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His dead heart.
As if I’m giving all my breaths to that precious organ of his. So it comes alive. So he doesn’t feel empty.
But he doesn’t let me revive his heart.
Instead, he grabs my hair and pulls my neck back. When I open my eyes, I find him staring down at me with a dark, intense gaze. “You know, I thought one of the advantages of not having a girlfriend would be that I wouldn’t have to go through the whole ‘I was worried’ routine. Not that I ever went through it before. But still.”
I fist his t-shirt at his back. “Too bad. You do have a girlfriend.”
His frown is immediate and thunderous. “What the fuck?”
“I am a girl. And I’m your friend. So girlfriend,” I say, the most cliché thing in the history of all things.
He watches me a beat. “You learn that from a chick flick?”
I don’t know how he can make me smile at a time like this, but he can and he is. “Yes. We should watch some together.”
“Yeah, over my dead fucking body.”
“Oh, I think you’ll be alive.”
His fingers pull at my hair as if emphasizing every word he’s saying. “I think this friend thing isn’t going to work out.”
I shake my head in his hold and study his features, whispering, “Again, too bad. You’re stuck with me.”
The moon is red again tonight, a fireball, and it highlights the lithe lines of his body and lean angles of his face.
Bringing one hand to the front, I reach up and do what I wanted to do back when he was talking to my sister and smooth out the messy strands of his hair. I push them away now, and he clenches his jaw.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” he asks, irritated. “In the cold.”
I huddle my shoulders and rub my cheek in his vintage leather jacket that I put on after Sarah left and Leah went to sleep. “You kept me warm.”
His fingers squeeze my scalp, making me crane up my neck even more. “Shouldn’t you be out there, haunting some bridge or empty street somewhere?”
My heart swells in my chest. It becomes so big that it’s pressing against my ribs. It must be pressing against his too, I bet. He must be able to feel it.
Feel the size, the drumming rhythm of my heart.
When I’m done setting his hair in place for him, I bring my hand back once again and grip his t-shirt. “That’s why you gave me that permission slip, didn’t you? So I could be free.”
Something passes through his face, clenching everything for a second. “It’s Friday. Would you have snuck out to go dancing?”
I bite my lip and nod.
He bends down then, his chest pushing at mine, his fingers tightening in my hair to make a fist and his other hand pressing in the small of my back.
“So consider this, me reining you in,” he growls. “Me putting a leash on you and making you follow the rules.”
A current runs through me at his low, rough growl, at his dominating words. “I don’t wanna go haunt a bridge or a street somewhere.”
“So you decided to haunt me, instead?”
Something about that makes me bite my lip again. “Yes.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because I wanna talk to you.”
“Talk to me about what?”
I swallow as my eyes sting with tears. “I know. I know why you beat him up. Ben.”
His eyes grow bright then, violent even, his jaw clenching hard. “Why?”
“Because you wanted to,” I whisper, pressing my knuckles on his back. “It wasn’t because he was the first person you saw. It wasn’t a bad coincidence. It was because you were looking for him. Because he betrayed you. Because my sister betrayed you.”
There’s no surprise on his face when I say that.
In fact for a second there’s something very akin to a dark sort of amusement rippling through his stunning features. “You heard.”
“You were standing under my window.”
“I was.”
Suddenly I understand. “You were… you knew I’d listen in.”
His mouth curls up in a tight lopsided smile. “You looked pretty upset when you had to leave the room after dinner ended.”
“Was this your way of putting a leash on me so I wouldn’t go around breaking rules to find out what happened?”
“Yes.”
My hands move then.
I let go of his shirt at the small of his back, and creep both my arms up and get them around his neck just to hold him closer, tighter.
Putting a leash of my own around him.
“I hated dinner,” I tell him. “I hated everything about it.”
His chest undulates on a slight chuckle. “Why?”
I tug at his hair. “Because you ate everything on your plate.”
“And that’s somehow objectionable to you.”
“Yes,” I insist. “You ate everything and you were so quiet. You even cleaned up after. When I knew, I could see how…” – I flick my eyes over his sharp, jutting features – “angry you were. Your shoulders were all tight and the way you’d clench your jaw every two seconds. But you never said a word. You were so nice, Arrow.”
