04-17-2020, 01:31 AM
He remembers.
He says her name but he’s looking at her strange and she feels her heartbeat slide sideways. A vise tightens around her throat, hitches her breath. She feels some terrible trepidation, which is compounded by the thing he says next. She shrinks, a staggered, aching step backward, away from him. Eyes still wide, that steady stare still fixed to his face. Those eyes. How the heart aches!
“Thorn?” she whispers it now. It comes out all strangled, scared, and there is a tremor that starts in her knees and splinters outward until it consumes her entirely. She frowns, cut to the quick, cold down to the marrow of her bones. She swallows hard around the lump wedged into the narrow space at the base of her throat, continues to shrink.
You can’t be here and she has half a mind to turn and flee. But he looks at her and she sees some distant glimmer in his eye. Her eyes burn as she extends her nose toward him without moving her feet, without allowing herself to sink any closer.
“What happened?” she asks and the question is all doused in pain that doesn’t belong to her. “What happened to you?” What agony! To look at him now and know that he is not the same boy who’d walked beside her so many years earlier, who’d buoyed her heart with his laughter.
She doesn’t know what’s wrong, doesn’t know where all that blood’s coming from until she forces herself to study his chest. Until she sees that fresh wound and recoils in horror.
“Let me help you, please.” And this comes out watery, shaky, as her frown deepens. “I can help you!”
He says her name but he’s looking at her strange and she feels her heartbeat slide sideways. A vise tightens around her throat, hitches her breath. She feels some terrible trepidation, which is compounded by the thing he says next. She shrinks, a staggered, aching step backward, away from him. Eyes still wide, that steady stare still fixed to his face. Those eyes. How the heart aches!
“Thorn?” she whispers it now. It comes out all strangled, scared, and there is a tremor that starts in her knees and splinters outward until it consumes her entirely. She frowns, cut to the quick, cold down to the marrow of her bones. She swallows hard around the lump wedged into the narrow space at the base of her throat, continues to shrink.
You can’t be here and she has half a mind to turn and flee. But he looks at her and she sees some distant glimmer in his eye. Her eyes burn as she extends her nose toward him without moving her feet, without allowing herself to sink any closer.
“What happened?” she asks and the question is all doused in pain that doesn’t belong to her. “What happened to you?” What agony! To look at him now and know that he is not the same boy who’d walked beside her so many years earlier, who’d buoyed her heart with his laughter.
She doesn’t know what’s wrong, doesn’t know where all that blood’s coming from until she forces herself to study his chest. Until she sees that fresh wound and recoils in horror.
“Let me help you, please.” And this comes out watery, shaky, as her frown deepens. “I can help you!”