And my heart constricts painfully.
We stay like this, locked in embrace, waves breaking against the shore as the tide recedes farther out. His fingers tap a rhythmic beat against the small of my back, a soothing cadence that resonates along my spine. Wind lashes against our trembling bodies as adrenaline slowly ebbs, leaving me torn, words caught beneath the ache in my throat.
I swallow hard, unable to collect my thoughts enough to voice any. I don’t tell him the mess he’s left me. I don’t confess how utterly, irrevocably ruined he’s made me.
“Your heart is thundering,” he says suddenly. Then, as he pulls back, his gaze moves over my face, bright eyes glittering with satisfaction as though I need to say none of it.
His arms tighten around me, holding me close as he shifts backward. He throws his leg over the seat, effortlessly dropping to the ground, keeping me secure against him a staggered heartbeat longer, my legs still clinging to his hips, before he sets my booted feet on the sandy earth.
As I stare up at him, he gifts me with his captivating smile. “You have a little gold in your eyes,” he remarks.
I drop my head, blinking rapidly to avoid his gaze as the awe in his voice cracks a piece deep inside. “Why am I the only one you let get this close to you,” I ask, masking the tremor in my voice with a shiver.
Orion tips my face up to his, gloved fingers coming to rest alongside my neck. “Because you quiet the chaos in my head,” he confesses, raw vulnerability edged in his tone.
I focus my breathing, hoping he can’t feel my shallow pulse through his gloves. The intensity of his gaze forces me to duck my head again, wishing for the barrier of his glasses—some shield between his eyes and mine. I tuck my windblown hair behind my ear, only for the wind to send strands back across my face.
“Which, I might add—” a lighter note threads his timbre “—works exceptionally well when I draw those lovely sounds from your mouth.”
A tendril of heat curls through me as a wry smile pulls at my lips. With a disarming wink, he finally releases me and stalks toward the lapping water, leaving me with an ache burrowing beneath my ribs. I hug my arms around myself, pulling his jacket tighter for warmth.
With his back to me, Orion stares silently out over the ocean, watching the last shafts of sunlight sink below the darkening horizon.
Pelicans fly low, their black silhouettes dotting the sky above the rolling ocean. There’s a crunch beneath my boot and I glance down, bending to pick up a broken piece of spiral shell.
As I palm the jagged shard, I’m taken back to another night, another ocean. Feeling another rising violence as a roaring tide crashed against the shore, stars glittering coldly above. Desperation constricts my chest just as it did then, standing at the edge of a crime scene that would forever alter my life.
I sweep my thumb across my wrist.
One. Two. Three.
A few steps away, Orion brings his hands together and slowly removes the black leather glove from his left hand, and I drop the broken shell, forgotten, as the action draws me closer.
I’ve glimpsed his hands before, as he played piano, as he adjusted his telescope, but only from a safe distance—and I halt now, torn between my burning curiosity and the implication he might not realize what he’s doing.
Only I can’t tear my eyes away, tracing the intricate ink covering the back of his hand, the shaded lines and fine artwork. There’s a sparrow, or?—
My breath snags in my chest as I recall his endearment.
Starling.
A flush of warmth spreads through me, my pulse quick as a pang reverberates through my chest.
I clear the ache from my throat, my gaze moving over star patterns and planets layered within the design, scrawled letters and glyphs I don’t recognize. Then my eyes catch on the fading bruisediscoloring his knuckles—a remnant of his fist destroying the speaker.
Orion lowers to his haunches, the waves lapping the gray sand near the toes of his boots. Leisurely, he skims his bare fingertips over the surface of the receding water.
“You’ve never explained to me what it’s like for you,” I say, keeping myself at a distance.
He glances over his shoulder, the fading rays of light softening the contours of his face. If he’s letting me in another measure, I want to get even closer.
“What it’s like for me,” he echoes, seemingly understanding that I’m referring to his aversion.
He pulls in a breath. “It’s like, when you stare into a beam of sunlight and notice all the dust particles floating in the air, and for one brief moment, dread grips you. Because suddenly, you realize this matter is everywhere, all around, all the time. You breathe it. It fills your lungs, suffocates you.” His gaze searches the misty horizon. “But then the light shifts, and you slip back into the shadow. Relieved, because you don’t have to exist in that constant awareness.”
He rises, turning to face me, his gaze dark, haunted. “I never escape that moment.”
A sharp pain catches beneath my breastbone, a reminder of my own inescapable prison. My voice softens. “Living in that constant state of awareness must be exhausting.”
