I could see the gears in his mind shifting. “Nothing,” he muttered.
I stepped closer until I saw every color in his eyes with clarity. “I waswhat, Heartling?”
Both his hands rose, came close to my face, but he never touched me. “You were hurting.” My ears rang. “You hated it. You wanted to run.”
I’m bad-bad-bad,whispered a voice in my head.
I moved to the side, not exactly aware that I was doing it.
March stopped me. “You’re not okay.”
“I’m fine.”
He wrapped his hand around my wrist. “Then walk with me.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t a request.” His voice was low, and he didn’t let go of my wrist. He just turned and walked up the hallway with me, and no matter how badly I wanted to knee him in the crotch again and run, I didn’t.
Memories rushed into my mind. Crashed against my skull. I couldn’t really see where I was going—the world had turned so blurry, but March’s hand around my wrist guided me, and luckily I didn’t slam onto any walls. We climbed stairs, and then my vision cleared a bit, and when we turned the corner to our dorms, I was glad to find the hallway empty.
Then…
“Are youcrying?”
I looked up at March. He let go of me, and my hand was cold, and the door to my bedroom was right behind me.
“No. No, I’m not c…” My hand went to my face. My cheeks were wet.
That’swhy the world had been so blurry.
Why am I crying?
“Ora,” March whispered, and it was like something inside me cracked. His fingers were around my chin, and he raised my head, and he lookedin pain.“I shouldn’t have said anything. I shouldn’t…”
I opened my mouth to tell him that I was okay, and that I wasnotokay, but then he was wiping the tears off my cheeks with his thumbs, and his hands somehow ended up on either side of my face, and he was looking at me like that, like maybe someone had cut off a piece of him. Like maybe he wanted to burn something at the same time.
“I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.” Lips on my forehead, so warm. He replaced them with his own forehead then, and I was holding onto his wrists as he held onto my face. His eyes were closed and he was breathing deeply, and that mademebreathe deeply, too. I was suspended in that second, and it lasted a good while. We just stood there, forehead to forehead, close and far, breathing.
Then March let go of me all at once, turned around and walked down the hallway to his room. He didn’t once turn to look at me when he made it inside and pushed the door closed.
I stared after him for another minute or two before I finally gathered enough sense to get in my own room, too.
Memory.
I somehow had March’s memory in my mind, and I saw it all in perfect detail as if it were my own, as ifIwas inside his head, looking through his eyes.
Of course it was a memory. It made perfect sense. I was inside his head while he did what he did with the glass.
And he was in mine when I screamed in the woods, and when my parents hugged me.
I don’t know why I’d cried, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall the memory for myself while I bathed. I tried, I really tried, and I knew my parents. I knew how they moved and how they hugged me and how they kissed me, yet I couldn’t recreate what March saw in his head no matter what.
Which told me the memory he saw wasn’t inmyhead anymore.
The other one, where I was screaming in the woods, was different. I’d done that same thing so many times that I doubted any of the times had been different, and I wouldn’t remember if Iforgotone of them.
How curious. Why would I have a memory of March in my head?Howhad I gotten it? Had it beenhim?
