I’ve never felt more alone.
Everything inside me vibrates with the urge to chase her.To force her to talk.To ask her why she’s always halfway on the run from me.
But I don’t.
If I go up there, she’ll open the door only to shut it in my face.
I’ve known her for all of two days.She needs time.I’ll give her that.
But when she’s ready, I’ll be the one waiting at the cliff’s edge to catch her.
I balance the sketchbook on my thigh, pencil gliding fast and rough across the page.My eyes ache, but sleep isn’t an option.Not with my head where it is.Not with the ghosts crawling up the walls.
Dove went to bed hours ago.
The lamp beside the couch casts a warm puddle of light that doesn’t touch the corners of the room.I keep my head down and my hands moving.
Shapes, lines, graphite… The image forming tonight is a woman with feathered wings stitched shut and her mouth open like she’s screaming, but no sound comes out.
Real subtle, Wolf.
My thoughts keep drifting to places I can’t let them go.Back to the river.Back to the doctor.Back to the woman sleeping upstairs.I grit my teeth and keep drawing.
Sometime around the Witching Hour, the floorboards creak above me.
I pause.
Another creak.
Footsteps.
I set aside the sketchbook and crane my neck toward the sound.
Dove appears on the stairs, floating down them and into the light like a nocturnal hallucination.Same pajama pants and camisole she wore to bed yesterday.That backpack of hers didn’t hold much.
I make a mental note to take her shopping.
Long blue hair falls around her slender arms.Wavy, bright, freshly washed.She looks like a silk trap, all soft and sweet.The kind of soft that makes a man stupid.The kind that makes a man sin.
She doesn’t make a sound as she steps into the room.Her eyes don’t leave mine as she closes the distance slowly, deliberately.She’s made up her mind about something, and I’m the decision.
Without speaking, she slides one leg over me and sinks onto my lap, straddling my hips.
I freeze, hands hovering midair, heart in my throat.
Her thighs clamp around mine.She smells like sleep and feminine soap.
And I’m hard.An instant, full-on chub that she knowingly, painfully traps between our bodies.
“What are you doing?”I ask, voice rough.
Not a twitch in her expression as she reaches for my waistband and starts unbuttoning my pants.
“Wait.”I grip her wrist, trying to catch her gaze.
“Stop talking.”Eyes on her hands, she yanks down my zipper.
This isn’t right.But holy anti-God in fishnets, it feels right.
