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

The seconds seem like millennia.

The stretch and stretch and stretch—until she feels like surely her reality will snap and she will be sent spinning into the sun. She wonders if he will just turn around and leave. She wonders if maybe he will finally be done with her—she is so deeply done with herself—and just slip back into the shadows.

Maybe this was a fever dream after all.

But, eventually, she hears the sound of his heavy footsteps on the ground. She feels the way that the air seems to be pushed by his presence. She swallows hard and glances up, feeling her heart trapped in her throat. When he is near her, she curls into him without thinking. It is instinctual and she cannot help but feel like it it drawing her first breath after spending so long underwater—so long drowning.

Her sudden inhale and exhale is heady and she closes her eyes, presses her cheek to his belly and then tilts her head up so that her head is resting on his spine. Everything within her twists tight around the feeling; everything within her nearly shatters with the relief. “I don’t know,” she says and it is almost a laugh. It is almost a broken sound as she presses in tighter to him, so hungry for the warmth that only he can bring.

Suddenly, she feels that faint stirring of life quicken.

She frowns and then gasps as the child kicks out and her head pulls back suddenly.

“Did you feel that?” She breaks apart just enough to curl so that she can turn her head around and look back at him, her serpentine eyes widening just a little. “They must like you,” and then a shy smile.

ADNA