Just to sit with our fingers entwined, close enough that our breath mingled, was enjoyable. A gentle warmth radiated through my chest, melting away all the stress and trauma of the last few days, if only for a moment.

“Do you think they’re ugly?” I asked as his fingers found the jagged scar that trailed down my wrist, courtesy of a lynx I’d caught in a snare one summer. “The scars, I mean. There are more you didn’t see on my stomach and back. I guess I never thought about them until today, because my family, well, everybody in my family is just scar tissue at this point. That’s all they’re held together by—things that happened in the past, that left a mark, that they carry with them. And all I can do is try keeping them sewn together.”

“When I saw your scars, I wasn’t even thinking about whether they were ugly or not, Toma. I was just thinking how sad it was that you suffered through all this alone. But I suppose you weren’t really alone.” His fingers were so warm against my arm, as if the same sparks that tingled in my stomach had also found their way into his bloodstream. “I’m not going to lie to you and say I think they’re pretty. I think they’re what makes you human. They show that you’ve lived so much more than—” he gestured at the skyline “—than this. And I think that’s beautiful in its own right, and far more intriguing.”

Something slowly loosened inside me, like a clenched muscle I hadn’t known existed until this moment. If he’d told me he found the scars beautiful, I never would have believed him. These words were real. They came from the heart, and the relief they gave me went so much deeper than any strained compliment.

“Tell me about this one,” he murmured, tracing his thumb over the scar that curved along the base of my wrist bone.

Feeling my cheeks heat up, I found my voice. “The first time I caught a lynx in a trap, I tried to release it.”

“Ah, that couldn’t have gone well.”

I chuckled. “It didn’t.”

“Something tells me that lynx got off with a whole lot worse than just a tiny scar.”

“Oh, of course.” I rolled my eyes. “It ended up as a hat.”

“What about these?” Easing up my sleeve, he followed the warpath of pale pocks left over from thorns or splinters. His touch was slow and teasing, lingering on each gouge and pinprick.

I blushed, my breath catching in my throat as his palm cradled my forearm. I couldn’t feel his skin’s heat anymore—it was the same temperature now as my own, as if by the second, the barrier between our bodies was slowly dissolving.

“I got caught in a thistle patch, I think,” I said, although the truth was that I couldn’t remember how it had happened, only that it had been so long ago, that it could have come from the before time.