about to collide? God only knew what they would form when they met in the middle of my consciousness. I looked back at Noah. He was standing by the roadside watching me as I walked deeper and deeper into the fields of flowers.
And then, like the eruption of a rumbling volcano shaking the ground beneath your feet, they collided. My body physically jolted. The sensation took my breath away and a sensation of physical pain wracked my body. It was so overwhelming that I felt my knees going weak. I couldn’t stop it. My legs wobbled. My head spun and I couldn’t stop myself from falling.
My knees collided with the ground. Hard. My head disappeared into the flowers, until all I saw around me were stems. Green stems, as I kneeled down in the field for a reason I just didn’t understand.
“Zoe! Zoe!” I heard Noah shout from behind me, and even in that moment a small smile flicked across my face.
Zoe! I liked that name so much. But I stayed like that, looking at the stems in front of me, until I felt those two great, comforting hands slip under my arms and pull me up to my feet. I don’t know why I was on the ground. Why my legs had buckled under me and made it impossible to stand up. Why the earth below had reached up and grabbed me and pulled me down to it, as if it wanted to show me something from a different perspective. As if it wanted me to look at the world from my knees?
“Zoe? You okay?” Noah spun me around until I was facing him. I looked at him, into his eyes, but it was as if I wasn’t really seeing anything. I still wasn’t present in this moment. Something had severed me from it.
“Zoe?” He shook me and I snapped out of it.
“I . . .” I mumbled.
“Come on, let’s get you to the car. When last did you eat or drink anything? It could be your blood sugar. Do you feel any chest pain? Any breathlessness? What about any tingling sensations? Can you smile for me, please? Smile.” His words came at me like a steam train. One after the other after the other. “Zoe, I need you to smile.”
I smiled at him and his shoulders seemed to relax a little. He took his smart watch and strapped it around my wrist. He pressed the screen and looked down at the heart graphic as a number popped up next to it.
“Ninety bpm. A bit high. But fine. Do you feel any numbn—”
“Shhh,” I put my finger over his lips. “Shhh. I’m fine—well, physically. There was . . . I had . . . I can’t explain it. It was like a memory. Well, not a memory, but this overwhelming feeling of a memory. Or a feeling from a memory. Two feelings, and they kind of just—I don’t know how to explain it—overwhelmed me.”
Even though he’d stopped talking, I hadn’t moved my finger from his lips. It had not been my intention to keep it there for so long, and I stared down at it. His lips were lovely. He had a little mole next to them, like a Cindy Crawford mole, but so, sooo much more masculine. There was a bit of stubble surrounding his lips, as if he’d missed a day of shaving. They looked smooth, and pink, and so kissable, kind of like how Amanda Stone’s had looked to the sheik in chapter five where he was tempted to just lean in and kiss her, right there and then . . .
But I would never just kiss a guy, would I?
Well, Zenobia wouldn’t. She hadn’t kissed a guy in years. Zenobia hadn’t been on a date in years.
But Zoe . . . she was different. She was the kind of girl who would just kiss a guy because she felt like it. She was brave. She had balls. She threw caution to the wind and she . . .
I moved my finger off his lips, and he seemed to part them slightly, as if inviting me to kiss them. And so, I leaned in and softly, slowly, planted the smallest of kisses on his lips. But I didn’t pull away entirely afterwards. I stayed there, only an inch away from his lips, to let him know that I was going to kiss him again, or let him know that it was alright if he wanted to