“What?” I asked instead, and I tried to act casual as I walked toward him, my body in another fight against itself—the side that wanted me to stop in front of him and the side that insisted I should just walk away.
“You’re not telling me something.”
I stopped. His eyes fell on my lips, and curiously enough, they still burned with the echo of that kiss any time he looked at me. My body loved to be reminded of the way he’d tasted, even if I’d have rather wiped the memory from my head altogether, just so I didn’t have to feel like I was being eaten by flames.
“I’m not telling you a lot of things.” Like how much time I spent thinking about that kiss. It embarrassed the time out of me, almost as much as it irritated me.
“But you’re not trying to run away anymore.” He pushed himself off the wall and stepped closer. “Right?”
“Maybe.” This was the part where I should have stepped around him and walked away. I didn’t.
“I’ll tell you a truth if you tell me one.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and stopped way too close to me, those eyes of his moving fast all over my face like mine moved on his. His hair was wet with sweat, yet his curls remained as wild as always. He had dirt everywhere on him, and a bruise was just starting to show on the left side of his jaw—but otherwise he looked okay.Alive.Delicious enough to eat.
“What kind of a truth?” I wondered, and the war that was raging in my head to get me to move back was simmering.
“One you’ll be interested in, I assure you,” he said, then his hand slowly rose up and up and up, all the way to my cheek.
I didn’t breathe. I didn’t move. I only stared at his eyes as he slowly touched my cheek with his fingertips, then rubbed my skin gently, like he was wiping something off. Whatever it was, it must not have budged because he did an unusualthing next: brought those fingers to his lips and licked them, then wiped my cheek again. With his saliva.
I swallowed so hard it was easy to hear the gulp. My eyes were on his lips still, his tongue gone, but the memory of it in my mouth incinerated all my thoughts one after the other.
He wasn’t close enough, and I found myself leaning forward just slightly.
“Okay.” My voice was thick, hoarse, and I wasn’t entirely sure what I was agreeing to.
“Memories,” he whispered, and I blinked and blinked, and looked up at his eyes when those beautiful lips stretched into a crooked smile I wanted to draw with my entire being.
“What?”
“I have your memories in my mind, and I think you have mine.”
Suddenly I went deaf and blind and mute, but only for a tick. “Memories?”
“Yes.”
It sounded very wrong. “How do you know?”
“Because I’m a Heart. I know memories. And you see me throughmyeyes, don’t you?” Yes. Yes, I did. I saw fromhiseyes—the way he worked the glass, held the rod, looked at the furnace… “I see you in that forest throughyoureyes, too. And I also saw your parents.”
He could have stuck a knife in my gut. “My parents.”
“You have your father’s eyes, but you look like your mom. She’s shorter than you and she wears an onyx spade around her neck. Your dad’s hair is longer, tied behind his head.”Where’d all the air go? “Am I right?”
Yes, yes, you are.
“How do you…how do you…” I couldn’t finish the question.
The smile fell from his face. “I saw it in a memory.Yourmemory.” A step closer. “Are you okay, Spade?”
“What kind of a memory? What…where are they now?”
His thick brows narrowed, not in suspicion, but inconcernthis time. He looked like he was genuinely concerned for me, and it confused me even more.
“I don’t know. I only saw that one memory of them—they were hugging you, kissing your cheeks. You were…”
He paused. So did I.
“I was what?”
