Untouched The Girl in the Box - By Robert J. Crane Page 0,88
can wait if you want to dry off first.”
I shook my head. “No big deal. I’m fine. I might sleep down here; it’s as good as anywhere else and I don’t know if I have it in me to walk all the way back to the dormitory building tonight. Besides, I’m sure Ariadne and Old Man Winter will be looking for me tomorrow morning.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that.” He said it with more assurance than I would have expected.
“I’m not worried.” I blinked my eyes, as though I could just shed the tiredness out of them with that little effort. “Worst comes to worst, I move along on my own.” I felt a strength in those words that wouldn’t have been possible a week earlier. “I’m okay with that, really. Maybe for the first time.”
“I don’t think they’re going to ask you to leave,” he said. “But why the change? Not that you showed much sign you were feeling all dependent before, but what triggered the shift?”
I took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been so busy feeling sorry for myself for all that’s happened, for all the tough breaks—literal, in some cases,” I held up my wrist, the brace still snug around it. “I’ve been jonesing so hard to be normal, whatever that is, that all I could think about was myself, about how I’d have to live a life where I had walls up all the time, where I couldn’t really connect with anybody.” I held up my hands as I slipped the gloves on. “Where I’d live untouched by people or emotion or life.”
He nodded slowly. “It’s up to you whether you connect with people or not. And I hate to break it to you, but your own little world is not the center of the universe.”
I cocked my head at him and shot him a “duh” look. “Thanks, Galileo. You’re a little late to the party on that one. And not fashionably so, like...party’s over, GTFO. I figured it out, thanks.”
“How?” He took a step closer to me, reminding me for some reason of Gavrikov as he took the first steps toward Kat.
“It was Aleksandr,” I said, thinking about it. “He lived over a hundred years with his flames up all the time, by choice, ever since...whatever happened with his sister. He chose to live that way, isolated, alone. I think...” I felt the loneliness creep over me, the walls start to rise, and pushed them away, “...I would give anything to be able to take the barriers down and just live. And I can do that for most of them.” I held up my hands, uselessly, showing him the gloves once more, the things that separated me from everyone. “All but one, anyway. It’s not normal, but it’s all I can do—”
He interrupted me by taking two strides to close the distance between us and before I could say anything his arms wrapped around my back, enveloping me, and he pressed his lips to mine. My eyes closed; the touch was magnificent, warm and sweet, and he pulled away just as I felt the first stirrings of my power start to work. I took a breath and opened my eyes, and his were staring back at me, brown and big and with his smile reflected in them. He had a really nice smile.
He didn’t say anything else, just pulled away, leaving me speechless, standing there with my wet hair, and walked to the door. “See you tomorrow,” he said, and the door shut before I could answer.
Chapter 29
I sat across from Old Man Winter, playing the staring game. Oddly, my eyes didn’t seem to burn this time, so I just kept going.
Ariadne was there, of course. “We’ve already gotten M-Squad’s report and spoken with Scott and Kat, so we have a general idea of how everything went, for the most part. Zack said that Henderschott showed up?” She flipped through the file in her hands as if looking for confirmation.
“Yeah. He had the campus under surveillance and picked us up as we left. He must have followed us all the way to the IDS tower, because I saw the cable truck he was driving pass us as we went into the lobby. Didn’t really put it together until he hit me, but that’s the only way it could have happened unless someone tipped him off we were going to be there.”
Ariadne closed the file. “Makes sense. Would you like to explain your