one good honest kiss, to feel alright
It might have been love that made her think of him, always, as the boy whose knee she’d smashed in on the pavement that night. But, as with anything, she couldn’t be sure. Was it love that made her want to see him crumpled on the ground, lit up by her magic like amber in the hot light? Was it possessiveness? Was it psychopathy, rewiring her brain into a hundred different messy, terrible knots?
What part of her - and she wondered this often, never mind how it made her heart hurt, and how long she had spent thinking about it without ever really coming up with an answer - was so desperate to keep him she’d rather bruise him like a peach, break every white bone in that perfect body, than let him walk away from her?
Would not, Bexley says softly. She grazes her teeth over the rope of muscle in his neck, tastes salt and jasmine and the comfortable darkness of Denocte. But something in her chest aches and twists and as much as she tries to push it away, she can’t help thinking that he might be right, that if he were the man she wanted him to be, a man she could bring home to Seraphina, a man who wasn’t such a walking disaster, she might not want him anymore.
It squeezes at her so hard she thinks her ribs might crack against her sides. But still she says nothing, just leans deep into him and blinks away the faintest cloud of tears from her eyes.
The world around them should still be sweet and warm and drenched in sunlight. Still the sun winks its hot eye overhead and Solterra swirls with the scent of sand and incense. And it is, sort of, but some part of her feels a deep-seated pain that cannot be washed away by the touch of sunlight on her spine or the way she can feel Acton’s breath on her throat, a pain that chokes her hard, makes her blink furiously to clear her eyes, turns her knees so weak she leans her whole weight against Acton’s and never wants to stand again.
Have you changed that much?
Her voice is almost inaudible. She looks up at Acton with those seaglass eyes, blinks dark lashes hard, and she does not know what she wants him to answer, or if anything would make the dull, gnawing ache of wrongness in her chest go away.
(It probably won’t.)
