What an instructive thing it was, feeling Holden's hands in her hair one minute and listening to his voice dip fondly over some constellation Derrica would never see, and then feeling him go, turning just quickly enough to see. There is a difference between knowing a thing could happen and seeing it, being unable to stop it.
She'd burned through the immediate pain of it in Richard's room. It's muted now, dulled down to something exhausted and numb. Present enough to flare up if she speaks of it, so she doesn't. Loxley hasn't asked directly yet, and that is a kind of relief too.
Her fingers are very gentle when she cups his face, palms moving over the bristle of his beard. Bracketed so, drawn in close, she looks him over. (She likes this, the way he looks mussed and rumpled from sleep.) Puts her hands into his hair before she leans in to kiss him so, so softly.
no subject
She'd burned through the immediate pain of it in Richard's room. It's muted now, dulled down to something exhausted and numb. Present enough to flare up if she speaks of it, so she doesn't. Loxley hasn't asked directly yet, and that is a kind of relief too.
Her fingers are very gentle when she cups his face, palms moving over the bristle of his beard. Bracketed so, drawn in close, she looks him over. (She likes this, the way he looks mussed and rumpled from sleep.) Puts her hands into his hair before she leans in to kiss him so, so softly.