Page 69 of Scorch

It’s only been minutes since I came, and still, hearing him say unleash makes my pulse race all over again.

“Eh,” I say with a shrug. “I can take a lot more than that.”

His gaze on me intensifies. “Oh, really?”

“Mhm.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

I’m too languid to build a fire, so I watch him do it. We sit in silence until the flame dies to glowing embers. I feel a profound sense of peace and acceptance.

“I had no idea I needed this.” I look at him. “Thank you, Viktor, for showing me that I can have this without fear.”

“You're stronger than you know.”

I wonder as I sit before the fire encased in brick…

Am I something to be controlled? Something to be held back? Or will I be consumed in the flames?

What if I lose myself to him?

I reach for another match, the question hanging in the air between us, waiting to be answered.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Lydia

Cake. I need cake.

Deep, dark, rich, chocolatey cake with thick icing.

Or marble. Maybe lemon. I mean, beggars can’t be choosers.

I need to get away from myself. I need a distraction. And while a small part of me knows that nibbling myself into a diabetic coma may not be the most responsible thing to do… I need cake.

It’s the middle of the night, Viktor’s dead asleep, and even Nikita only opens one lazy eye to see what I was up to before she falls back asleep and starts snoring.

I walk down to the kitchen in Viktor’s tee. It billows around me because he’s the size of a lion. I have no idea where his mother must’ve gotten his shoes or clothes from when he was younger. Did she make them herself?

I’m bare under the tee, and it feels nice walking around the house barefoot like this.

The tee smells like him.

When I get to the kitchen, I open the fridge. I’ve opened it to cook for both of us a few times now, but I haven’t really taken the time to look look. Like, really get in there and see.

At first, when I open the door, I note my favorite beer, the craft kind you can only buy in Upstate New York because they hand make it in small batches and don’t widely distribute it.

Interesting. Did Viktor buy this for me? Or does he somehow miraculously like the same things I do?

I finger the cold bottle.

I still want cake, and while beer and cake together are a thing according to some people, I’m a bit of a purist.

I reach for the carton of milk and pause, my hand on the carton. “Huh,” I say out loud.

How does he know I only drink organic milk? While I’m hardly a natural foodie, I’ve only had organic milk since I was in high school and read an article that hinted at the correlation between a woman’s boob size and hormones in milk. While I have no idea if the claims were true, I did anything and everything I could to not let my boobs get any bigger, so I started drinking organic milk.

I frown, staring at the fridge. Well, he doesn’t know me that well. If he knew me that well, he’d know that when I drink milk without cake, I don’t drink it plain; I always—oh. Oh, interesting.

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