Fic - with your progress stretched out for miles (Sophie Devereaux) 4/5

[abvj]

[F O U R]

Sophie didn’t expect to hear from him after that and she didn’t for a long while. After Paris, she headed to the South of France, after that it was the Caymans, and later, South America. There were men, of course. Lovely, handsome, very rich men who Sophie spent her time both seducing and stealing precious art and money from. She enjoyed nearly every second of it - the planning, the attention, that same thrill of adrenaline that settled at the base of her spine when she pulled off the plan perfectly. But it was different. It felt different.

For the first time since she was eleven years-old, the whole routine was starting to feel worn. For the first time since she met Gabrielle, her life was starting to feel dull, trite. The cons were too easy, the marks all the same in one way or another.

She was in Panama when she heard about William.

Sophie stayed in contact out of necessity to keep up Charlotte's appearances. There were letters here and there, strategically planned phone calls that was always placed when she knew the family would be out and never lasted more than thirty seconds. Except one day his mother picked up the phone and Sophie was so startled she stuttered, the Latina dropping from her accent, her shoulders squaring until she was Charlotte again, until she felt confident enough to speak without giving anything away. Sophie could barely make out the words behind the tears of the other woman that started as soon as Sophie uttered a quiet hello, but she picked up enough to understand the severity of the situation: William wrapped his car around a tree in Nottingham two days ago. The funeral was on Sunday. Everyone had been desperately trying to contact her. They were anxious to know if she was coming home.

Abandoning the con she was just a day away from completing, Sophie returned to Europe a year after leaving Nate in a French hospital.

She returned to London and the flat she still kept there in Charlotte's name instead of Istanbul with Tara or India with Marcus - both of whom were knee deep in two separate cons and had asked for her help, and both of whom she had denied. Sophie dug out the wedding band she buried in the back of her safe years before and wore black to the funeral. She sat numbly between Charlotte’s mother-in-law and William's favorite aunt, her legs crossed at the ankles, her hands tightly wound in her lap. She tried not to feel guilty over so many things and was surprised at how much she missed William when she allowed herself to. She was even more surprised that the tears that stung her eyes and wet her cheeks were genuine.

Days later, after she had grieved and mourned the loss of a man who, Sophie mused, she probably would have loved had she been a different woman, William’s mother begrudgingly informed her that he had left her everything. Sophie's fingers tightened around the porcelain cup of tea in her hands, her eyes widening slightly.

"Oh, don't look so surprised, dear," his mother bristled. Her tone wasn’t kind and it wasn’t grief-stricken, either. Sophie knew enough about this family to realize the glare, the coldness most definitely meant that they blamed her and her departure for William drinking himself into an early grave. "He loved you very much."

There was a beat, a pull of silence that lasted too long and stretched Sophie’s nerves too thin. She painstakingly planned her next words before she spoke them.

"Then why did he stray, Mama? Why did he lie?" she asked because it was something Charlotte needed to know, because it was something Sophie wanted to know. She just was not sure which was more pressing in that moment.

William's mother bit the inside of her cheek the way William used to when he was mulling something over, when he was choosing the exact right thing to say. He was always best at that - saying exactly the right thing at exactly the right time. Sophie and he were alike in that way. The only difference was that for William it was an art, an innate gift. With Sophie it was just an act, an ability she had spent years perfecting and tailoring to her specific needs so she could manipulate and bend people to her will.

"Why did you not stay and try to mend your marriage? Why were you so quick to abandon your vows? We could play this game for hours and still have no answers, Charlotte. And don't scowl like that. Your guilt is pointless now."

Erasing all emotion from her face, Sophie just breathed and sipped her tea, planned an exit strategy in the back of her mind. It would be all too easy to take William’s family for everything they were worth or to just simply take her fair share, really, but instead she did nothing. Slipped out of their lives, and back into her own. Ignored the guilt and heartbreak, the way her gut twisted every time she thought of William, of what she did to him, of what she drove him to do.

It didn’t take her long to leave London for places abroad. She spent weeks wandering the streets of Paris that she had inhabited a dozen times over years before. One afternoon Sophie found herself returning to the building that once housed the flat she had shared with Gabrielle all those years ago. Now it was only a crumbling structure filled with vacant offices. It was a rare moment, as she stood on the cobblestones and stared upwards at the fifth floor, that she remembered her old friend. She remembered how much fun they had together, and thought, not for the first time, what may have happened to her after Sophie disappeared in the middle of the night. There were a million possibilities and they all passed before Sophie’s eyes in a gray haze, each one more horrible than the one before.

Of course, Annie Kroy had friends in high places, Charlotte, too, and it would be relatively easy for Sophie to find out the truth if she cared to look hard enough.

But the thought of Gabrielle rotting away in some French prison turns her stomach even more than the thought of William drinking himself to death because his Charlotte didn't love him enough to stay.

Sophie was not sure what that meant, wasn’t accustomed to feeling guilt over the things she did or left undone, so she buried the feelings the best she could. Celebrated Tara's biggest payday to date in Morocco. Runs The Mona Lisa Variant with Marcus in Poland. For the first time in years she picked up a paintbrush and constructed a replication of Degas' The Bellelli Family; she used it to swipe the original from a museum in Paris, and started to feel a little bit more like herself.

Of course, that was the exact moment that Nathan Ford decided to re-enter her life.

He found her at a cafe a few blocks away from the hotel she was currently residing in, sliding into the seat across from her as if he had a right, as if he belonged there.

"Somebody stole a Degas last week. You wouldn't know anything about that would you?" Nate asked in lieu of a greeting. Sophie smiled around the rim of her teacup.

"Of course not. What do you take me for?"

Nate chuckled, settling back in his seat. "A thief."

"Well," she grinned, and quite liked how easily they fell back into old patterns. "There is that."

"If you hand it over, I won't arrest you right here and now."

Leaning forward, she set her cup to the side, used her index finger to slide her sunglasses to the tip of her nose. "What makes you so sure I have it?"

"It's how I found you."

Her eyebrow raised in challenge. "So you admit you were looking?"

Nate didn’t take the bait. He almost never did. "It's my job to look for you, Sophie."

The smile spreading across his mouth was smug because he thought he had her cornered even though he didn’t. Even though all it would take was a simple distraction, a small twist of her mouth just the right way to cause him to break eye contact by looking down or away, and she would have been gone in a blink of the eye. She remained still. Sophie listened as he presented the terms of the deal he came to broker: Sophie would hand over the painting, naturally, and instead of Nate dragging her off to prison, she flew to Tuscany with him. There, they would run a con on a man he suspected was committing insurance fraud by staging thefts of his art, and then auctioning them off to the highest bidder on the black market.

It could be a trap for all she knew. It could be a ploy at getting her to break the law one more time just so he could swoop in at the right moment and pin something on her that would stick a little longer in a court of law. While she didn’t trust Nate enough to say that his intentions were purely genuine, she did trust her own instincts. She trusted in the fact that he had plenty of opportunities to turn her in - including that time almost two years ago when she shot him without a second thought - and never had. So, instead of arguing with him, instead of wasting her time by trying to make an escape, she reached for her cup of tea, smiled over the rim, and shrugged carelessly as if to say why not?

In Tuscany they spent days doing recon. They spent a week convincing the mark that Sophie was interested in paying more than generously for a painting of his, and another week waiting for him to stage the robbery, submit the insurance claim, and try to sell the painting. As far as jobs went, it was one of the easiest cons she had participated in recently. It did little to challenge her, but she was in Tuscany and Nate, she found, wasn’t terrible company when he was not trying to catch her for a silly little crime like art theft, so she made do with the cards she was dealt, and gave a more than worthy performance.

Nate had Interpol apprehend the mark on a Friday afternoon, saving IYS millions of dollars in the process. By Friday evening, she was plying him with some very expensive whiskey at a very nice restaurant she practically had to drag him to while working very hard to convince him to spin her around the dance floor at least once. Eventually he conceded grudgingly, but Sophie was not deterred and led him in a subtle dance under the stars, the Tuscan heat still warming her skin so late into the night. She was wearing a green dress that fit tightly, her hair pulled back, her smile genuine. After a while of growing accustomed to each other, Nate’s fingers felt right on the bare skin of her back, his breath brushing her face as he leaned in too closely.

He smelt like whiskey - warm, thick, burning - and she mused he probably tasted like it too.

“This was fun,” she murmured. The stereo blared an Italian song about finding love in all the wrong places, the voice beautiful, the lyrics heartbreaking. Sophie found herself smiling at the irony. Nate made an appreciative sound in the back of his throat and they were so close she could feel the vibrations sink into her skin.

“This was a one time deal,” he told her. His voice was businesslike, but he didn’t pull away. The smooth tips of his fingers danced along her spine. She idly wondered if he realized he was only lying to himself. “Don’t mistake this for something it isn’t.”

As she pulled back to glance at him, Sophie found herself chuckling softly. “Of course not,” she said innocently, shaking her head in a way that made him aware she didn’t believe him in the slightest. Nate’s gaze dropped from her eyes to her mouth and back again and it made her smile, really, because she was not even trying. She hardly ever had to try with him.

Out of all the things she liked about Nathan Ford, of all the things she liked about this arrangement they seemed to have, that was what she appreciated the most.

Before they parted ways, Sophie stole the painting back from him. She rationalized that it was his fault for not hiding it properly from her in the first place. Whether it was out of spite or just simply to give him another reason to chase her, she didn’t know.

When he contacted her a few weeks later with a note that simply read: I need a favor. Berlin, she found she didn’t much care.

*

Despite choosing the first apartment he stumbles upon, Nate still finds himself in her hotel room for dinner almost every night, his feet propped up on the coffee table, prospective client files spread between them on the couch. Sophie sips wine, and Nate’s glass of whiskey is balanced annoyingly on the edge of the white couch, leaving a faint brown circle as a reminder. Sophie would say something snide just to goad him into an argument if she wasn’t on her fourth glass of Merlot. If they hadn’t been celebrating finally finding an appropriate office space that fit all five of their personalities, that was smack dab in the center of the city so no matter where the others ended up, they would all be equal distance from their home base.

She definitely would have bitten out a soft, half-irritated do you mind? if his left arm wasn’t resting comfortably behind her shoulders, his fingers drawing tiny circles into the skin at the nape of her neck. Instead, she leans slightly into his touch, sighing something content as he flips through yet another file and she folds the corner of one of the pages in her magazine before tossing it to the side and reaching for another.

Nate reaches for her with his other hand, skimming along the slender line of her foot for a moment before allowing it to fall to his lap. “Planning a vacation?”

“Not exactly,” she murmurs, the words sounding like a gentle hum in the back of her throat. She sips her wine quietly, reaching forward to pour herself another glass. On the TV, The Thin Man plays softly. Nick is telling Nora that his only type is lanky brunettes with wicked jaws; she and Nate glance at each other for a long moment, their mouths curling at the corners on cue, before he reaches forward to the magazine she discarded earlier, flipping through the pages she earmarked.

“Burundi, Mauritania, Nepal,” Nate mumbles as he turns the pages. Sophie lingers on a picture in her own magazine with a sandy beach and water as blue as the sky. She earmarks that as well before moving on.

“All places without extradition treaties,” she supplies and his fingers still against the skin of her neck as he regards her softly.

“You have something you’d like to share?”

“No. Just…” She pauses and considers. Starts again with, “Just thinking about the future, I guess.”

“Exit strategies?” he asks and Sophie knows that the bite behind his words is instinctive. She doesn’t take offense to it now even though the Sophie of yesteryears would have let the words, the anger and disappointment laced between the lines drive them even farther apart. Now laughter bubbles in the back of her throat.

“Contingency plans,” she corrects with a crooked smile.

He calms a little bit at that, his fingers returning to the soft skin of her neck, the circles small and deliberate. “We’re a little too young to be thinking about retirement, don’t you think?” he asks after a long moment and she tosses the magazine to the side and takes another long swallow of her wine.

Sophie isn’t exactly sure how to explain it to him - mostly because she isn’t exactly sure what she’s feeling. She’s happy here, with him, with the job, with the team. Despite being halfway across the world, Parker and Hardison still send her texts filled with pictures of diamonds and pearls and all the art they steal and then, mournfully and reluctantly, put back. This morning she woke to an email from Eliot. It was short, to the point, but the sentiment behind his just checking in resonated. She’s antsy for their return, to dive back into the work. This is what she does. This is what she is good at and that will never change. She’s a grifter, for better for worse.

Still, she glances towards her bedroom, her suitcases still mostly packed and standing upright near the door. Nate chose the first place he laid eyes on, bought new furniture, appliances, hung Sam’s drawing and dug his heels in, readied himself for the long haul. Sophie’s finding the adjustment a little tough to swallow, goes through the motions of looking at the classifieds, circling prospective homes, but never following through.

Spring in Portland brings rain, dense early morning fog and it reminds her too much of London, of the life she had once upon of time, of all the things she’s spent a lifetime trying to forget. Less than a month ago she helped Nate bury his father, parts of his past he’s been carrying with him as a reminder, and she couldn’t help but realize, now after the dust has settled and they’re surviving the aftermath, that this can’t go on forever.

This, too, will come to an end. It’s inevitable. She’s always been the more practical of the two. She just hides it with distraction - a disarming smile, a flash of teeth, a well-tuned accent.

“We’re not nearly as young as we think we are, Nate,” she says at last, her smile tight, horribly wistful as she glances at him. Sophie thinks about the beginnings of things more than she used to - theirs, hers, Sophie Devereaux’s. It leaves something bitter in the back of her throat. She smiles wider around it. “And this is not going to last forever.”

She fully expects him to pull away at that, to ask her if she’s ready to quit, if she wants to be here, if she’s committed. But instead he nods, the fingers at the nape of neck dropping to her side, skimming her legs until they stumble upon the jut of bone at her ankle. He understands the validity of her words now more than ever.

For the first time since San Lorenzo, since he leaned in to kiss her and nothing outside of his lips on hers and his hands fisted in her hair existed, they’re on the same page in all aspects of their lives. It excites her just as much as his hands on her and the way he looks at her now with parted lips and dark eyes, like he can’t wait to get her out of her clothes and into bed.

“What do you got?” he asks and she stares at his hands on her skin for a long moment before turning her attention to his face, smiling as his fingers slip under her jeans, tracing the slender line of her calf, the tender skin behind her knee. The shiver is an involuntary response and she hides it the best she can. The way his mouth tugs upward smugly tells her she didn’t do a very good job.

“Russia, obviously.”

“Too cold,” he replies, making a face. His fingers skim down until they encircle her ankle again and linger. “Saudi Arabia?”

“Not a good idea,” she tells him, her smile guilty but proud. “There was a sheik and, well,” she pauses, reaches for her wine again and takes a long sip. “It’s best if we just stay away from there. In fact, it’s probably best if we stay away from the Middle East in general.” Nate is smiling at her again and she hides her own behind the glass between her fingers. “Cote?”

“Because we’d fit so well in the heart of Africa?” He chuckles, eyebrow raised. His hands leave her legs to reach for his drink. She misses the weight of his touch almost immediately. “There’s always San Lorenzo.”

There is a shared smile and a memory flows through her mind, blurred around the edges, hazy with tacky technicolor. It’s a good memory. “We do have some friends there,” she concurs conspiratorially. “It’s a shame they named a girls’ school after me -”

“And put your name on the royal note,” he added, raising his glass to her in a mock salute. He buries his grin behind his glass, the whiskey coating his lips. “We’ve managed with less.”

“Rebecca could have a long-lost twin sister…”

“It is a small world.”

They laugh softly together, the sound gradually fading and lapsing into silence as the movie continues to play in the background. He’s watching her and she’s acutely aware, her hands tightening and releasing at her sides before reaching for his drink, her fingers brushing his as she takes it from him and he allows her. It bites and burns on the way down and she winces and tries not to hate the smug, self-satisfied smirk that tugs at his mouth in response. It falls shortly there after, and she rises in her seat in an effort to set the glass to the side as his lips press into a thin line.

“You’ll let me know when you’re ready?” he says and she knows he means it as a statement, but the question, the uncertainty lingers between the words.

Nate’s not looking at her then and she hates that more than the doubt, so she reaches for him, her palm flattening against his cheek, her smile warm and certain enough for the both of them.

“Of course,” she breathes softly, and before the words are even finished leaving her mouth he’s leaning in, his lips brushing against hers, his fingers tangling in her hair.

His kiss is soft, learned, easy, but his fingers tighten and pull as if he’s trying to anchor himself, as if he’s afraid to let her go. There is a sigh that he swallows whole. It is soft and content because she loves this; she loves him - even if she isn’t ready to admit such things aloud quite yet. Even if she knows he isn’t ready to hear them. The way he kisses her like he’s drinking her in, like he’s been thinking about this and her all day, takes the breath right out of her.

In the beginning, she made him work for it, drew out the moment until he was just on the verge of begging, but today, here and now, she’s scrambling over him with every bit of elegance and grace she possess, a jean-clad thigh on either one of his. She kisses him soundly, the mere flick of her tongue telling him everything she wants and needs, her teeth biting on his bottom lip until she elicits a moan that causes arousal to coil and ignite dangerously inside her. His hands slip under cotton, skim the bone of her ribs, the underside of her breast. She moans and sighs at once, her lips slipping to his cheek, to the soft skin where slight bone meets neck.

“Tell me you want me,” she says, just a breath of words near his ear then and he buries his face in her hair, his fingers working steadily on the button of her jeans, slipping inside without any preamble. When she pulls back he’s looking at her openly, wantonly, and the angle is awkward, his shoulder still in repair, but he manages to slip his hands between her thighs, under the cotton of her panties.

Nate’s thumb brushes against her clit the exact moment he murmurs, “I’ve always wanted you, Soph,” and it’s too much all at once.

It is almost always too much with him.

She loses herself in him completely and after they lay there for a long time, curled around each other on the couch, joking about how they’re getting entirely too old for such things. She’s straddling the line between sleep and consciousness. He’s talking to her about football or some sport-like thing she couldn’t care less about because their movie has ended and he has a late-night ESPN ritual just like almost every other American male she’s known. She remembers, then, as the sportscasters argue about something incredibly insignificant, that her birthday is tomorrow.

Hers. Not Sophie’s or Charlotte’s or Annie’s. Hers.

There is a quiet moment, with Nate’s palm splayed against her hip, his lips pressing against her forehead as he curls into her more closely, as he presses his body to hers so every single piece of them is touching, where she thinks about telling him.

She doesn’t, of course. There will always be parts of her, secrets she’s spent a lifetime burying, that she will never feel comfortable sharing.

Sophie thinks he of all people would understand.

*

After Berlin there was Belize, after that it was Argentina. Later, there was Paris, again, Mumbai, St. Petersburg. She and Nate fell into a routine that was inexplicably unshakeable. She still ran and he still chased, but somewhere along the way the line that separated right from wrong, the line that defined them as two completely separate entities grew dim, blurry even. Eventually, Sophie was toeing it from muscle memory alone because she could barely see it, found herself constantly questioning whether it even existed any longer. He would contact her when he needed her help, always seeming to know exactly where she was at any given time. She would never admit to anyone but herself, but she quite liked the idea of him keeping track of her. Liked to imagine him mapping out her locations by marking pinpoints on a map he kept on his office wall or folded in a briefcase. She liked the idea of him keeping her close.

When he called, she went to him because, well, there were a variety of reasons, but mostly she played along with his games because it was fun. Because running cons with Nate replicated the exhilarating thrill she felt in that café near Buckingham Palace all those years ago, the one that had since faded over the years as the cons became tired, as her way of life became surprisingly dull.

By the time Sophie had met Nate she had more money than she knew what to do with. There were storage lockers strategically placed all over the world and filled to the brim with all the things she had stolen over the years. She had a collection of priceless art and antiquities that she could not ever put on display and fully admire because then people would know she had them and that posed all sorts of problems.

Sophie also helped Nate con petty criminals into making stupid mistakes because it gave her a newfound sense of purpose. She helped Nate because after a job well done he always poured her a drink of something that still burned on the way down after all these years, and told her some very true things about himself - things about Maggie, about Sam, about his father, about who he was way back when. Things she already knew, had already guessed, but had greater meaning as they passed his mouth and fell between them, as she watched him talk of the things he loved most.

There are some very true things she told him during their time together, too. About jobs she had allegedly completed, people she had allegedly scammed. She left times, places, and names out of the equation, though. She didn’t mention Tara or Marcus. She definitely didn’t tell Nate anything real about herself, about the family she left behind, about her father and Gabrielle, how they aided her in becoming the person she was. Sophie didn’t mention to Nate how often she wondered if she was simply a product of her environment or if her natural ability to lie, cheat, and steal her way through life was something that had been ingrained within her since birth.

Sophie thought about mentioning William once, on the second anniversary of his death, but the timing wasn’t right, the guilt still tasted bitter on the back of her throat when she thought of him. Mostly, Sophie knew speaking the truth regarding that one, single lie amongst so many would reveal too much.

Somewhere in the midst of all the running and chasing and conning, Sophie fell for Nate and suspected that he fell for her a little bit too. But that wasn’t who they were, that wasn’t what they were meant to be to each other, so she turned the lies on herself and locked the feelings away, meant to be forgotten and remain untouched. Sophie only allowed herself to play the torturous game of what if during lonely nights. During those long stretches of time when she didn’t hear from him, when life slowed down to a near halt and all she was left with were the lies she had told, the personas she had created, and no idea who she truly was underneath it all.

The last con they ran together brought them back to Damascus.

Nate called and she packed her bag and took the first flight out, smiling when she found him just outside the airport, his weight supported against the taxi as he waited for her. He smiled back, but the lines forming at the corners of his mouth and across his forehead told her that something was wrong. Over the years, as they had grown to know one another, Sophie had come to the conclusion that Nate was a better liar and thief than he knew, than most people even realized, but now she knew him too well for him to be able to hide even the littlest thing from her.

As they slid into the back seat of the taxi, he sat too far away, his fingers avoiding hers as he passed her a file. Nate explained the details of the job ahead in clipped, quiet tones. He removed his sunglasses and rubbed at the bridge of his nose as he talked, as he explained the intricate details of his plan to her. As far as cons went, it was probably the least complicated scam they had ever run, and as the taxi took a left turn and their hotel loomed in the distance, she wondered why he had called her, why he hadn’t just run this one of his own.

She said nothing, however; she didn’t dare question him or his methods when he was completely closed off to her. Only mumbled her thanks as he held the door for her, as he checked them into the hotel and followed her into the elevator. His hands ghosted the small of her back, out of appearances’ sake for the smallest moment before she watched him pull back in the reflection of the elevator doors so quickly, as if he had been stung.

They spent a total of four days in Damascus. She would barely be able to remember the intricate details of the con years later except for the fact that they pulled it off - Nate was good at what he did, Sophie better, and neither of them ever lost unless they were playing each other. Even then, she mused, it wasn’t even entirely fair or honest, so she wasn’t sure it truly counted.

Years down the line, Sophie wouldn’t remember the con or the mark - two things she was notorious about filing away as keepsakes, as reminders of her victories.

No, instead all she would remember would be the after, that final night they spent together.

Over the years, the chase between Sophie and Nate became something akin to a routine, the cons they ran together a respite, just another tiny detail in a very complex, never-ending cycle. Buried in the details was a tradition that started after that very first job in Tuscany - a celebratory dinner afterwards. Drinks. A dance or two. They joked. They laughed. They enjoyed each other’s company. They argued over their favorite cons - Nate had a soft spot for The Wire because of the intensity of it, because it pushed the limits; Sophie’s favorite was The Nigerian because she loved to watch somebody drown in their own greed - their favorite artists, their mutual affinity for black and white films even though Casablanca always left a sour taste in their mouths. They talked about everything except the lives they led separately from each other, from here and now.

It was a cardinal rule that remained unspoken between them.

Damascus was no different, really, except it almost entirely was. When Sophie found him in the hotel’s restaurant that last night he was mostly drunk, his fingers curled tightly around the glass in his hands as if it were his anchor, his lifeline. She made a joke, but it fell flat, and she watched as he motioned for another drink without turning his head towards the bartender, his eyes focused solely on her.

For the first time in all the years she had known him he didn’t bother to mask his emotions. His face was a crystal clear picture of lust, want, and, most of all, need.

It left her breathless. Sophie’s hands tightened and released into fists at her sides, but she didn’t falter, didn’t give in. Instead, she raised a hand and allowed her fingertips to draw softly over the strong line of his shoulders as she moved into a seat next to him at the bar, watched as his eyes fell closed, as he leaned into her touch for the smallest moment.

Sophie should have liked him like that - open, honest, raw - but she didn’t. This was not the Nate she knew. This was not the Nate she had grown to love in her own twisted, manipulative way. She grabbed the drink he had set to the side and finished it in a single, solitary gulp just so she had something to do with her mouth and hands.

During dinner, Nate broke their rule and pressed her for information he knew she wasn’t willing to offer. Not about the heists she was known for a world over or past indiscretions, but about her family. He asked about the father she had only mentioned one, the mother she had never mentioned at all, and the siblings she remembered, but wished she didn’t because remembering hurt too much. The less she offered him in the way of the truth, the angrier he became, and when they danced he held her at arms length, but the fingers of his left hand dug into the fabric at her hip and lingered.

Eventually he either gave up or realized the battle could not be won, not that night, and after a song or two he loosened his hold and pulled her closer. The song ended, the beat switching to something softer, simpler, and Nate acknowledged the transition, tilted his head downwards, into the crook of her neck. Sophie swore she felt his lips brush against skin, just once, just for the briefest of moments, before he pulled back up to look at her.

“This is probably going to be the last time you see me for a while,” he murmured.

Around them couples were dancing, kissing; husbands and boyfriends alike leaned in to whisper sweet nothings into their woman’s ears. Sophie focused solely on Nate and understood what that night was, finally, and hated herself for missing the signs, for feeling blindsided as Nate looked at her, his mouth twisting into a smile that was both kind and sad.

This was their goodbye.

The knowledge hit her like a storm, but she didn’t show it. Sophie didn’t allow the confusion to set in or the heartbreak either, merely held his eye contact and allowed her mouth to quirk upwards and around her quiet, “Oh?”

There was more he wanted to say, things he wanted to tell her. Sophie could see it on his face, in his eyes, in the way his mouth opened and closed before his hand left hers and reached for a stray piece of hair, tucking it gingerly behind her ear. He wanted to kiss her then. She could see that too. She had seen the look on his face many times before, but Nate was usually very good at reining in his emotions, only allowing them to flicker before shutting them down completely. Nate was a good man underneath the rough exterior, usually honest when it counted the most. That night he failed to do it, to strictly adhere to his moral compass. His fingers grazed her cheek, the curve of her jaw; his eyes flicked towards her mouth every single chance he had. He made a noise in the back of his throat that turned her insides out, unnerved her and set her on edge.

Sophie wanted to kiss him too, reached up and covered the hand resting against her cheek with her own, leaned into his touch completely. Nate shuddered at the contact of her skin against his. His sharp intake of breath was audible even over the conversation and music and the sound of her heart drumming in her ears.

It would have been so easy to just lean in, to kiss him, to feel his mouth move under hers, but she didn’t. Sophie didn’t kiss him because there was a finality in that moment, in that night, in the entire past four days they had spent together and she didn’t want to ruin the idea she had of him in her mind, the one of the honest man who did the right thing.

Mostly, though, Sophie didn’t want to turn him into this sort of liar. She didn’t kiss him because she knew he would kiss her back - she could already feel the weight of his mouth against hers, could already taste the bit of whiskey on his lips- and she didn’t want him to have to carry the weight of his actions. She also didn’t want to be the woman who turned him into the type of man who disobeyed vows and broke promises he’d had every intention of keeping until he met her.

Sophie didn’t kiss him because if she crossed that line, if she pushed him past that line, she didn’t want to know what type of person that made her. For better or worse, Sophie was a thief and a liar, always would be, but she never wanted to be that woman. She didn’t want to be that woman to him.

Nate pulled away at just the right moment, his fingers dropping from her face to skim the soft skin at her shoulder, the line of her arm before coming to rest once more on her hip. His touch set her skin on fire, ignited something deep within her that had remain untouched for so very long. At her hips, his fingers dug in so deeply she wondered if she would come away with reminders, faint bruises in the shapes of his fingertips. A part of her hoped she did.

“I love my wife, Sophie. I love my son, my family,” he told her quietly, his version of an apology, of an excuse. Sophie couldn’t help but laugh - the sound soft and broken, getting stuck as it bubbled in the back of her throat.

“I know,” she replied because she did, she always had, and never once doubted it. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Leaning forward, she acted for the first time in a very long while without any thought, and kissed him - soft, fleeting, her lips curled into a worn, tragic smile as she pressed them to the corner of his mouth.

The moment passed in the blink of an eye.

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