The cider has been watered down with lemonade and isn’t very alcoholic. All the same, I look down at Ryah fifteen minutes later and see her eyes slowly closing and opening.
“Sleepy?” I murmur.
“Mm. But I don’t want to go to bed. It’s too perfect right here.”
Ryah shivers, and I let go of her hand and wrap my arm around her shoulders. She nestles closer to me on the blanket. She’s right. It’s perfect just here. Her lashes are dark against her cheeks and she leans fully into me. The trust she’s put in me this year is the most precious thing I’ve ever known. I want more from her, so much more, but trust is such a fragile thing, built in thin, delicate layers day by day, sliver by sliver. What if I destroy it with my hunger for her?
One by one, everyone drifts off to bed. Ryah is fast asleep against me, and I watch the flames flickering as the bonfire dies, and the shadows flickering over her face. Through the thin, high clouds, the moon is slipping down over the horizon. It’s tempting to lay right down here and hold her until I’m asleep, too, but there will be a hard frost by morning.
Gently, I ease myself to my feet and then pick her up in my arms. Ryah doesn’t wake until I’ve got her into the house.
“I can walk,” she mumbles sleepily, her cheek against my chest, as I carry her up the stairs.
“Where’s your room?” I whisper, not letting go of her. She tells me. When we reach her bedroom I nudge the door open with my shoulder and then set her on her feet by her bed. Ryah steps on the heels of her sneakers to pull them off and then reaches for the blankets.
“Hey. Take your coat off,” I whisper.
“Too sleepy.”
“You won’t sleep properly if you don’t take your coat off.” I reach for the buttons and undo them, and help her out of the heavy garment. Her eyes are open now, and luminous in the darkness.
She reaches up with a forefinger and traces my lower lip.
I’m transfixed by her touch. By taking her clothes off. I want to keep going, until she’s naked before me and I can pull her against me.
I want to, but I can’t do anything. My muscles feel like they’re solid metal.
When I don’t move, she gets between the blankets and draws her legs up until she’s in a tight little ball. I stare down at her for a moment, and then tuck the blankets around her. The night is freezing and the radiators won’t come on until six in the morning. All that’s visible of Ryah when I’ve put another quilt over her is her eyes and nose. I think she’s fallen back asleep already.
Softly, in the darkness, I say, “I know you find it strange, that I don’t throw the last knife.” I stay where I am a moment, taking one last look at her sleeping form.
“You will when you’re ready,” she whispers.
Snow falls just before Christmas, and Ryah and I take Dandelion and Jareth on long hacks along the bridleways that thread through the hills. I show her all the places I used to play as a boy and tell her about the mischief I would get up to on this farm or that friend’s house. She tells me about her first memories, of horses towering over her and being lipped on the shoulders by their velvet muzzles. Of her mother baking scones when times were happier, and being taken to visit her grandparents. We both seem determined to revisit only good memories, and I steer us far away from Red Hill.
Christmas is an excuse to eat and drink far too much and play silly games wearing paper hats. I have a present for Ryah hidden in my pocket all day, waiting for a quiet moment to give it to her. We do a Kris Kringle among the performers, and everyone gives one present and gets one present. Everyone has something for Mum and Dad; bottles of homemade strawberry wine bought from a farmer’s market, knitted socks or tins of pecan fudge.
In the middle of the afternoon when most people have wandered off for a nap, I pass Ryah coming back from the kitchen.
“Hey. I’ve got something for you. For being my partner.”
Ryah smiles up at me delightedly. “I’ve got something for you too. Wait here.”
She runs upstairs and comes down again a moment later with a package wrapped in brown paper and red ribbon. “I was going to give you this on New Year’s, to celebrate the year ahead, but now is good, too.”
I unwrap the package and find two figures about five inches high. One is wearing a black suit and shirt and has red sequined suspenders. The other has on a red sparkling catsuit. She’s sewn wool hair and embroidered little faces on the figures to make them look like us. I turn them over in my hands, grinning. “These are amazing. I love them.”
Ryah shrugs, smiling up at me. “They’re just for fun. I liked making them and I thought they’d look cute in your wagon.”
I lay them carefully aside on the hall table and then dig a small box out of my pocket. “I didn’t wrap it,” I say apologetically. “I thought it looked kind of nice like this.”
Ryah gazes in surprise as the dark wine velvet as I put it into her hands. She just stares at it.
“Oh, wow,” she says softly, stroking the fabric.
“Open it,” I prompt her.
She hesitates for a moment, and then pulls the lid back. Inside is a raw moonstone necklace, three pendants on silver chains of different lengths. The chunks of baby blue stones are slightly iridescent. It’s not an expensive gift. Moonstones aren’t in the order of diamonds. They’re not even in the order of opals or jade, but they are beautiful.