Angelic (Book 2)

Twenty-Five

This was what it was like to love somebody.

            I finally knew.

            To be wrapped in their arms, wrapped in their soul, until every heartbeat became one. Until you became a single entity.

            For every brush of their skin against yours to cause some inner natural disaster.

            When you looked into their eyes, and you couldn’t turn away, because in them you saw everything you needed to survive.

            This was love.

            And I felt all of it.

            The next morning dawned bleak and grey, with a soft flurry drifting from the sky. The clock on his nightstand read 5:10. His flight was in the late afternoon. Already a bud of panic blossomed within me, at every second that brought us closer to separation.

            I shifted slightly in his arms, wincing at the ache in my core. It was a foreign soreness, something not altogether unwanted. The pain meant pleasure and love and closeness. Good pain. I could deal with good pain.

            August snored softly beside me, his hand hooked around my waist in a vicelike grip. Never letting go. He didn’t have a problem, because he wouldn’t lose me.

            He was the one leaving.

            He was the one I would lose.

            And when the hurt of leaving became too much, I disregarded those thoughts in favor of remembering him. I wanted to make sure every snippet of the night was etched into my memory, so I forgot nothing. 

I wanted to memorize how his body felt pressing mine into the mattress; his natural musky scent, and the lemony aroma of his shampoo. The spicy taste of his tongue plunging in my mouth, and the longing, desperate drive of his lips against mine.

I needed to remember every human-like occurrence of fumbling bodies that broke through the dreamy feeling and reminded me how real everything was.

When the necklace I gave him snagged in my hair.

When our noses knocked together inelegantly, in our feverish need for each other.

Every whisper, every assurance, every asking if it was too much or not enough.

I needed it all.

And I forced myself to recount every moment between us, building to this interlocking of souls, but I figured maybe I began to fall into him long ago. At the first milkshake, our talk on the balcony, saving me from myself every instance he saw me backsliding. Maybe even at Yale, when he pushed me against the side of the building, and I had to use my ability on him.

Maybe even then.

But that all already happened. They were pictures hanging in my head, of memories that seemed so long ago.

This was now.

This was happening right now, and the clock clicked to 5:20.

Tears sprung to my eyes. I buried my face in the solid wall of his chest, shoulders shaking with every stifled sob. His heart skipped a beat. The irregular pattern of his breathing let me know he was awake.

I wanted to beg him not to leave. To beg him to stay with me forever, government be damned, but that was selfish of me. It was his duty to protect these people. No matter how much I believed the duty to suck.