He nods solemnly. “Yes. Cold.”
We both stare.
Behind us, Sammy yells out the window, “MOM! Is the hot neighbor helping you with your lawn-based water war?!”
I close my eyes and exhale. “Lord, grant me strength.”
He still hasn’t let go of my hand.
And I, idiot that I am—haven’t pulled away.
It’s only a second. Maybe two. But it stretches, elastic and thick, like syrup poured slow on Sunday pancakes. He’s looking at me, and not just in the polite, friendly-neighbor kind of way. No, this is different. It’s... searching. Like he’s trying to decode something in my face, read a frequency I didn’t know I was broadcasting.
And then it hits me.
The warmth.
God, it blooms inside my chest without warning—unexpected and primal. Like flipping on a light in a room you didn’t know was dark. My breath catches. There’s a jolt, low in my belly, equal parts adrenaline and that aching kind of yearning I thought I’d buried ages ago beneath bills and bruised dreams.
It’s not sexual. Not yet. It’s deeper than that. Stranger.
Like falling. Or remembering.
Or both.
Richard blinks. For a moment, his expression falters. The mask slips. Just a crack. But I see it. Confusion. Recognition. Fear?
Then it’s gone. Replaced by that same polite, vaguely robotic calm.
But it’s too late. I felt it. And so did he.
“What was that?” I whisper before I can stop myself.
He lets go of my hand.
Steps back.
“I do not know,” he says carefully, like he’s defusing something volatile. “Perhaps a... static discharge.”
“From what? My soul?”
A twitch at the corner of his mouth. A smile threatening to happen, but never quite making it past security.
“You are... humorous,” he offers.
“I try.”
He turns slightly, gives a very stiff nod in the direction of his garage—still half-obscured by jungle-grade gardening tools and what I now realize might be parts of a drone.
“You should... dry yourself,” he says. “Your thermal levels have likely dropped below safe parameters.”
“My thermal levels?”
“You’re wet.”
“Well, yeah.”
“I will return to my indoor base.”
