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Her smile falters, and I curse inwardly.
She lets go of my hand and takes a step back, as if my throwaway response has given her the answers to the many unspoken questions between us.
“Thank you for coming to my party,” she says stiffly, avoiding my gaze. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening.”
In mounting disbelief, I watch her turn and head for the door, presenting me with that stunning canvas of fine porcelain skin—the one I’m aching to put my mouth on it.
Her walking away from me is the best thing she could do, butdammitif it doesn’t piss me the hell off.
“So, that’s it?” I say loudly.
She stops and turns. “Why, is there more? Are you actually going totalk to me after all this time?”
“You got sick,” I grit out.
“So?” The hurt in her eyes hits me like a bullet. “That’s not a license to cut people out of your life. Did you think I’d make you paint pictures of me all day long when I was in hospital? Or was it pity that really drove you away?” Her voice catches on the word.
“Ella, stop.” Cutting the distance between us, I do the unthinkable, crossing every line to take her face between my hands, just to feel her trembling beneath my touch. “I don’t pity you,Mi Cielo. Look at you. Just fuckinglook at you.”Still holding her face prisoner, I let my gaze roam her body again, and it’s even more stunning with her heart beating inches from my own.
I wish I could tell her how flawless she is.
Just as she is.
“I missed you,” she whispers, her cheeks coloring.
“I missed you, too,” I say truthfully. “I miss sitting on that patio in Leticia with you drawing frogs.”
She giggles suddenly, lifting the moment further, reminding me that she’s goodness and innocence, and that I’m tainting her just by being in the same room as her. “It was a great frog. I think Thalia called him Jeremiah… Do you still draw?”
Reluctantly, I drop my hands from her face. “Not for a long while.”
“You never made it to Goldsmiths.”
“I never made it to Goldsmiths.”
“How’s New York?Papásays you work for him there now.”
“Busy. Noisy. But no worse than Colombian Chicharras.”
Her face lights up. “Oh my gosh, they were noisy, weren’t they? Some nights I couldn’t get to sleep until early morning. And the birds? So many chattering birds! I used to make up their conversations in my head at five a.m. I wrote whole stories about them. It drove my tutor crazy.”
That’s when I feel it. The relief, the peace, thecomfortI always have when I’m around her.
I close my eyes to savor it. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this calm, but then I ruin it by mentioning the one thing we’re dancing around.
“Sanders says you’re on new meds.”
She nods, looking weary suddenly. It’s as if she’s been dying to live for nearly as long as I’ve been living to die, and we’re both pretty fucking exhausted by it.
“Can I make a deal with you?”
“Do I have to kill anyone?”
“Please don’t make jokes like that,” she says with a sigh. “I might think you mean it.”
Oh, but I do.
“If I forget to tell my father that you pulled a gun on me this evening, you need to promise me you won’t mention my health again. At least, not until tomorrow.”
