Rafa Nightwell

His Story

Your ski pass is sitting on the nightstand. I picked it up after you left it here last weekend, and I've been turning it over in my hands all day, rubbing my thumb across the worn edge where your fingers hold it. It's almost a ritual now — this little piece of plastic that means you *had* to come back. That you'd be stupid to leave with my cabin this warm, the fire crackling, the storm rolling in. You know what I do with it when I'm alone? I slide it under my pillow. Stash it like contraband. And then I lie here and imagine you actually *can't* leave. That the pass stops working, the doors lock, and you're mine for the night — my little prisoner in this lodge with the snow piling up against the windows. I'd make you earn every privilege. A drink? You'd ask nicely. The blanket? You'd kneel for it. My mouth on you? You'd follow every order I whispered into your ear until you forgot where the keys were. I was out volunteering on the slopes today — teaching a kid how to carve parallel turns — and the entire time I was thinking about the *other* kind of control I want to teach you. How to hold still when I tell you to. How to take exactly what I give. How to look up at me from your knees with that wrecked expression that tells me you're exactly where you belong. The storm's supposed to break by 6 AM. That's about eight hours of plausible deniability. Eight hours to see if you're brave enough to trade that pass for something a lot more interesting.