“You’re too quiet,” she said with a laugh. The air filled with the clean, fruity scent of shampoo. “Makes me think you’re up to no good out there.”
Just trying not to imagine lathering you up with soap and running my hands over your slippery—
“Just wondering when you’re going to start singing, little sparrow,” I teased. “I know how the showerinspiresyou.”
“What? Oh, you wish!” An arc of water leaped out over the shower door, dousing me right in the face.
I cracked up. And for a few minutes, it actually felt good to laugh with her again. Like maybe things were… Well, I wouldn’t say normal, but…
What the hell was I talking about?
Nothing was ever normal in Midnight, and nothing between me and Haley could even comecloseto normal.
Not like what we’d had in the Bay.
The thought sucked all the lightness from my heart, leaving a heavy weight in its place.
No, things wouldn’t be normal between us. I’d made sure of that the night I left her, vanishing without a goodbye.
Guilt churned through me, eating everything in its path.
“Hand me a towel and bathrobe?”
“Hmm?”
She turned off the water and stuck her bare arm out. “Towel. Robe. Preferably sometime before I freeze my ass off, if it’s not too much trouble?”
I hadn’t realized how much time had passed. How long I’d spent dwelling on the past.
Dragging myself back to the present, I did as she asked.
When she stepped out, she was shiny and pink, her hair wrapped in a towel, her body wrapped up in the bathrobe, her eyes a few shades brighter.
Damn, it hurt to look at her.
“What?” She grinned at me, cheeks darkening with a new blush, but all I could do was shake my head.
Kept right on staring at her though. Couldn’t tear my gaze away.
“Elian,” she whispered, her voice faltering, that megawatt smile fading. Her eyes, though—they only grew brighter.
I said nothing. Didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. And for the span of a hundred heartbeats, we just watched each other, lost in thoughts and memories, all the what-ifs and could’ve-beens that would torment me until I took my last immortal breath.
There was a time when I’d sworn I could read her thoughts like this—just by looking at her, just by letting the silence linger.
But she was a mystery to me now. One whose innermost thoughts I no longer had a right to know.
“Where are you, little sparrow?” I whispered anyway—the old question we used to ask each other whenever one of us drifted into our own darkness. It was a way to bring each other back.
“I can’t believe you still remember that,” she said softly, her eyes misting.
“How could I forget?”
Hurt flooded her gaze, and I wanted to stake myself.
How could Iforget?
I’d fucking walked out on her. In her mind, Ihadforgotten—everything we’d shared, everything we’d promised, everything we’d ever meant to each other.
