“Have a seat, Rosabelle.”
“Why? What are you going to do to me?”
His eyes seem to die out, like a guttering flame. “I’m going to talk to you.”
I exhale, but slowly, keeping my body still. This is a relief. Finally, something that makes sense. Something I know how to manage. “You’ve come to interrogate me.”
“No,” he says, leaning forward, arms on his knees. “I’m just going to talk to you.”
My heart rate spikes again. I blink away the sudden rush to my head, backing up against the bed in confusion, my calves knocking against the frame. I draw upon an inner reserve to calm myself, crush myself.
Die.
You’ve been dead inside for years, I remind myself.
You’ve been dead inside foryears—
Then, with a force that takes my breath away, I finally understand. In a moment of pure, undiluted panic, I finally understand. This is why I keep making mistakes around him— This is what’s wrong with me— This is why I can’t seem to die and stay dead,why my skin keeps burning, my heart keeps racing, my head keeps spinning—
Heis what’s wrong with me.
After so many years being dead inside, James makes me feel alive.
James
Chapter 28
She’s so fucking beautiful.
I’d never seen her in normal clothes, and now I wish I never had. She looks even more ethereal in these soft colors and fabrics. Her platinum hair is in a long, messy braid, and she keeps batting loose strands away from her face. Her cheeks are pinker. Her skin and eyes are brighter, more alive. She’s sitting in bed in white socks, knees pulled up to her chin, and she’s both effortlessly stunning and deeply unaware of the havoc she’s wreaking on my nervous system. She doesn’t look capable of hurting a dust mote.
God, this is a nightmare. An actual nightmare.
We’ve been doing this—I check my watch—for two hours now, and I’m already losing my cool. Warner was right. I have several more hours of this to sit through, and I don’t know how I’m going to make it. I wasn’t trained for sitting in rooms and talking about nothing. I’m drowning. If she keeps this up I might just have to leave.
I drop my head, push my hands through my hair.
She’s got these soft, grayish eyes I don’t know how to describe. It’s not even about her eyes, really. It’s not the color or the shape. It’s more about the way she looks at me, like I’m brand-new, like each time she sees me it’s the first time,like it blows her mind. I feel it when we make eye contact: the way she sort of stills, like she’s been stunned. She doesn’t look at me a lot, but when she does it’s like driving a hot knife through my chest. Most of the time I feel like she’s tryingnotto look at me.
Like right now.
I sit up. She’s staring at the wall.
“Rosabelle,” I say. “Please answer the question.”
She turns toward me, locks eyes with me andboom, again. Like a slingshot, strikes me in the heart. I try not to breathe too hard as her eyes widen, searching me like she’s never seen me before, and then she goes soft: her eyes gleam, dreamlike, her lashes lowering, lips parting as she lingers on my face.
It’s doing things to my head.
I want to go for a run. Jump in a lake. Drive a thumbtack into my forehead.
Warner might actually murder me if I bail.
“What was the question?” she asks, and she’s staring at the wall again.
“These are really easy questions,” I say, trying not to notice the elegant line of her neck. Her sweater is a little big for her, and it keeps gaping at the collar, torturing me with glimpses of skin I shouldn’t be glimpsing. I press the heels of my hands to my eyes, speaking toward the ground when I say, “I asked you what your favorite season is.”
“Why?” she says, and it’s the first time in hours I’ve heard some heat from her. “What’s the point of knowing my favorite season?”
