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.
Oh my God.
I’m in his arms. He’s carrying me in his arms.
“You won’t miss an appointment again,” he rasps. “Ever. With me or with your therapist. Your group session, your meds. You won’t miss any of it. You won’t jeopardize your health in any way or fashion. Promise me.”
“Simon—”
“Promise me, Willow. Your health is the most important thing to me. It’s not a joke. Do you understand? You won’t let anything affect it. Anything. Least of all a man like me. Tell me you understand.”
His voice is so dark and heavy, laden with things I have no clue about. All I know is that it’s imperative for him that I say yes. The way he’s looking at me like I hold all the answers to his problems, like his life depends on me, I can’t deny him anything.
So, I nod. “I-I do.”