ROWAN
I did not want to let go of her.
That was the honest truth of it, standing there with her in my arms in the low lamp light of her room at four in the morning. I wanted to hold her and breathe her in and not think about a single thing that had happened in the last twelve hours, and for approximately thirty seconds I had exactly that, her back under my palms, her hair under my chin, her breathing evening out against my chest.
Then I felt her hands go from gripping to releasing, and the shift in her body, the first small pull back.
I loosened my arms before she had to ask.
She stepped back and looked up at me and I could see her building the wall back up behind her eyes, brick by brick, the way she always did when she thought she was getting too close to something.
