Temporary✔️

| Twenty-eight

EMERY STEPS out of her cabin, and onto the wooden porch. She furrows her brows at him.

"What are you doing here?" She asks. The wind blows, and a chill comes over her. She hugs herself in hopes to get warm.

"I couldn't sleep. Can we sit by the fire? It's chilly." He gestures to the still burning fire, left over from the earlier bonfire they had. She nods.

They sit, side by side, in front of the flames. She asks for the real reason he's here. He hesitates to tell her, out of embarrassment.

"I...have nightmares, which seems dumb but-"

"Not dumb." She shakes her head, which rests on her knees. He looks down at her and smiles.

"It's just my mom. I barely see her and I just get these weird dreams about it. Like is she even alive right now? I feel like I would be the last to know." He looks off into the sky.

"I'm afraid that's how it'll be for me." She says, looking over to him. Harven looks down, and she compares his eyes to the sky.

"No, it'll be different. You're stronger than I was. Or am." He shrugs. She smiles thoughtfully, still staring into his eyes. She can't even hate them, not now.

He stares into her eyes, which remind him of warm honey, and should be boring after all these years. But they're not, they're alive and new. He marvels at how much those eyes must have read or learned.

He swallows, because everything is coming to the surface so fast that he has trouble containing it. He's never longed for her to look at him like this, but he's thought about it once or twice.

When she actually does it, now, in front of the fire, it makes him long for it for the first time. He knows what's wrong and he knows what's right, but he wants so badly to blur the line between the two.

"I'm going to lie to you." He breathes.

"What?" She furrows her brows, blinking.

"I don't think you are the smartest person I've ever met. I don't adore the thing you do with your eyebrows. I hate when you laugh in that way that makes me laugh too. I hate the way you say my name when you're angry. I definitely do not think you are fucking beautiful. And I absolutely, 100%, do not want to kiss you right now." He finishes on everything he has to say right now, because it is too much for the daylight to hear.

Her lips part, and she stares for a while. Emery shakes her head, getting up.

"No, Harven. You can't do that." She puts her head in her hands. He follows her, and she turns to him.

"I have to, Emery." He cups her face with his soft hands.

"Harven, we're too different. It'll be difficult and just-please." She softens her eyes at him, holding his hands in hers.

"Emery, do you feel nothing? Tell me no, and I'll go right now." He says. She groans, hiding her face in her hands, and leaning against him.

"You know I can't say no." She mutters.

"What did you say?" He gently lifts her head up from his chest. His face is serious.

"You heard me." She grumbles, trying to hide the pink in her cheeks. He breaks into a smile.

"Yeah, I did, but tell me again." He breathes.

"I can't let it get to your head." She shakes her head and smiles up at him. She sees the other Harven that exists in these quiet moments, when he's raw and honest.

"I never hated you."

"Neither did I."

He softens his eyes at her, stroking her cheeks.

"Can I kiss you?" He asks.

"Yes, please." And it's real because she didn't hesitate, not now.

Harven softly places his lips onto hers, the rosebud ones that he had thought about so much. They taste like strawberry, which doesn't seem so bad now. Their lips dance together, and his fingers tangle lightly into her soft curls.

She smells the same delicious, crisp smell that was on his pillow, it flooded her senses. She wishes she had gotten this close before.

Emery doesn't think about everything she had sworn not to do and what seemed wrong. She thinks about him and what she wants to do right now.

He breaks it, staying close to her mouth.

"Are you sure? Because I can't come back from this." He murmurs. She takes his hand and places it against her chest, where he can feel the fast beat of her erratic heart.

"I am, Harven." She mutters quietly. He smiles widely, not being able to help it. She rolls her eyes playfully at his excitement.

"This is very off brand of us, enemy." Harven smirks.

"A business improvement I think, enemy." She nods. He laughs softly, agreeing.

They stand there, the wind blowing past them, staring into each other's eyes, because something had just shifted. A knowing, an understanding. Somehow, they weren't enemies anymore.

He was just a playful boy.

She was just an intelligent girl.

And everything that happened before seemed silly now.