Page 92 of Thin Ice

"I meant none of it."

"You meant the part about being scared."

He looked at me. His eyes were red and tired, and honest. "Yeah. I meant that part."

We sat on the rock. The lake in front of us, frozen and wide. The pines behind us, quiet. The snow had stopped and the sky was still gray but lighter at the edges, like the day was trying to decide whether to open up.

"Liam."

"Yeah."

"Look at me."

He turned. His whole face. Wet and open and scared and beautiful and mine.

"I love you."

He didn't move. He didn't breathe. His lips parted and his eyes widened, and I watched the words land on him, watched them go through his skin and into his chest, and something in his face changed. Not a wall going up. A wall coming down. The last one. The one he'd been building since he was ten.

"I love you," I said again. "I love you. Not because you saved me, and not because you brought me home, and not because I have nowhere else to go. I love you because you're the only person who ever let me be the real version of myself and didn't ask me to be less of it. I love you because when I'm with you I don't have to calculate what to say or how to say it or what it's going to cost. I love you and I am not leaving."

His hand came to my face. Shaking. His thumb on my cheek, his fingers in my hair, and his forehead came down against mine, and I could feel his breath and his tears and his heartbeat through the places where we were touching.

"I love you too," he said. Barely. A whisper. His voice wrecked. "I love you too. I've loved you since the dock. Since the first time. I've been carrying it for so long, Alex."

"I know."

"I was so scared to say it."

"I know. Me too."

We sat there. Foreheads together. His hand on my face. Mine on the back of his neck. The rock was cold, and the air was cold, and the lake was cold, and none of it mattered because the only warm things in the world were the places where his skin touched mine.

He kissed me. Slow and careful, the way you kiss someone when the word has finally been said and you don't have to rush anymore. His mouth tasted like salt and cold air and coffee he hadn't finished, and I kissed him back and held his face in both hands.

"We should go back," I said.

"In a minute."

"They're going to worry."

"Let them worry." He pulled me closer. His arm around my waist, my head on his shoulder, and we sat on the rock and looked at the lake. Two boys on a frozen shore in the last days of December, holding the word between them like something they'd built together, something that belonged to both of them, something that was finally out in the open where it could breathe.

"Hey, Alex."

"Yeah."

"I love you."

"I know."

"Just practicing."

"Practice all you want."

He smiled.

"Hey," Liam said. He shifted, reached into his coat pocket. "I lied to you."