“I kept thinking, who could do this to me? No one else makes sense, Jonah. Only Enlilkian.” I tap on my forehead. “I don’t feel him in my head anymore, but ... it worries me you can’t feel me. Or surge. What if he’s done something to me to make sure you can’t?”
“Then we will figure out how to reverse whatever he’s done. Are you sure you don’t feel him in there right now?”
“Positive.”
His forehead comes to rest against mine, eyes closing. I know he’s angry and feeling more than helpless; I’m right there with him.
I reach up and cup his face. “I could hear you,” I tell him softly. “In the bathroom. I couldn’t move, couldn’t open my eyes, but I could hear you. I think you saved me, Jonah. I was slipping away and you woke me up and reminded me why I needed to keep fighting.”
His arms loop around my body and I’m held so tightly I can feel his muscles trembling. I want to reassure him that things are, in fact, okay now, but the truth is, I’m not so sure they are.
How can they be until Enlilkian is stopped?
Jonah and I don’t go to help move the Dane boys’ belongings to Kellan’s building (as even Zthane encouraged me to stay put, at least for the next day or so), but we do help them unpack while at the same time Jonah gathers up his own belongings to take upstairs. Kellan’s apartment has three large bedrooms, so both Cameron and Will get their own space now that Jonah is moving out. For his part, Kellan is silent as the boxes shift around; I think he and Jonah spend the better part of the few hours talking about what I admitted earlier in the day. This kind of behavior is old hat for Astrid and Callie, who are also over to help. They act as if nothing is amiss with two of our party remaining silent the entire time, whereas Cameron and Will are still struggling to get used to it.
It’s unnerving to be back in Kellan’s apartment, though; even more so knowing there is now a small, neat spiral staircase joining his home and mine. When Jonah first admitted to me that he’d bought the space above his brother, I hadn’t truly dreaded the proximity. There was an entire floor in between us; seeing one another would take time and planning, elevators and external staircases. I would have been constantly aware of him, yes—but it felt doable. Now, though, with the metal and wood staircase I created coiling between us, it feels much more difficult to let go gracefully, even though I desperately wish to.
And yet, as I shift boxes from the living room to one of the back bedrooms, I can’t help but peek through the cracked door that leads to Kellan’s bedroom. Memories flash throughout my mind, of time spent in there before we went to Costa Rica a year before. Of how his mouth felt like on mine. How my heart still calls out for him, no matter what my mind says. And of how I’m aware of him in every fiber of my being when we’re in the same room together.
“You okay back here?”
Like right now, for instance. As if on cue, Kellan is standing just inches away, leaning against the wall as he studies me.
I jerk back, knocking the door open wider. I hate that I blush furiously, that he’s caught me peeking into his bedroom. Thank the gods he can’t feel me right now—or at least, I don’t think he can. I step to the side so his king size bed is no longer visible. “Thanks for letting Cameron and Will move in.”
A slow smile emerges, the half one that leaves me lightheaded. “It might be fun. I’ll never go hungry, you know?”
I laugh probably louder and stronger than is really needed.
He takes a step closer toward me. My back hits the wall; my breath stutters in my chest. “How are you really doing with all of this?”
My mouth sort of stupidly opens but no sound comes out. Gods, he smells so good, too. What is it with the Whitecomb boys always smelling good enough to eat?
“I don’t like not being able to feel you,” he murmurs. One of his hands hovers near my face before ever so gently sliding hairs that have freed themselves from my ponytail back behind my ear. “It’s unsettling.”
A door down the hallway swings open. Kellan’s hand drops to his side and he takes a step backward. Cameron wanders out, an empty cardboard box in his hands.
I step around Kellan and tell him, “Let me take that for you.” When Cameron goes to argue, I quickly add, “I’m feeling a little useless around here, you know? Like I’m the lazy one.”
“You just got out of the hospital,” Cameron says. “You’re entitled to be a little lazy.”
And yet, I can’t be lazy right now. I can’t let my guard down, especially when it concerns my feelings toward Kellan. And all of this—me and him here in the hallway—is so bittersweet that I know I can’t stay any longer. I’m too afraid of being weak. So, like a coward, I snatch the box from Cameron and bolt in the opposite direction.