His other hand lifted toward my hair, then stopped before it touched me.
“Your hair is caught on the stone.”
It was. A strand had snagged where the wall had split in a thin seam. If I moved, it would pull.
“May I?”
The question was quiet enough to belong to the dark.
“Yes.”
His fingers took the strand free and tucked it behind my ear. They stayed there for one breath, no longer, and then they were gone.
I realized I had stopped breathing.
He let go.
His hand returned to the wall beside mine, close enough for heat, not contact, and the space he left there felt as deliberate as the touch had been.
I finally exhaled.
“I’ve been looking for you,” I said.
“That sounds promising.”
“It isn’t. You left an apple on my bed.”
“I did.”
“After getting into my locked room.”
A pause.
“Yes.”
“That’s the part I came up to discuss.”
“The lock?”
“The part where you decided my room was a place you could enter when the door was locked.”
His hand stayed on the wall beside mine.
“I suppose I shouldn’t have done that. I was trying to get your attention.”
He gave me an apologetic smile. His teeth were straight and white, and in the dark of the clock tower stairwell his eyes shone even brighter green.
The stair was dark between us. Above, the wind moved through whatever waited at the top.
“I wanted to ask you to come up here with me,” he offered. “I tried several times.”
“You did?”
“Twelve times, to be exact.”
I stared up at him.
“In person?”
