Page 67 of Stay Scared

My thumb finds his mouth. “You already know what I look like when I think nobody can see me.”

“This is different.”

“How?”

“You’re here with me.”

“Tell me what makes that different.”

His lips move against my thumb. “You’re choosing what I get.”

I close the last inch.

My mouth catches the corner of his before I correct the angle. Owen holds himself there for one heartbeat, then kisses me.

The hand at my waist drags me closer as his mouth opens under mine, measured for barely a second before I catch the front of his coat and pull.

A rough sound leaves him.

The padded wall bears down behind him, forcing every hard line of his body against mine while his mouth turns hungry. I give him more, and his fingers bite into my side.

The damaged seam of my jacket slips farther down my shoulder when I press into him, and his arm closes tighter across my back. The wall pushes again, but Owen absorbs it without breaking the kiss.

My shoulder brushes the moving panel.

Pain flashes.

He shifts me away from the pressure before I can react and takes the wall himself, my fingers knotting harder in his coat.

A speaker activates.

A copied voice says my name.

Owen tears his mouth from mine. His lips remain close enough that his next words touch my skin.

“That wasn’t part of my recording.”

The wall behind him stops.

A heavy release moves through the maze, and panels begin retracting. Space opens near my shoulder as a strip of white floor light returns.

Owen keeps himself between me and the mechanism until the corridor reaches full width. Only then does his arm loosen.

I step back, and he releases me.

I keep his hand.

Owen looks down at our joined fingers.

I pass him the mask. “The doors need this?”

“Some of them do.”

“Keep it off until we reach one that does.”

He clips the mask to his belt.

Several panels remain extended into routes missing from the map built into his wrist unit. Owen switches on the utility light, revealing long scrape marks across the floor where the walls traveled past their programmed limits.