For me, though, it wasn’t. I still didn’t care about what happened to him—I only cared about what it meant for me.
So I said nothing, only closed my eyes and allowed those tears to fall down my cheeks.
“We’ll get them back,” he whispered as he kissed my hair. “I know it. I feel it. We’ll get all of ourselves back soon.”
I didn’t believe him.
I wokeup in his arms just before five in the morning. March was sound asleep, our fingers still intertwined, and we were still wrapped up in towels.
I was sure he’d wake up as soon as I moved, but he didn’t. He must have been tired. Slowly, I pushed his hands to the sides and I stood up as silently as I could. I only grabbed my panties and my nightgown, and didn’t bother taking the towel off at all—I would do that in my own bedroom.
For a moment, though, I stopped by the edge of the bed and watched him. Just…watched him.
March asleep, completely relaxed, every feature on hisface soft. He looked so young, so peaceful, socomplete,and for that moment, I was, too. I wasfulllike I’d never given a single memory, a single version of me to this place at all. Like I was in this just as much as he was.
The need to kiss him overwhelmed me, and so I turned around and tiptoed out of his room before he woke. It was already hard enough—I didn’t want him to wake up and see me, talk to me, ask me to stay.
Becausewould he?
Andwould I?
I would rather not have to find out.
So I went to my room and I lay on my bed alone, still wrapped up in his towel. I cried myself back to sleep as if I thought the tears were going to fill the gaping hole in my chest at any moment. They didn’t.
What felt like seconds later, Lida knocked on my door to wake me up for breakfast, and I was back in the real world, the same different Ora.
Training with Ashawas more brutal than ever before. She gave us weapons and dummies, and told us to cause as much damage as we could to the wooden and leather bound pieces. My muscles were screaming even after lunch, and when we made it to Master Talik’s workshop, the Timekeeper wasn’t even there.
Calren had no idea why. You could just tell by the way he looked about when he opened the door, saw that the room was empty, that it was a mess.
“Well, it seems Master Talik could be busy with something,” he said, and offered us a fake smile. “Go ahead, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back with him.” And he pushed the door open for us to enter, then closed it behind us when we did.
Meanwhile March was standing just two feet to my side, looking at me through his peripheral, and I knew it because I knew the weight of his attention.
Except every time I turned to him, he looked away.
And every time I turned to him, every inch of my skin raised in goose bumps because the memories were there. The feel of his hands on my body, of his mouth, of his cock inside me—it was perfectly vivid still, so my cheeks remained red at all times. I was used to the heat in them by now, and the changes in my body. Not something obvious, or even anything I could point out. I wasn’t in pain, but I just had this slight pressure between my legs.
I wasn’t a virgin anymore. I’d actually had sex—and I’d loved every second of it.
A whistle, loud and sharp. “Would you look atthat!” Reggie said as he strode to the main table where Master Talik worked on usually.
“Let’s get the benches prepared, guys. C’mon, let’s settle,” said Mimi, and she was right. The benches were still by the walls just like they had been that night when I came to see Master Talik. Which made me wonder if he’d maybe overslept and had forgotten that we had a lecture today?
Then March looked at me, and his eyes were like magnets for mine. The others were already by the benches—they were apparently heavier than they’d looked—so it was just him and me there by the door still, our eyes locked, our memories flashing before our eyes. Or at leastmine.
“Hi.”
What a stupid thing to say. What a stupid,stupidthing to say, but it was all I had.Hi.
An arched brow. He really did know how to make me feel both like I was on top of the Great Clock, and the most pathetic person to have ever existed.
“You disappeared,” he then said, and everything inside me squeezed.
My mouth opened to say something—you were asleeporit was easier that wayor anything at all—but nothing came out of me. Not a single sound.
March then nodded, like he got exactly the answer he was expecting, and with the suspicion hiding the red hues of his eyes, he went to help the others with the benches.
