“Who?” I whisper back, praying for whatever just happened in her head to not end yet.
“My brother,” she whispers so quietly I’m not even sure she said it. But she did.
Oh my God.
I inhale a shaky breath.
“Yes, yes! I do. I miss him, Nat.”
She smiles and tilts her head.
“I miss him too.”
Her eyes falter, like she’s savoring some memory for a second.
“Kasien? You remember him, right?” I ask gently, wanting to hear it out of her mouth.
Like it’s supposed to give me hope he’s alive. My body starts to tremble with hope. The corner of her mouth tugs a little.
“Adrien,” she breathes out.
I can’t stop myself from breathing out a happy laugh.
She’s there. She’s still there. I can save her.
Her lips suddenly sink into mine, gently savoring my mouth, as if she’s just tasting me, and waves of something warm and unsteady run through my body.
“We can miss them together,” she mumbles into my mouth.
The words coming out of her mouth are soft and dreamy, like someone talking in their sleep.
I just stand there, letting the water cover us, hiding us from the world and letting her taste me. I start to kiss her back unintentionally and my hands shoot to her body, gripping her waist clumsily since I’m still handcuffed.
Her lips are soft, trembling against mine, tasting like water and something strangely sweet. My whole body tightens. Not because I don’t want it, but because there is too much happening at once. Too much pain, too much fear, too much grief, too much loneliness.
And she feels all of it. I can tell.
Her fingers slide into my wet hair, not seductive, but desperate. Searching. Like she’s trying to glue herself to something familiar.
I gasp into her mouth.
“Nat—”
She kisses me deeper. And for a second, a single, horrible second, my brain tricks me. Her eyes. Her skin. Her hands gripping the back of my neck. The way she breathes against my lips. It feels like him. Like Kasien. Like both of them and none of them.
Her mouth moves against mine with a hungry, aching need and my knees quiver. My cuffed wrists pull helplessly at the metal between us.
“Nat—please—”
I push a little, just enough for her lips to hover over mine instead of being fully there and her eyes snap open. Kasien’s green, but empty and full at the same time, like two different people are looking at me from inside her skull.
“I miss him,” she whispers, breath trembling across my mouth. “And when I look at you, I feel something. I don’t know what it is. It feels like him.”
My chest hurts, violently, not only for Kasien now, but for all of them.
“Nat, this isn’t—”
“Don’t ruin it.”
