It's a rarity mirrored in her: she likes to go fast, likes to go hard, likes to prove she deserves anything in life because she can suffer for it and she can protect it. And all of that is genuinely important to her. It makes her feel something like safe, something like confident in her own skin.

But she craves this, too: being treated like something valuable, something worth the effort. Something that would be irreplaceable if she broke or was lost. She breathes in against the warmth of his palm against her cheek, nestles ever so slightly closer, and then settles into the kiss with him.

She takes her time. They have time to take, and she stretches out in it, unhurried and unwilling to miss a single detail he gives her in this moment. She deepens the kiss just ever so slightly right before it ends, a bid for more even if they need to break for air, her fingertips curling, carefully, through the ends of his hair.

"You should come back to Creekside," she breathes, so close still it's almost with his own air. "If you want. You could come back."

She still wants him. She doesn't know what that looks like beyond this moment, but she knows she wants him still, so she opens the door she closed.