“God, I’m not made for this,” I almost whimper, my body contorted in ways I didn’t think possible.
“Shut up. Everybody’s made for yoga,” says Renn, bent in the exact same way, facing me. On her though, the pose looks effortless.
“Not me. What is this?” I heave, trying to find my balance before my back gives out on me. “Why am I on my hands and toes? Why am I…” I lose my breath for a second. “Upside down? It’s not natural. Oh God, I feel my lime jello in the back of my throat.”
“You’re such a drama queen. It’s called downward dog.” Renn rolls her eyes. “It’s like, the most basic yoga pose. Kids could do this.”
“Do I look like a kid to you?” I swallow but gravity is working against me. “I can’t believe I let you pull me into this.”
“Exercise is good. It’s healthy, okay? We’re being healthy. We’re being productive with our day.”
I clench my eyes shut, the muscles in my calves probably starting to erupt in flames. “Shut up. You’re only doing this because you think you’re putting on weight.”
It’s true. This morning, Renn knocked at my wall to tell me her favorite top is fitting her tight around the tits. She called it the underarm/bust fat.
“My clothes don’t fit,” she practically shrieks. “It’s a disaster, Willow. I get anxious when my clothes don’t fit. So shut up. We’re doing this.”
My throat’s drying up and I feel like I’m going to pass out on the ground. The sun’s not helping. I fucking hate the sun. Hate it. The rays are piercing me like needles, making me prickle and sweat.
“I can’t… I can’t breathe.” I heave again and blow at my bangs.
“You just did, you moron. Just hold the pose for a few seconds. Don’t you like the burn in your muscles? Your ankles. Feel the burn in your ankles.”
“I don’t care about my stupid ankles.” I grit my teeth, sweat going into my eyes. “I’m dying. Dying.”
Renn blows a puff of air, dismissing my concern. “You wish.”
I snort. “God, I hate you right now.”
I do. I so do.
Why am I not reading like Penny or feeding the birds like Vi? Or why am I not at the library, reading a dozen new Harry Potter books? Yes. They finally listened to me, and now the library has the entire series of Harry Potter. Isn’t that wonderful?
But instead of petting those paperbacks and smelling their pages, I’m here. Why? I have no clue. I don’t even know how I got roped into this. Except Renn said something to me at breakfast and I said yes without listening since I was lost in my own head. So here I am. Standing on my head.
All because Simon Blackwood kissed me.
And then he ran away.
Well, he gave me time to escape without being seen but still. What does it mean that he kissed me? Does it mean that he likes me now? Has he always liked me? Why did he say no to the date, then?
What happened between us?
Damn it.
All of these questions are making me dizzy and this stupid yoga is not helping. I keep replaying it in my head. He kissed me. We kissed each other. I tasted him. He tasted me. I touched him. He touched me. I felt his arousal. I almost jacked him off with my stomach.
He cured me with his mouth.
I can’t stop thinking about particularly that. How his lips made me feel happier than I’ve ever been in my life. His kiss was a massive dose of lithium, lighting up the dark places in my brain.
That’s what I dreamed about when I fell asleep in my bed last night. Him lighting me up, chasing away the darkness by just being him.
My personal hero. Designed just for me.
I woke up this morning, my hands stuck between my legs and my panties shoved to the side, thinking about him.
But then, we almost got caught.
Oh gosh, my heart still jumps thinking about that. That knock is the kind of sound I’ll never forget.
I haven’t seen him since then, though, and I don’t know what it means. Do I hunt him down so we can talk about this? So we can figure this out? Or do I go see him for our appointment this evening?
What am I supposed to do?
My thoughts come to a halt when I see wingtips in my line of vision. Instantly, I spring up from my contorted position, but I forgot about the dizziness and I get a wicked head rush, almost toppling me over.
But a hand on my wrist stops me from falling.
“You okay?” Simon asks, pulling me upright.
I blink, adjusting my eyes to the sun, even though I’ve been under it for almost an hour now. Blowing on my bangs, I nod. “Yes. Thank you.”
He studies me for a few seconds, probably making sure that I’m really okay before letting me go. He doesn’t look away from me, however. He watches me like he was doing yesterday in his office, only today, his stare feels like a weight.
A physical thing. It’s as if that’s all he can do: watch. And nothing else. So, he’s pouring all his intensity into it.
“Hi,” I say, waving my hand lamely, hoping he’ll say something, praying it doesn’t look like I’m staring at his lips.
Because I am. In the direct sunlight, his lips are shining. They look even softer. Did I really have them on mine yesterday? Did he really kiss me? I lick my own lips as if his flavor still lingers there.
His gaze shifts to my action and he takes a step back, clipping, “Can we talk for a second?”
I bite my lip then, feeling apprehensive, and his nostrils flare. Almost angrily, he marches a few steps ahead, without waiting for my answer.
Well, that was rude. I almost don’t want to follow him but who am I kidding?
I’m obviously going to follow him. I’ll always follow him.
And I do. We’re away from Renn and the crowd, standing under the tree, but the relief I should feel after getting out from under the sun isn’t there.
I’m uneasy. As in, extremely uneasy.
“I have something for you,” he says, all somber.
“For me?”
“Here.” He offers me my old Harry Potter book that I’d left in his office on The Confession Day. “I fixed it for you.”
I look at him, his smooth, expressionless face, and then at the book. I wasn’t even thinking about it. I haven’t been thinking about it at all. I should be filled with gratitude that he thought about me and this book, and I am.
But I’m also a little nervous. A lot nervous, actually.
Taking it from him, I clutch it to my chest, hugging it. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
He tracks my movements, eyeing me as I hug myself with my arms, and shoves his hands down into his pockets. The hands that he put on me yesterday, of his own volition.
I can feel them over my pulse on the side of my neck. I can feel them in my hair too, fisting the strands. My heartbeat jacks up as my scalp tingles. Why is every part of my body already used to him when he’s only touched me once?
It’s magic. It’s fucking torture.
“It was a mistake.”
He doesn’t have to define what ‘it’ is. I know what he’s referring to. And I hate that. I hate that I immediately know what he means. I don’t even get the delay-time of comprehension. I can’t ease into the knowledge. I already have it.
“Was it?” I ask, my body feeling all cold and sweaty at the same time.
“Yes.” The angles of his face are sharp and defined, unforgiving. “It was a major failure on my part. It never should’ve happened. I was less than professional. It’s a line I never intended to cross.”
“But you did.”
Remorse flickers through his features, right alongside something else. Something like anger. At himself?
“Yes. And for that I’m deeply sorry.”
“You’re sorry?”
“I would understand if you wanted to take this to Beth.”
“You would?”
I’m aware that I sound like a parrot. A dumb parrot, at that. But I don’t know what else to say. What else to think other than this deep sense of betrayal.
“Yes. I made a mistake, and I’m ready to face the consequences, if I have to.”
I’m so pissed off.
God.
So fucking pissed off. While I was dreaming about his kiss, he was thinking about how much of a mistake it was. He was thinking how best to approach me and tell me that he’s sorry.
“Is this your way of apologizing?” I wave the book, the book he fixed for me.
He nods, appearing grim.
“Did you stay up at night, fixing it?”
“Yes.”
I shake my head, lowering the stupid book. I hate this stupid book. I want to take it and tear it apart. Ruin all his hard work.
“Why’d you kiss me?” I ask, gritting my teeth.
Simon doesn’t like this question. His gray eyes glint with anger, agitation almost. Tough luck. He’s asked me a ton of questions that I haven’t liked. But I answered every one of them. I wanna see if he’ll tell me the truth or if he’ll lie.
Come on, Dr. Blackwood.
“Temporary insanity,” he replies. “It was a slip-up. A momentary lapse of judgment.”
“Right.”
Kissing me was temporary insanity.
Great.
Wonderful.
It flares my anger. It flares it to the point where all I can do is smile tightly and nod. And make claws out of my fingers and dig them into the book. Stupid fucking blunt nails.
Stupid fucking book.
“What would happen if I told Beth? Would you get fired?”
Did you get fired from your last job for something like this, too?
I don’t ask that. But it runs through my mind.
And I do have the right to think that because let’s face it, I hardly know anything about him. Whatever I know is based on my feelings, not facts. I still feel guilty though. I feel disgusted at even having that doubt about him.
God, I’m a mess. And he’s a jerk.
“There’d be an investigation, if you pressed formal charges. The board would have to get involved.”
I’m trying to read his face. The sun is so bright that every nuance of it is visible. The curve of his lip, the corner of his eyes, the lines around his mouth. I’m trying to see if any of those would betray the man they belong to.
But no. Nothing. I’m still clueless about what happened to him at his previous job.
I’m still clueless about him.
“Well, then I absolve you. It was temporary insanity, wasn’t it? Everybody makes mistakes. It doesn’t mean you have to sit through an investigation for just a kiss.”
His hooded eyes and his clamped jaw are the last things I see of him as I walk away.
I take it back.
Simon Blackwood is a fucking asshole.
***
I used to have a pet goldfish.
Her name was Hedwig, after the pet snow owl of Harry Potter. My mom got it for me for my twelfth birthday, and I loved Hedwig to pieces.
In fact, for the longest time she was my only friend, aside from my mom. One night I couldn’t sleep, and so I kept chatting with Hedwig, telling her about all the things I’d like to do but couldn’t ever find the energy to. And suddenly, it hit me.
She never talked back. She simply circled the glass tank over and over, blinking her eyes and gaping her mouth. I thought maybe that was her way of communicating and I wasn’t capable of understanding it. Just like she wasn’t capable of understanding me.
What the hell was I doing with her, then?
Next morning, I decided to set her free so she could find her friends. It wasn’t fair that I kept her for myself when she could have a chance to meet people like her. At least one of us should be happy.
I’m missing Hedwig tonight.
I wonder what happened to her. Is she alive? How many years do goldfish live, anyway?
I hope she found her friends. I wanna tell her that I did too. I finally found my friends. My kind of people. I finally found a man, as well. He’s kind and sexy and so fucking handsome. He looks like a king and kisses like a beast.
But he thinks our kiss was a mistake.
I’m watching the rain from my bed, my knees drawn up and my back propped against the wall. The book he fixed for me is in my lap and I’m hugging it, like I would hug him. The night shift nurse who does hourly checks just left. She saw me through the square window on the door and found me awake so she stopped by for a little chat. I’m pretty sure she’ll put on her report that I wasn’t sleeping even though I’m on sleep meds, and a certain someone will hear about it.
Whatever. I don’t care.
I’m drawing shapes on the misty window with my finger. I refuse to write his name, even though that’s what I want to do. I refuse to be that pathetic. At least, tonight. I figure there’s going to be a lot of lonely nights for me in the future. I’m saving pitifulness for later.
I watch the rain pouring down on the screen in rivulets. There’s a storm out tonight, thick and loud.
Even though the sounds on the inside are drowned by the sounds on the outside, I still hear the door of my room opening. The air inside the four walls changes and I whip my eyes to see who it is, terrified.
The shape standing at my door is tall and large. It’s almost blocking the dim lighting of the hallway, causing my small room to plunge mostly into darkness.
Even so, I can tell who it is. I’m pathetic after all, because I’ve memorized the outline of his body and his rainy-weather smell.
Simon Blackwood.
What the… Am I dreaming? Did I conjure him up?
I’m huddled by the wall, gripping my knees, trying to breathe, or rather, not breathe this fast. If I’m dreaming, then this has to be a nightmare. Why else would he come here, if not to torture me, torment me, and break me down?
Without turning around, he closes the door behind him. The soft click of it is a jarring force I need to realize that this is real life.
He really is here. Inside my room. In the middle of the night.
“What are you doing here?” I whisper-hiss, throwing the book aside, springing up from the bed.
“You didn’t show up for our meeting tonight,” he says in a low voice.
A voice that makes me jump.
Even though the rain outside is chaotic, his voice seems louder. His voice seems like a declaration of some sort.
A proclamation that he’s here.
Holy fucking shit.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I repeat my question, although on a whisper, ignoring his statement. “Who said you could come into my room?”
Technically, this isn’t the first time he’s been here. Last time was in broad daylight and everyone knew he was in my room. Doesn’t he remember though? Beth saw us. Not to mention, we almost got caught kissing in his office.
Stupid, fucking phenomenal kiss.
Simon takes a step toward me and my eyes jump to the little window on my door. I’m half-expecting to see an outraged night nurse or even Beth standing there, peeking inside, drawing all the conclusions – wrong conclusions – about his unexpected visit.
“I was waiting for you.”
“What?”
“Why didn’t you show up?”
“What does… I don’t…” He walks closer to me and this time I hear a creak that makes me jump. “Oh my God. Stop. What are you doing? Don’t move. This fucking hospital is falling apart, okay? Just don’t move.”
Of course, he doesn’t listen.
Of course, he wants to kill me. This is what it is.
He’s here to kill me. He’s a murderer. I wouldn’t put it past him because he is already stealing my breath away. He is already a thief. There’s a high likelihood that he’s a cold-hearted killer, too.
He keeps walking closer until I feel the heat radiating out of his body.
God, he’s hot. In temperature and in other ways. But I’m not thinking about the other ways right now.
I won’t.
“Do you think this is a game?” he snaps.
“What?”
I squint at him, trying to discern his expression. There’s no moonlight tonight; the rain is covering every inch of the ground and the sky. And the hallway light is dim, not to mention, this reckless man in my room is blocking it with his giant shoulders. So I can’t really see anything, other than his shining dark eyes and the shadowed lines of his face.
“Answer me, Willow,” he commands. “Do you think this is a game? Do you think your health is a game?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why the fuck didn’t you show up for the meeting?”
Is he really asking me that? After he pulled a ‘temporary insanity’ clause on me?
“Because I didn’t wanna see you,” I snap back. “Can you go now?”
I swear I see a pulse on his jaw, as if he’s angry. Then he shakes his head, sighs sharply and asks, “Why were you crying?”
“What?”
“I saw you through the window.”
“You’ve been spying on me through the window?” I hiss, trying to keep it down, wiping the tears that I didn’t know I was shedding in the first place.
“Spying is a strong word. I was trying to check up on you.”
I raise my hand in a stop-right-there gesture, blowing at my bangs. “I don’t even wanna address the fact that this is a gross invasion of privacy. Because something much more drastic is at stake right now. Remember what happened yesterday back at your office? And before that? Beth saw us. There’re eyes everywhere.”
“Beth’s not here.”
“What?” I shake my head at his casual comment. “We have hourly checks, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“The nurse thinks I’m in the supply closet and the check isn’t for another fifty-six minutes.”
“You’ve been counting?”
He completely ignores me and instead says, “You didn’t answer my question. Why were you crying?”
I sigh, tired, but so charged up at the same time. I know I won’t be able to sleep tonight. Actually, I’m not even thinking that far out. I’m only thinking of now. Like there’s nothing beyond him and this moment.
“What does it matter to you?”
He leans closer then, and at last, I can see his features a little better. Like he’s come out of the shadows. His brow is furrowed and his hair’s sticking up on the sides making me think that he’s been plowing his fingers through it.
I’m almost shocked to see him this way, ruffled and bothered. Nothing bothers him, not from what I’ve seen. He’s a block of ice but not right now.
Tonight, he looks like a man who’s tired, exhausted, imperfect, and so fucking glorious.
“It matters to me because you’re my patient and you missed your meeting, and now you’re awake at night, crying.” His eyes glint, troubled. “Which is why I’m asking you again. Why were you crying, Willow? Why are you even awake? With Trazadone you should be fast asleep.”
I’m such a sucker that I can’t see him like this. I can’t see him upset. I should tell him I’m crying because of him. I can’t sleep because of him. Because he kissed me and then pled temporary insanity.
But as I said, I’m a sucker so I look away from him and tell him the other truth, “It’s not the meds, okay? I miss home.”
“What about home?”
“Hedwig.”
“You had a pet owl?”
There he goes again, stealing my breath. How fucking unfair is it that I’ve finally found a man who knows Harry Potter like I do, but he isn’t into me. “Goldfish. I set it free when I was twelve. Well, gave it back to the store and asked them to set it free. Right after The Funeral Incident…”
Okay, stop, Willow. Stop talking.
I thought I hated talking. But something about him makes me want to talk and spill and bare my soul.
I’m so stupid.
“Why?”
I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I can’t believe he’s here.
How is this my life?
I glance at the little window on the door again before focusing on him. “Because I thought she was alone and she needed friends.”
I want to say more but I grit my teeth. Enough. I’ve already told him so many things about me, while I know nothing about him. Not that I’m interested.
I’m not.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Didn’t you need friends?”
Fisting my hands, I say, “I was okay. I was handling it.”
Thunder cracks and reverberates through the room, throwing the light of the sky on him. My intruder. The face sculpted by the gods. It has to be. And those eyes. They were probably drenched in the rain clouds to get that rich, gray color.
Everything about him is so poetic. And everything about his poetry is fucking tragic. For me.
“That’s what you do, don’t you?” He scans my face in the darkness. “You handle things. All alone. You fight for them. Every time. All the time. You fight.”
My eyes feel heavy, grainy. “Yes. I’m a warrior. Maybe I should tattoo that. Warrior Willow or something.”
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Maybe you should.”
“Okay, now can you go?”
I blow at my bangs again and I see his eyes roving to my loose hair, and I’m racked with such longing. It grips every part of me. My lips, my fingers, even the roots of my silver strands.
Will he never fist them? Will he never kiss me again, taste me, cure me, let me taste him?
There’s so much to do, so much to discover. I didn’t get to touch him last time the way I wanted to.
God, please. I want him to touch me.
Perhaps his thoughts are the same as mine because instead of going away like I asked him to, he puts his hand on me. Again.
And I squeak. His fingers circle my throat, his thumb pressing on the fluttering pulse on the side of my neck, like he did yesterday. As if he wants to feel the life inside me, my essence.
My vitality.
My eyes are wide and shocked. “Wh-what are you doing?”
His eyes are on his fingers, as if he can’t believe they are there. He puts pressure around my neck, and it arches and so does my back. He isn’t hurting me. There isn’t even discomfort. It’s just that he’s touching me, holding my throat in such a possessive way that I can’t help but make room for him. Or rather my body can’t help rearranging and shifting.
“S-Simon…”
Without answering me, he bends down, like really down, his hand leaving my throat so his arms can go under my ass.
Then, he does something that I never, not in a million years, expected him to do.
He lifts me in his arms.