Anna-Sophia looked up into his face.
He tugged the match between the striking surface and the cover, and there it was, the sound: the almost inaudible breath of the match head igniting. Then the rushing hiss of the pioneer flame bursting into the air.
Anna-Sophia’s face was a cathedral lit by the sputtering match. Every want, every desire that Dutch had ever possessed—everything he had thought he’d lost—was in her expression. He’d never realized how what he’d taken to be adoration was really fear.
He could feel his heartbeat again, crashing chaotically in his ears. “Tell me you love it,” she said.
(He didn’t say that he didn’t.)
When the match fell to the concrete by his feet, it went out.
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