AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Because…
I pulled open the bottom drawer of my filing cabinet and yanked out one of the journals I’d kept when I was younger. It only took flipping through a few pages before I saw it.
A shitty drawing of eyes, colored in blue with a pen.
A few more pages, and I’d taken my time.
Intense, framed in black lashes. Blue.
I threw the journal into the cabinet and reached for another one.
I’d been nine when I wrote in the first journal. I was sixteen in this one.
And the eyes were still there. Sketched almost offhandedly — no wonder I hadn’t remembered. I drew them half awake, half medicated.
I drew them when I first woke up, because the doctor had asked me to try to remember my dreams.
They were more detailed by the time I was sixteen. Pensive, and a bright blue, framed in Jayce’s thick lashes and dark brows.
And then, on the next page, they sparked a near coppery gold, but it was still his eyes.
I kept a journal until I was eighteen, even though I was on and off the streets by then, and his eyes were drawn in every single one of them. Sometimes they were blue. Sometimes they were golden — sometimes, they were a sparked mix of the two, but they were there.
How had I forgotten?
How did I not realize the second I saw him that I’d seen him before, too? At least, I’d seen those eyes. No wonder I hadn’t been willing to kill him with the rest of the men at the car garage — no fucking wonder I hadn’t been able to extract information from him the easy way. Whatever that medication was, it let me see him the same way he'd obviously seen me. And when I'd stopped taking it…
“Fuck.” I muttered the word softly and yanked the last page from the journal. I’d drawn them in perfect clarity there, and then I’d stopped taking the pills I’d been prescribed. I realized my apathy was perfectly suited for a career path that would keep me off the streets, out of trouble. I was intelligent, efficient, and I could make use of that.
After I stopped taking the pills, I’d stopped drawing his eyes. I’d forgotten about them…
I’d…
I looked down at the page in my hand — blue, with a center of gold spiking around the pupil.
I felt seen.
I took the paper to my bedroom and opened the door. This time, Jayce wasn’t asleep. He was stretched out with his arm beneath his head, and his gaze was fixed on me.
I held up the page and looked between what I’d thought was in my mind and the obvious reality in front of me.
“I —” I cut myself off. I didn’t know if I wanted to tell him. What point would it prove? What could it possibly do, letting him know I’d dreamed of him, too?
“Clay?” Jayce started to push himself into a sitting position, and I strode across the room in three quick steps that put me at the edge of the bed. He took the drawing before I had a chance to stop him.
I didn’t really try to stop him.
He stared at the page, his brows knitting together, and he dragged his lower lip between his teeth.
“Jayce, I…”
The paper fluttered to the ground as he wrapped his fingers in the front of my shirt and yanked me forward. Apparently, it didn’t matter if I explained myself.
His lips were on mine, and I couldn’t think of a single reason to struggle, a reason to discuss. All I could think about was his mouth, the way his hand wrapped around me and pulled me against him. He let out a soft sound, a mixture of pain and need. It was a struggle to lift myself up — it was worse when his hands went lower and jerked me forward, so I was straddling him. It got me off his wound, but it slotted our hips together.
We fit like we’d been built for it, and the sudden pressure of his hot body against mine was nearly enough to make me lose my mind. I couldn’t resist grinding down against him in a quick motion, and I couldn’t stop myself from licking the moan it elicited from his mouth, like I was sipping nectar from the gods.
As soon as I did, though, I leaned back and searched his face. It was just heat, just need — it was the burning stare I’d drawn a thousand times, and I forgot why I was supposed to be careful. I threaded my fingers through his hair and kissed him again, licking into his mouth until I was dizzy with the taste of him.
