Page 95 of Unclench Me Softly

Bliss-ism #101/k

Emotional rebirth often begins with crawling through pine needles and rage.

Bliss-ism #75/g

You’re not overwhelmed. You’re being ritually softened.

Chapter Eighteen:

Full Moon, Open Heart (…and legs. But mostly heart.)

I’m still crouched beside the fire pit, picking through the remains of our sacred arts-and-emotional-crafts night, trying to gather both my supplies and the scattered remains of my composure, when I realize I’m not alone.

The others have drifted off, carried by the ritual’s afterglow, back to their domes or the woods or wherever emotionally raw men go when they’ve just symbolically burned their false selves under the moon, but one of them stayed.

Seb.

He’s still there.

He’s quiet, unmoving, standing a few feet from me like a sentinel or maybe something older, some kind of forest god who’s just been patiently watching this whole time, waiting for silence.

I glance up, unsure what to say, because he’s not smiling and he’s not speaking. He’s just there, holding my gaze like he’s choosing his moment with precision.

“I thought everyone left,” I say, my voice softer than I meant it to be.

He doesn’t respond with words.

He steps forward instead, moving slowly, and lowers himself into a crouch beside me without breaking eye contact. For a long second, we just sit there in the flicker of dying firelight and pine smoke, saying nothing. Then he dips two fingers into the shallow bowl of ash I’d nearly forgotten I set down.

He brings his hand to my shoulder, and with deliberate gentleness, he paints a line across my skin.

It’s not a symbol.

Not a word.

Just a line. A connection.

My body tenses for a moment, somewhere between surprise and that raw ache that comes from being seen too clearly, but I don’t move away.

He dips again. Brushes a smear across my collarbone. Then another down the inside of my arm, slow and careful, like he’s mapping something sacred.

He still hasn’t said a word, and yet the quiet between us feels thick with meaning, the kind that doesn’t need to be spoken. It isn’t silence, it’s a language he seems fluent in, and suddenly, I’m desperate to respond in kind.

I reach for the ash bowl, my fingers trembling slightly, and press my hand against his chest without asking, leaving a broad, imperfect mark across his sternum.

He closes his eyes for the briefest second but doesn’t flinch, doesn’t pull away.

I draw another line, curved and senseless, just beneath the edge of his collarbone.

He opens his eyes again, and there’s something wild and unspoken in them, something reverent. He leans in, just enough for me to feel his breath on my cheek, but doesn’t kiss me. Instead, he holds perfectly still, offering more of himself without instruction or demand.

We move together without speaking, without breaking the fragile rhythm we’ve found, painting ash across each other’s skin as though our hands know more about what we need than our mouths ever could. Every touch is intentional. Every mark feels like a confession we’re not brave enough to say out loud.

And when he finally lowers me back into the grass with slow, careful hands, I don’t resist.

Not because I’ve surrendered.

But because I want to.

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