Page 61 of Enslak

Not quietly. Not the graceful kind of crying that looks bearable from the outside. The full, body-shaking, completely undignified kind that starts somewhere deep and takes everything with it on the way out.

"I'm sorry," I managed, pressing the back of my hand against my mouth. "I don't know why I'm—"

But I did know. I knew exactly why. The fear I'd been carrying since the creature appeared, the older fear underneath it that had been waiting for an unguarded moment since the day I'd gotten shot in Hell's Kitchen, the grief for Danny that I'd never fully processed because I'd been too busy becoming a cop and then too busy surviving this entire impossible situation. All of it had been sitting there waiting for a moment exactly like this one, when someone had just saved my life and the danger was past and my defenses were completely down.

"I thought I was going to die," I said, the words rough in my throat. "When I saw it coming at me, I thought this was it. And it was like Hell's Kitchen all over again, that exact moment when the bullet hit and I knew. And I kept thinking about Danny." I pressed my hands over my face briefly. "My brother. He died the same way. Shot and bleeding, and I wasn't there. I couldn't save him, and then I almost couldn't save myself, and if you hadn't been—"

Enslak moved without hesitation, gathering me carefully into his arms and holding me against his chest. One hand came up to the back of my head, his fingers threading through my wet hair with a gentleness completely disproportionate to his size. He didn't try to speak. Didn't try to redirect or fix or explain. He just held me and let me fall apart against his chest and kept one hand moving in slow circles between my shoulder blades until the worst of it passed.

I talked through most of it. About Danny and what had happened to him, about the cop I'd become trying to give his death some meaning, about waking up on an alien ship and learning that everything I'd been was gone and I'd have to figure out something new. Enslak listened to all of it, his arms steady around me, his presence so completely and specifically itself that eventually the words ran out and I was just breathing against his pelt, spent and quiet, feeling lighter than I had in a very long time.

He leaned forward slowly and pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes closing.

The simplicity of it undid something inside me. Just that, the warmth of his forehead against mine, his breathing steady and careful. An offer of contact without any demand attached to it.

I thought about what I was about to do. Actually thought about it, not for long but with intention, wanting to know my own mind before I acted.

Then I closed the small distance and pressed my lips to his.

It wasn't gratitude. Or not only that. And it wasn't loneliness, though I felt that too. It was something more specific: the recognition, finally acknowledged, that this person had been showing me who he was every single day we'd been here, in every fire he built and every meal he brought and every morning he held himself carefully back at the river tree line because I'd asked him to. He'd been showing me that he was someone who paid attention, who adapted, who understood that care looked different from control.

I kissed him because I had been paying attention too.

I gave him room to pull away. I kept it soft, barely pressure, a question more than a statement.

He went completely still.

I started to pull back.

And then he kissed me back.

Careful at first, tentative, like he wasn't entirely sure he was reading the moment correctly and was moving slowly enough to check. His lips were warm, surprisingly gentle, and he kissed me like something he wanted to do right rather than just do. One hand came up to cup my face, his palm large and warm against my jaw, the gesture so deliberately tender that it made my eyes sting for an entirely different reason than a minute ago.

We stayed there a long moment, just that. Lips and warmth and the sound of both of us breathing.

When we separated, his eyes opened, and I found him watching me with an expression I hadn't seen on him before. Open. Wondering. Like something he'd believed impossible had turned out not to be.

I watched him try to speak. Watched the effort move through him, the concentration, the jaw working around something that wouldn't quite come.

Then, rough and deliberate and costing him something visible, the words arrived.

"Don't cry."

I felt them like a physical thing.

"Enslak." I touched his face. "You're talking."

He nodded slowly, his eyes on mine. His mouth moved again. Another pause. Another visible effort.

"You safe." He held my gaze, making sure I was receiving what he was trying to give. "With me."

Four words. Halting and imperfect. But precise, chosen, aimed at me with clear intent.

I pressed my hand against his cheek and felt him lean into it slightly. Not the instinctive leaning he'd done in the earliest days, the way he responded to any gentle touch without appearing to fully register it. This was deliberate. He was choosing it.

"I know," I said. "I know I'm safe with you."

His eyes closed briefly. When they opened, the relief in them was something I wanted to hold onto.