Meanwhile, I watched him with my mouth open and my mind blank except for one thing:March is in my room.
“I wasn’t sure if someone was watching,” he said in a hushed voice and looked at the door for another second before he turned to me.
I could have sworn that he wassurprisedjust then. In that split second when his eyes fell on my face, he looked surprised,like he hadn’t expected me to be there at all. Or to look the way I looked.
Which then made me self-conscious about my appearance and wish I’d taken a second to look in the mirror when I came back, but…
A hand around the back of my neck. My heart all but stopped.
March leaned in, whispered, “Are you okay?”
A silly question I didn’t know the answer to, and he didn’t wait. He pulled me in and hugged me instead.
Yes.My arms wrapped around him instantly like they belonged there.I’m okay now.
We sighed at the same time. I smiled against his chest at the thought that he felt the same relief I felt.Nothing had changed.It felt like that trial had done something to us, but it hadn’t. We were stillus. We were still right where we were supposed to be.
Then March said, “What is that?”
His arms around my body loosened, and I raised my head to find him looking somewhere behind me—at the coffee table. And the sketchbook that I’d left open when I went to answer the door.
Right there on the first drawing—that of the mechanical heart.
“Oh.” Heat on my cheeks. I stepped aside and let go of him all too reluctantly. “That’s, um…it’s a sketch.”
He looked at me, thick brows raised, a small smile slowly stretching his lips as I watched, and I was envious just now.Iwanted to claim his lips slowly like that, then all the way.
Time’s Teacups, I was envious ofa smile.Maybe the trial did more damage than I realized.
“A sketch.”
My cheeks were hot-hot-hot. “Yes.” I cleared my throat and went to the table just to have something to do. “I made it for you, actually. It’s, uh…it’s the heart we saw in the junkyard. Here…”
He was already right behind me, and he didn’t wait for me to invite him to sit at all. He fell in the armchair and took the sketchbook on his lap, his eyes never leaving the page.
He was mesmerized. He barely blinked, barely breathed as he analyzed the shapes and the shadows of the sketch. I went and sat on the other side because my knees were slightly shaking.
I never much liked to show people my sketches. They were too personal. Something that belonged to me and me only. It was my mind out in the open without barriers, without an ounce of privacy. My thoughts raw and unfiltered.Personal.
But this was March.
I analyzed his profile as he analyzed the heart, and the question was at the tip of my tongue:would you sit there really still like that and let me draw you?
Of course, they never made it out of my lips.
“You can draw,” March said after a beat—not a question, just a statement. He wasn’t even surprised.
“I thought since…you know, we can’t take that thing out of the junkyard, this would serve as a reminder,” I muttered. “I tried to stick as close to the original as I could.”
“It’s identical.” March looked up at me, smiling.
My heart did strange things.
“It might need a little more work…” It didn’t. I’d exhausted my memory of it. It was indeed as identical to the real thing as it could get, but I needed something to say when he looked at me like that.
And he continued like he knew, those red and brown eyes warming me like sunlight.
I stood up—my body couldn’t handle it. My blood was rushing too fast. “You, uhm…you can take it. Just rip the page. You can—” And I moved to grab the sketchbook, but…
