He lifts the axe and slams it down, hearing the pop as the wood splinters and breaks. He tucks the axe precariously under his arm and grabs the 2 halves of the log, one in each hand, and throws them towards the rapidly growing pile. He meticulously places another piece of wood on the trunk and again hoists the axe.
He can still feel her hands on him, momentarily cradling his head then passing over his close shorn hair. Sliding so slow over his neck and over his ears to his face. Not even pulling him closer, just touching him, wanting him. He doesn't think he's been touched like that before, not ever.
He remembers thinking she was pulling away, but she wasn't. Even as her body was moving back, creating that familiar distance, her face strained forward, stealing one more kiss, than another.
And despite the fact that he had thought about the first kiss a thousand times since first meeting her, the entire time it was happening he was almost just outside it. Dwelling on the delicious fringes of it, unwilling to give himself over to it. Part of him could not believe that it was actually happening, and the other part of him somehow understood how fragile and raw she was at that moment. How she had unwillingly exposed everything and how he felt like he was poking at her open wounds, infecting them and making everything worse.
Because that perfect, good guy, the one she yelled at, he has never existed. Hes gotten so good at projecting it, so good at selling that particular illusion, sometimes he even fools himself. Its actually a pretty easy sell, the whole intense, focused doctor thing really works for him. But at the core he's just a fucked up guy trying to get through the day.
He remembers just after she broke contact, how he couldn't quite catch his breath. How her hands were at his chest, how he could feel the heat in his face as his heart continued to pound. How he stared at her open mouth, so wide and still wet.
And then came the shock, the insane astonishment of it all. He could read everything on her face. It could have only been regret.
And then the inevitable. He had known it was coming from the second her mouth caught his. She had run.
And that's when he had fucked it all up. That is when he should have stopped her, pulled her in again and kissed her harder, deeper, slower and then faster. He should have made it abundantly clear just how much he craved her. How he didn't care that he didn't really know her and certainly didn't trust her. Wanting to know her, wanting to trust her, that should have been enough.
He should have leaned his whole body into her, the weight of him pushing them back, stumbling into a tree or a rock or what he didn't care as long as he was touching her.
He should have.
And why hadn't he? The division between what he wants and what everyone else needs? That excuse is growing so thin and tired.
Was it Sawyer that stopped him? Hearing him say those words? He knows even if he wasn't talking about Kate, he was still talking about Kate. Its what the island does to you. You think about something from back there, before everything, but it means everything now.
And he knows there's something between them, some sort of common ground born of a white trash childhood and criminal lifestyle, but he can't bring himself to care about it outside of how it affects him.
So what then? He doesn't know, so he just slams the axe down again and again, hoping to find answers in the pure dumb physicality of it. He closes his mind, tells himself he won't think of it any more. And for a second he believes that's possible.
And then the memory of her fingers creeps up on him again.