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 not certain whether she hates him more for his stoic nature or whether she hates herself for feeding into it. She wants to fall into him again. She wants to feel the rivers of his pulse under her lips and know that he’s there. That he’s alive. That he is still hers. 

But this Bethlehem isn’t hers. Not like he had been. 

He stands apart and she knows it’s because of the walls she so quickly put up. 

She curses herself for it. Curses him for not fighting it. 

But she doesn’t make a move to change it. 

She feels locked into some kind of standoff with him, her sage green eyes guarded, that bare stirring of life within her, and all of the words she wants to say corked in her throat. How she dreamt of him and the scent of cedar in his mane or the way she shivers when she remembers the way it felt to have his cheek on her hip. The way she still comes undone. 

Instead she just nods, like this is normal and she is okay. 

“Something, huh?” she says and she cannot stop that small glimmer of humor that flashes across her delicate, predatory features. That small sign of the girl she had once been and the girl she could be again if she only let herself try. It softens her face for a second, but it is only for a moment because with the next breath, her expression is neutral again. Washed clean. 

She frowns, looking into the shadows woods and wondering if they will always be destined to find themselves in forest and impending darkness. “I thought I would try looking for a home again,” she says and immediately regrets the honesty in it. The way that it calls back to their last meeting. The way she so easily coughs up her heart to him without him needing to say or ask for anything. 

“I guess I’m not very good at not looking.”

ADNA