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Chloe doesn’t lean into the kiss.
The eager brush of Max’s lips against hers is a spark of something she once knew. The same buzz that emanates from her lighter, when it’s running low on fluid but still trying to catch its former flame.
It’s familiar. Way too familiar.
Chloe can’t indulge in instinct. Can’t bite Max’s lower lip, or bring her hands to Max’s hips, or press Max’s wrists against her bedsheets.
It’s an instinct from a different timeline, a different life entirely. And Chloe has been wrought against foreign waters, to lives unknown.
In other words, this— the flirting, the night swimming, the sleepovers, whatever— is fine. Max is sweet and clueless and experimenting. It’s cute. It’s innocent. It’s nothing.
It isn’t her .
And Chloe knows that, as soon as she lets the waters of old routine flow over her, her eyes will flutter shut and she won’t be seeing Max anymore. And that’s not fair to anyone. Not to Max. Especially not to Rachel, waiting for her somewhere.
All of this, firing and flickering within an instant as Max springs onto her tiptoes and Chloe feels Rachel’s clothes press against her.
***
Chloe backs away, and there is only a half of a second of agape silence between them.
Max sees it, somehow, in her widened eyes. A flicker of refracted light in the blue of her irises. Spilled lighter fluid.
The moment flutters like a butterfly’s wing before either of them can catch it, and routine absorbs them within its warm embrace. Jokes and redirections are traded, winks and giggles, all of it becoming innocent and meaningless.
But the “Damn” that passes through Chloe’s lips after she stumbles backward, natural as a breath after emerging from cold waters, pierces Max so harshly it lodges and sticks.
They’ve been so many things, over the years. Pirates. Criminals. Partners in time. But never this. Max has never had this with anyone, but Chloe’s lips graze hers and something falls into place.
She feels guilty about it, afterwards. But, without thinking, she is rewinding this moment, over and over. Each kiss hungrier, greedier. Each stumble backwards harsher, each moment afterwards lingering a fraction longer.
Each time, as natural as clockwork, that “ Damn ” that leaves the both of them breathless.
And, yet, each time, it is only a moment. Reduced to a wink and a punchline. Warren’s name broaches the air between them and makes Max shudder.
Each time, those blue eyes darken and flicker away, accompanied with a wavering smile before she turns and she’s gone, as fragile as the kiss they shared, or the flap of a butterfly’s wing.