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 loathes her traitorous heart for the way that it pounds in her throat when he gives her the kind of answers that add kindle to the fire of her hope. She loathes the way that it is so quick to jump at the chance that he may feel the way that she does or at least be familiar with the feeling. That maybe he understands the dips and curves of it, the dangerous switchbacks, and the cliffside plunges of it.

Adna takes care to not reply immediately even though the answers fly to her lips.

Takes care to force herself to continue looking for her daughter—her heart at war with itself. She feels the same panic she has felt for hours now (although he has helped to dull the edges of it, reason with it until it is not gnashing its teeth so violently), but she also feels that desperate, aching need for him.

It takes everything within her to hold it back and let him have the lengthy pauses.

To give him the space to think even when their shoulders continue to brush against one another.

The word fate tangles into the hopeless romantic of her heart and she buries it deep, encapsulates it so that she can think on it later, can cling to it in the dark hours where she is alone. “I guess it is,” she finally answers because it’s the only thing that she trusts herself to say—but her tongue has always been as traitorous as her heart and as they come up on the end of Loess, she finds it betrays her once more.

“Although I’ve determined my reason a long time ago.”

She swallows hard, cursing herself, and presses forward into the night.

ADNA