so reckless you might start feeling; beth

[adna]

one touch will make you so nervous you might stop breathing
one touch will make you so reckless you might start feeling
one touch will finally show to me what you can't hide

She thinks about the first time they met often—perhaps too often. She thinks about the way he had managed to stir life into her. It had been ugly, but she had been alive for the first time in months. He had made her feel the entire spectrum of her emotions. From rage to helplessness to sorrow to heat.

He had made her want.

He had made her need.

Perhaps most dangerously of all, he had made her hope.

The memory of it is something she carries with her often, tucked against her breast. She remembers all the ways she had come apart. How she had beat fists against his chest and pressed her fang to his throat and hunted for purchase on the granite walls of him. How he had finally melted into liquid heat and the way that he had lit her on fire—how he had showed her everything she had known existed but never found.

That heat is always with her now, simmering just below the surface, but she is too focused on the way that the pain rises to notice it now. Even when he touches her and she shivers, her skin nearly flinching beneath it, she can only swallow. His question digs into her and she thinks about all of the answers she could give him. She could tell him that she’s haunted by his daughter that he doesn’t know about. That she’s haunted by the look on her sister’s face when she had talked about Bethlehem.

How she had known it was too late for her to change course.

How the only option seemed to be swallowing the poison alone.

But she can’t bear to talk about it now and so she gives him an answer, but not the full one. “Fear, perhaps,” she whispers. “Fear that I won’t be able to out run my past. That I will lose myself.”

Her gaze drops.

“That I will lose the things I care most about.”

ADNA