The weight of her hand against the side of my neck anchored me enough to push the voice away again. It wasn’t forever, but every second of silence was precious with her.
I could tell she didn’t believe me. Eva carefully knelt on the cot, her knees straddling my lap. I held on to her legs to keep her steady. “Tell me,” I roughed out. “How do I earn your trust again?”
“I don’t know.” Her hands moved up my chest to the narrow rise of my shoulders. It felt wonderfully wrong to be so close, her ministrations almost reverent. Almost right.
“I missed this too.”
I didn’t mean to say it.
Eva’s knees cinched tighter against my hips. “That’s the fever talking.”
I shook my head. “You know it isn’t.”
“Do I?”
How could she not? There was no moment in which I was with her when I did not find myself bending in heart and body like a sunflower to the light. But saying that would ring hollow when my actions years ago had told her otherwise.
“You know me,” I said softly, unsure if that was really true, or if I merely wanted it to be.
Eva brushed her fingertips down the beard growing along my jaw, her voice turning rough with emotion. “I knew a boy.”
I caught her fingers in mine and pressed her palm to my heart. It still beat for her. Maybe it always would.
She’d known me as the boy who’d taken her out to hear the birds, who’d lost himself in the sanctuary of her world, who’d teased her and laughed with her, and touched her with tentative hands.
But I’d buried that Arthur. I’d sloughed him off like an insect voiding its chrysalis. How I wished I could get back to the boy she had loved. If I could be him again, maybe I could survive being a monster too.
“Do something for me?” Eva asked, her voice hushed.
My heart skipped a beat. “Anything.”
Her hesitation felt like the strike of a gavel, weighty and full of my fate.
Eva’s exhale washed over me. “I want what you took away eight years ago.” She curled the hand pressed to my heart into a fist, her voice husky and rough with feeling. “I want a better goodbye.”
Chapter 27
Eva
Eva’s body hummed with the things she hadn’t said.I want. I want.Like a heart, it beat inside her, steady and stubborn and strong.
She wanted to know why he’d tattooed a bird he hated into his skin.
She wanted to know who he spoke to when he thought she wasn’t listening.
She wanted to know where he’d gone when he left these mountains.
She wanted to know who he’d become when he stopped being hers.
The boy Eva remembered had been more conscientious about preserving life than any other person she knew: Everything was finite, so everything was precious. Eva wanted to know if he still believed that, after all this time.
“A better goodbye?” he echoed.
A lump grew in Eva’s throat as she nodded, turning her hand and moving her thumb over the pulse point in Arthur’s wrist.It would hurt. She knew that. There was nothing good about goodbyes.
“What did you have in mind?” Arthur asked. He sounded the way she felt. Nervous. Needful. Full of want and fear.
Eva scooted a little closer and guided Arthur’s hands to her waist. “Touch me.”
