I lick my chapped lips, my head spinning.
James runs his thumb across the curve of my cheek and I tense, gasping as if he’s lit a match against my skin.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he says quietly. “You’re all right. Just breathe.”
I blink. The effort drains me.
Fatigue drives me deep inside myself. Residual tension dissipates, unhinging the rest of me, and I seat back into my body with a nearly audible latch.
Breath leaves my lungs in a rush.
For a long moment, I can’t move; I’m paralyzed with relief; my bones like bricks. James is bent over me, no longer touching, but close. I’m physically aware of him now; he seems fully realized; and his proximity is making me feverish. Heat has ravaged my chest, fogged my thoughts. My skin feels raw and sensitive, overly responsive. The ineffable scent of him is overwhelming. I want it injected into my veins. I want to draw him inside of me.
I don’t know where these thoughts are coming from.
I feel out of my head; unstable; and I realize, dimly, that my senses flared back to life too quickly. I’m feeling too much at once. I’m being burned alive by sensation.
I’ve lost my shields.
I can’t seem to move my mouth. I desperately want to say his name out loud. I can’t see clearly. I want to run my hands down his skin, taste the heat of him, press my lips to his throat. I don’t trust my mind. I want to get his attention. I want him to look at me. I think I might be dreaming. It’s an extraordinary feat even to lift my arm. I manage to animate a little, my blurry hand visibly shaking as I draw my fingers down what I think is his shoulder.
His T-shirt is warm.
The cotton is soft.
The muscular curve of his bicep is both solid and yielding and it’s disorienting to touch him. To be the one to touch him. I am a blur; unformed. I feel drunk. I haven’t initiated physical contact with anyone but Clara in over a decade.
The heart monitor reflects this.
When my fingers leave the border of his sleeve and accidentally graze his skin, the shock of connection is nearly violent.
James looks up sharply, bedsheets rustling as he shifts his weight. He meets my gaze and I can make out the blur of his eyes, the suggestion of his mouth, and I nearly lose myself again. I nearly touch him again.
“You’re back,” he breathes.
I blink at him.
My mind has gone soft. My eyes are still defective, still struggling to refine images, find edges. Light leaks smear the subtleties, smudging color, rendering details like an impressionist painting. I search his surrealist features, details coming in and out of focus: his dark eyelashes; thedizzying blue of his irises; the hard line of his jaw. I might be sinking softly into the ground. I can’t find my borders. I’m so aware of him I think I might scream.
He stills as I study him, his eyes tightening. “You okay?” he whispers.
You okay?
I flinch; the blow batters my chest.
You okay?
You okay?
My body panics out loud, the monitor beeping frantically all around us.
Where’d they take your sister?
The asylum, right?
I hear voices, a rush of footfalls, but the world winnows as I stare slowly up, into his eyes.
But, like, how do we get there?
