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I stiffen. “Of course I care about the exorcism,” I tell her. “I want you to be healthy. I want you to be well. But…you deserve to have a life, too. You can’t spend the rest of your days trying to outrun whatever it is that’s happening right now. I know you’re just trying to do the right thing, but this, I don’t know.”
“What?”
“You’re still a human being,” I tell her. “You can’t let what’s happening steal everything from you.”
“But you guys aren’t angry at me?”
“Why would we be? Look, obviously, I can’t speak for anyone else here. I might not agree with what you’re doing, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to respect it. Of course I’m going to respect what you’re doing.”
“You’re so sweet.”
“No, I’m not,” I tell her, bringing her hands to my face and kissing the tips of her long fingers. “I just want you to be happy.”
She sighs deeply, her shoulders dropping, then she throws her arms around my waist. I’m surprised at how tightly she’s holding me, at the way she gently lays her head on my chest.
My heart skips a beat as she does.
It feels like she fits perfectly in my arms, like there was a big empty space here and it was always supposed to be there for her.
She tilts her head up and kisses me softly on the lips. Her eyes widen as she does. “Shit,” she says. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“It’s okay,” I reply. I wrap my arm around her waist and kiss her back, hard this time, until she’s gasping for breath. She opens her mouth to let me in and our tongues wrestle in her mouth. I can feel her body pressed up against me, and all I care about is the warmth of her skin on mine, the way her chest slowly rises as her breathing quickens.
She pulls away from me, a smile on her face. “Hey,” she says. “Let’s finish this later. I have a gig to play.”
“Break a leg.”
She gets on her tiptoes, kisses my cheek and giggles as she runs away. Fuck, she’s so beautiful. I want to take her upstairs to any one of these rooms and ravage her. I do nothing of the sort, waiting for her to run back to the deck.
Rei watches them for a few seconds until he catches my gaze. He opens the glass door. The poolside deck is getting busy with people.
Rei ducks past them, opens the door, and takes off his glasses, wiping them with the bottom of his black shirt. “I have a bad feeling about this,” he says.
I look at him.
“I thought we were trying to get away from people.”
“We are trying to get away from people,” I say. “But we’re also trying to make her feel normal. You get that, right?”
“Yes,” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. He straightens up, squaring his shoulders as he does. “Of course I get that. That isn’t what this is about.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“Look,” he says, dropping his voice to a whisper. “Of course I want to help her, and I understand that doing things that make her feel normal is absolutely a part of that. But…”
“But?”
“Asking people to come here when we’re trying to keep her protected doesn’t seem like the best idea,” he says.
“I thought you didn’t believe in any of this, doctor.”
He rolls his eyes. “I know you’re worried, but this isn’t my fault,” he says. “You know I trust what I can see.”
I nod, looking him up and down. He looks very concerned. He’s usually the most sensible one of all of us, so this isn’t good news.
“The gig is already happening,” I say. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“I know. But we should kick everyone out as soon as it’s over.”
