Page 260 of Immune

“This,” she says, her free hand gesturing vaguely between us, angry and awkward. “Wanting. Touching. Sex. Whatever. I don’t start spouting off poetry and shit. I don’t even know how to make any of this pretty.”

I stare at her, then I say, with every single ounce of sincerity in my poor Welsh soul, “Oh, thank god.”

She blinks.

“I can’t do pretty right now, Tiny,” I tell her, lips twitching. “We’re literally sitting on a cupboard floor right next to musty old blankets and a Christmas box full of despair. Pretty would be weird right now.”

Her eyes narrow on me. “You calling me weird?”

“Yeah,” I answer quickly.

“That’s brave.”

“That’s just a fancy word for stupid.”

That gets me something even closer to a laugh that time, and the sound suckers me right between the ribs. It’s not soft, and it’s not sweet. It’s devastating, and her eyes widen as if she just betrayed herself.

I don’t smile too quickly, and I certainly don’t pounce on it, but I do say, “There you are.”

The laugh dies, but the warmth lingers in her scent.

Honey.

Rain.

Something else opening under it.

Then she sets the knife on the floor between us. Not near me, and not away, but between. Both a boundary and an offering.

“Can I come closer?” she eventually asks.

Bloody hell.

I nod, because I’m pretty sure talking right now might just turn me into grains of dust.

Dakota moves on hands and knees, slow at first, then with a deep little scowl like she resents how careful she’s being even though she chose it. She stops just in front of me, close enough that her knees almost touch mine.

My hands remain exactly where they are. Her eyes drop to them. Waiting. Checking. Then she reaches up and pulls the headphones off. The music drips from the cushioned earpiece,barely there and soft as it bleeds into the room. Her hair is still hidden under her hat, and her bandana still covers her mouth, but her eyes are right there. Light hazel and furious and too alive for the dim room we’re sitting in.

“I want this to shut off,” she says.

I know she doesn't mean the music, so I swallow and ask, “Your head?”

“My body,” she corrects, her voice quieter now. “The buzzing. The flinching. The feeling like every part of me is just waiting for someone to turn me into a problem.”

“You are a problem,” I tell her, and her eyes sharpen. I lift a hand slowly, giving her time to stop me. “The best kind of problem I can imagine.”

She watches my hand but doesn’t move away, so I touch two fingers to the floor next to her knee first.

A question.

Her eyes dart down and then she shifts her knee until it presses against my fingers.

And there’s the answer.

My breath leaves my lungs very carefully as I slide my hand around her knee, then up to the outside of her thigh. My hand moves slow over fabric, not grabbing or claiming, just contact, and I watch as her eyelashes flutter.

“There?” I ask.