“What do youthinkI’m doing?” I sniff.
“You’re... crying? But... why?” He studies me a moment longer, then pulls me down to the couch next to him. Softer, quieter, he says, “Is it because of what happened earlier? I knowthat must’ve been scary.... I promise it won’t happen again. I won’t let them hurt you.” He strokes my hair as he speaks, his touch so gentle that it’s disorienting. It doesn’t seem possible that those same hands had broken a grown man’s nose tonight, had ripped two people away from me and thrown them to the concrete. “You’re safe now.”
And despite everything the vision had warned me of, I do feel safe. Safer than I should reasonably feel. “That’s not... It’s not because of that,” I whisper, dabbing my tears with the corner of my sleeve. I motion toward the cuts across his torso, all that raw and ruined flesh. “It’s... this. I don’t like it. I don’t like—I don’t want you to be—I can’t stop picturing... I mean, doesn’t ithurt?”
He freezes.
Something flickers across his eyes, which are almost pitch-black in the low light, his pupils dilated. “My pain,” he says slowly, like he’s struggling to understand a new, abstract concept in class, “means something to you?”
The answer is a given, but the problem is that I don’t know what exactly it means.
“Of course it does,” I say.
“Of course it does,” he repeats, like he still can’t quite believe it.
The tears are falling faster than I can wipe them away. “Fuck, now my makeup’s ruined,” I say on a shaky breath, half laughing at myself.
“You still look pretty,” Ares says matter-of-factly. “You always do.”
My heart stumbles over itself like a drunken fool trying to find the exit, but there’s no escaping this feeling. And so when the air shifts between us, when his eyes flicker down to my lips, I lean in.
In the past, kissing was a pleasant pastime at best, a chore more often than not, and a disgusting, deeply regrettable ordeal at worst. There have been occasions where I’d kiss a boy simply because we’d run out of things to talk about, and we were both already sitting there, so might as well. I had perfect control over myself. It was like I could disconnect my body from my mind; I could calmly plan out my breakfast or outfit for the next day inside my head while I drew them closer to me.
But something in me fractures when his lips graze mine.
My mouth parts on its own accord and I shift forward, letting my knees spread until I’m straddling his torso on the couch, every possible inch of skin pressed together, and still, it isn’t nearly close enough. My nails sink into the muscles in his shoulders as I kiss him, wild and breathless and stunned by the intensity of my body’s response to him.
Isthishow it’s supposed to feel? Like hunger? Like the world’s on fire? Like I might be losing my mind?
He grips my leg with the kind of sureness that only comes from experience, and violence blazes through me at the thought of him touching any other girl this way, even if it was before we ever met. I run my nails down his back like I can keep him there, just keep him, make him mine. A breathless sound escapes my lips, and for once I’m not faking it. If anything, I’m holdingback, clenching my teeth to stifle a gasp when his hands slide to my upper thigh.
My head is spinning, or the room is. I only stop when I taste the rust of blood on his lips and I remember, dimly, too late, that he’s injured, but his fingers find the nape of my neck and he pulls me down to him again.
“Keep going,” he says hoarsely.
“But... you’re bleeding—”
“Doesn’t matter.” His voice is rough, the rasp of flint.
He kisses me harder, and I think I’ve done it, I’ve figured out a way to keep the future at bay, because time seems to halt. There’s only the two of us, his heart thudding against my chest. I bite gently down on his lower lip and he makes a sound deep in the back of his throat, the most vulnerable and unraveled I’ve ever heard him, and his hands are everywhere but still not enough—
It almost hurts to break away from him.
Not because I want to, but because I need to leave him wanting more. It’s the most basic of rules when it comes to attraction: Never give him everything at once, or else there’ll be nothing for him to fantasize about, no point for him to keep chasing after you. It’s just as well. If I were to keep going any longer, let him hold me tighter, run his hands even farther down my body, all those rules might just dissolve from my mind.
He opens his eyes slowly. There’s the briefest moment where his features are relaxed and his guard is down, where I glimpse what he might be like when nobody else is around. Then his expression smooths out, and he releases his grip on my hairwith just enough reluctance to make me consider kissing him again.
Silence passes between us like a truce. This is new. Uncharted territory.
“Do you want to watch something?” he asks after a beat, nodding at the TV.
The casualness of the question surprises me. As if it’s just any ordinary evening, as if we’ve long fallen into the habit of making out on his couch, and he hadn’t narrowly escaped being beaten to death mere hours ago. As if he isn’t still bleeding right now.
“Okay,” I say, matching his tone.
He leans forward to grab the remote, barely wincing when the movement pulls against his wounds, and settles back down next to me, his arm draped around my shoulders. He starts to flip through the five-second previews, but my eyes land on a familiar logo in his Continue Watching history.
“Wait. I was on that variety show,” I say, pointing at it. “You were watching me?”
