I dealt with it as long as I could before I allowed my eyes to water, before I let the tears fall, and it was like a dream when someone appeared at my back. So warm. So vital.
In these walls, I wasn’t safe. Not really. Maybe I wasn’t in danger like I’d been on day one, but I knew to keep away from people, because they were always looking for ways to pull shit on me.
I knew, in this instance however, there was no need to worry.
“What have you done?” he muttered, and when he slipped his arms around my waist, covering me as he tucked his chin on my shoulder, I had no choice but to sink into him.
“S-She was in pain.”
“You healed someone?” he queried, his voice low, quiet.
I nodded, then winced as another shudder racked my spine. He tutted under his breath, then muttered, “Turn around.”
Maybe it was stupid, especially when I’d only been thinking how I needed to avoid him ten minutes before, but I twisted around and hurled myself into his embrace. When he opened up his jacket, letting me sink beneath the folds, I tucked my body into his and knew that heaven couldn’t feel this good.
Breathing his air?
Sharing his heat?
Bliss.
He sighed. “I thought you said after Louisa you couldn’t do this anymore.”
My nose wrinkled, and when I blew out a breath, my eyes flared wide when I saw how I could see it—like it was freezing in here. Like it was freezing outside. My breath was visible. Fucking visible.
That was how cold I was.
What the hell?
“I couldn’t see auras,” I clarified as my teeth started chattering. “Not as many as I could before, none for a while. Now, I just see them every now and then.”
“What made you heal this one?”
“Her aura is usually so pretty,” I whispered. “A bright, cheery yellow. I could see her pain. I wanted to help.”
“Was it worth it?”
His grim question had me thinking about it. “Probably not. She ran off like I had the measles—”
“Of course, and let me guess, no thank you.”
“No.” But I snorted. “You know I’m persona non grata here, Adam.”
“Fuck, I can’t wait for graduation.”
I rested my forehead on his pec. “Me either. Not long now.”
“Five months.” He blew out a breath. “I applied for Stanford.”
My brows rose, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out why he’d picked a college on the other side of the country—me. That was where I was going.
“Didn’t they send out their scholarship offers already?” was all I said.
“There was another grant. Coach helped me. We’ll see.”
My throat tightened at the prospect of us attending the same college. I wasn’t sure if the idea made me happy or if it terrified me.
Because I wasn’t sure, I decided to tell him the truth. “I miss you.” That was constant.
Unending.
“You don’t have to. We could hang out—”
I shook my head. “No. It isn’t fair.”
“To who? Her?” he snarled, and in his outrage, his temperature surged, and somehow made this goddamn chill deep in my bones disperse some.
“No. Me.”
He stilled at that, then he hauled me tighter against him, held me like he’d never hold me again and rasped, “This isn’t going away, Thea.”
“It never will,” I stated calmly, knowing he was completely, one-hundred-percent correct. “It’s always going to be like this.”
“I don’t think I can stand that,” he ground out.
“We have no choice.” That was when the blessing of what we were to one another had become a curse. I gulped at the thought, then whispered, “I feel better now. You can let go.”
“Bullshit, I felt the cold too. I can still feel it,” he grumbled, surprising me, even though I remembered back with Louisa, how he’d said he’d felt how cold I was too. That the only time he’d felt better was when he was back in the pool.
I sighed, didn’t bother struggling to break free of his embrace which tightened, and whispered, “Adam?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for finding me.” Even if I’d been cursing that inbuilt GPS he had, now I was grateful for it.
A grunt rumbled from him. “You don’t have to thank me for that. It’s my—”
When he broke off, I knew what he’d been about to say, but I tapped his waist where I was holding him and soothed him.
Whatever the word was, be it ‘job,’ ‘duty,’ or whatever, the meaning was the same.