If Sabine had a plan, a railing, anything, the whole thing is splintering apart because as much of her wants to hold on to some control for him, no part wants to hold herself apart from him. When Jack is crying into her shoulder, and the breath he pulls in has the same jagged edges as his tears, as the miasma of words before it, as the look in his eyes when he pulls back and stares at her—

a well of darkness in the eyes she knows better than her own
—and then he pushes back in, and it's a collision of lips, teeth, and noses, and Sabine feels the bubble in her blood, in the back of her head, that would be a laugh if her mouth weren't already busy. Graceless is fine. Messy is fine. Because the only thought that hits with the impact is that there's a jarring r e a l i t y to it.

Stubble and wetness on his cheek under the hand that's moved from his neck to there, and this? This is real. Not a memory she's taken from their childhood. From the smallest of tattered scraps of a dream remembered. It's not out of place—no part of it—Stolen. Changed. Rewritten. Taken without any shared understanding and only her own iron faith he'd be able to find it. The discrepancy. (Her.)

Sabine pushes on her toes and pulls him into her even harder. Letting everything else fall, and fall, and fall, like all that broken glass and water (and memories) they left behind. Gives herself to just this. The one thing she's wanted most in so many years—the only one.