Her words had been sharp, almost defensive. “I don’t like being touched,” she had told him more than once, as if the declaration alone was enough to keep distance intact. He believed her, or at least he tried to, until the moment her hand reached across without warning. Her fingers brushed his wrist lightly, not gripping, not holding—just drawing.
It was slow, almost absent-minded at first, a lazy pattern that could have been mistaken for distraction. But then the movement became deliberate—small circles etched against his skin, each one slower than the last, as though she was testing how far she could go without being called out. He watched her mouth stay still, her eyes focused elsewhere, pretending as if nothing had changed. Yet her fingers betrayed her, tracing invisible marks like confessions she couldn’t speak.
By the time she pulled away, the silence between them had already deepened. Her words about distance felt hollow now, undermined by the warmth still throbbing where she had touched him. It wasn’t the circles themselves that unsettled him, but the contradiction—the way her actions burned against the memory of her warning. She had said she hated being touched, but the truth was written in the way her hand lingered: what she hated was admitting how much she wanted to.