like the bullet you never saw coming; 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 is always the first to break before him. 

She is always the first to crumble. 

Maybe, in time, she will learn to live with it and not hate the way that her body betrays her, a slender scaled leg lifting and threatening to carry herself closer to him before she firmly plants it again . But, for now, she only hates herself for the weakness that blossoms like a flower in her chest when he looks up and catches her eye. The way that she immediately begins to tremble as the faultlines split her open. 

“Beth,” his name comes out softer than she means to, so close to the way she had prayed it against him when they had finally collided that night so many months ago. So she swallows and tries again, desperately grabbing for any kind of strength. For any kind of armor. 

She cannot survive him again, she thinks. 

Not if she is vulnerable. 

“Bethlehem,” this time she is able to feign almost indifference, almost able to pretend that she barely remembers the name. Like she hadn’t spent nights recreating the shape and feel of him. But she feels a fissure open up in her, threatening to tear her apart, and she knows that she can’t give in. She can’t be so weak in front of him again. She can’t. She can’t. 

So she straightens, pulled on her mask, her features smooth and cold, her eyes glittering. 

“I didn’t expect to see you here.”

A truth, one wrapped in a blanket of apathy. Adna so desperately trying to play at his own game. Her mask slips for just a second as she studies him, as she feels that dark and painful ache that grabs at her chest, but she pulls it on again, rolling a shoulder. 

“I hope that you have been well.”

Maybe he won’t notice the slightest swell of her belly, she thinks. 

If she stays far enough away.

ADNA