“He really tried to make soup?” Winston asks.
I feel like I’m suspended in space with a fever. Like I might be on drugs. I don’t know how else to describe it. My head is hot but soft, like parts of it have gone bad. My chest is literally aching, pain branching across my sternum like stress fractures.
I take a tight breath, releasing it carefully.
I’m sitting on the ground in the empty, dusty living room, my back propped up against the wall, and her small body is curled up against me like a cat, hardly moving, the engine of her heart almost silent.
Her pulse is really, really slow.
So slow, in fact, that it’s beginning to scare me.
Rosabelle didn’t wake up even when Nazeera finally removed her manacles. She didn’t wake up when I carefully repositioned her tortured arms, when I touched the tender skin at her wrists, searching for bruises. She didn’t wake up when I removed her slip-on shoes and her hospital socks almost came off in my hands. She didn’t move when I tugged her socks back up, my fingers skimming the sensitive skin at her ankles. She didn’t wake up when Winston tried to set up the folding chair and knocked it over instead.
I swallow as I study her.
Her white-blond hair is long and loose, tumbling over her shoulders, occasionally catching in my fingers. Her skin is smooth and silken, her features softly rendered, every slope and curve drawn gently. She’s too lightweight in my arms; she’s already lost what little strength she’d gainedat the rehab facility; but a slight flush has bloomed in her cheeks in the past thirty minutes, and I realize, as I look at her, that I might be willing to give up a piece of my soul for the chance to kiss her.
She’s so beautiful it’s actually a little hard on my brain. The first time I saw her I glitched so hard I convinced myself she wasn’t even human.
I can’t process the sight of her like this, in stillness.
She looks like if a flower were a person. Like if clouds were a person. Like if a person was made of cake.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
I sound like a fucking lunatic.
“Hey, do you think we should order food?” Nazeera says, and I open my eyes. “I can call Kip. We could have breakfast for dinner.”
“Where are we supposed to eat?” Winston points out. “On your imaginary dining table?”
“We could sit on the floor.”
“When was the last time you swept this floor, Nazeera?”
“Oh!” she says, snapping her fingers. “That reminds me. I need to buy a vacuum when we go out tomorrow.”
Winston groans.
Every once in a while Rosabelle inhales sharply, like she’s forgotten to breathe. Her body clenches, then releases, easing back against my chest in increments, like the slow give of a blood pressure cuff.
At one point she startled in her sleep, lifting her hand a couple of inches in the air, then letting it fall to my chest.I was in agony for a full minute as gravity drew her fingers slowly down the thin cotton of my shirt, my temperature spiking as my body stiffened.
Her hand is now pressed lightly against my abs, and every time I breathe I feel her fingers press harder and lower against my torso. Her cheek shifts against my chest. She sighs into my shirt. She’s wearing a cheap set of thin hospital scrubs and, as usual, she’s definitely not wearing any underwear. She’s sitting in my fucking lap.
I’ve nearly lost the will to live.
I rock my head back against the wall and close my eyes. I can’t really breathe, to be honest. This is an unreal kind of torture. Intense in a way I can’t even describe.
“So is this it?” Winston says, leaning against the sink. “We’re just going to watch her sleep?”
“If you’re bored, you can run some errands,” Nazeera says. “We still need groceries, and I don’t have a spare mattress, but maybe you could—”
“Me?Why do I have to go by myself?”
“Obviously I can’t leave these two alone.” She gestures in my direction. “If we’re gone for too long James will probably try to marry her, and she’ll probably kill him for trying. We’ll have to scrape his body off the asphalt.”
I flip her off.
