Page 47 of When Wildflowers Bloom

He smirks. I sigh.

Hesitate.

Clear my throat.

“Okay,” I begin. “I see your hair, the way it’s pushed back tonight instead of tucked behind your ears.”

He nods, and I shift my weight from one leg to the other, a sort of thickness filling the air and seeping into my lungs.

“I see the line of your jaw and point of your chin.” As if my words are somehow connected to his tissues, his jaw clenches. “And the way that, even with your beard, your dimples show with a slightest of smiles.” I pause, realizing he’s not smiling, and I’ve just said something I don’t see now, that I just see. All the time. “In the dark, your eyes look almost black except for where the light hits them slightly—there they look some shade of gold.” The right side of his face is bathed in the moonlight pouring through the window. “And you have one freckle below the corner of the right one.”

“What else?” he asks, voice low. Rusty as an old nail.

My eyes drop from his face, and he swallows. “I see you swallow. It’s slow, like it’s a struggle.” He repeats the motion, and I wonder if it’s on purpose. “And I see the way your shoulders slope before slipping to the muscles of your arms. The way your T-shirt wraps around them.”

Somehow, just describing him, my chest tightens.

“Your turn,” I say, trying to buy myself recovery time.

He shakes his head.

“This isn’t about me, Birdie.”

“It is if you’re in my kitchen. Your turn.”

A nod.

Slow swallow.

“I see the way your hair is wild because you’ve been at the gym. Curled pieces against your forehead the color of honey when the light hits it. And your eyes, that look almost like coffee, are always moving, assessing. You have eyelashes that probably make other women jealous.”

For the first time, I’m thankful for the dark, because heat shoots across my chest and up my face. But I’m still. A statue. Wondering if he can hear the pounding of my heart.

“I see the way your lips are shaped like a heart when they close. And the inviting slope of your neck to your shoulder. How your shirt always seems to pull to one side, close to falling down your shoulder but never quite doing it. Like it wants to be touched.”

I nod—I think.

“Your turn again.” His voice is so coarse it creates friction in my veins. “What do youhear?”

I close my eyes. Breathe as deep as my lungs will let me.

Listening.

“My heart…that’s it. I only hear my heart.”

The quiet pause that follows lasts three heartbeats.

“Keep your eyes closed,” he says, his voice coarser than a whisper.

I do as he says, flinching slightly when something touches my neck. It’s light and cool. Gentle. Soft, but not cloth. Something delicate.

Whatever it is moves across my neck.

Down my arm.

Across my fingers.

When it touches my hip, he slows. Even through my yoga pants, chills wash across me.

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