to get the wrong idea?”
I take back a swig from the bottle, watching her. The Scotch keeps me warm as it burns down my throat.
“When don’t you get the wrong idea, James?” she says to me. There’s an openness about her expression. An invitation. Something soft like the snow.
I take my chances.
I put my hand on her face, my fingertips resting on her cheekbones, my thumb on her chin. “Forgive me for breaking my promise.”
I lean in and kiss her. Her lips offer no resistance; they’re yielding to mine, my mouth pressed against hers, feeling the kiss in the darkened depths of me. This kiss feels different from every other one I’ve shared with her, and I don’t know if it’s the alcohol, or the thin mountain air, or the beautiful chaotic energy of those lights. But something inside me has switched on, something long left dormant and undisturbed. It’s a terrifying feeling, like each pass of my tongue against hers is pushing me closer to this edge that I don’t dare fall from again.
And so I pull back, breaking the kiss, leaving us both gasping.
I hold her face tighter, resting my forehead against hers, my nose pressed along the side of her nose, and I’m trying to catch my breath and wrangle my muddied thoughts, and step back, way back from that ledge inside me.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, though I don’t know if I’m apologizing to her or to myself.
She pulls back, pressing her hands on each side of my face, staring up at me, eyes searching mine. “What happened?”
I try to shake my head, averting my eyes in case I do something foolish again. “Nothing. I overstepped a line.”
“Not my line.”
I have to look at her. That softness is still there. For once I didn’t chase it away. So why am I so afraid?
“You said…,” I begin, licking my lips. “Look, I don’t want to mess things up between us.”
“That’s not it, James,” she says. “That’s not it at all. You will gladly make things messy between us again. You thrive in it. What is it? What just happened?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, searching her eyes.
She still won’t let go of my face, her gloves warming my skin.
