Page 92 of Lamb

“In fits and starts,” Lamb responded, turning over my hand to focus on my palm. With his thumb, he ran circles around the soft centre. “But yes, about four hours.”

I could not remember waking before, but it was not unusual. I often woke up more exhausted than before I went to sleep.

I considered his world idlily, my eyes drifting away from Lamb’s quiet musing, back to the room around us. “There is nothing here …”

Lamb, considering my words, paused from his musing over my hand and followed my gaze around the dim room. He only briefly scanned it, either from familiarity or the fact that there was little to look over. His head tilted with that tiny, subtle gesture of confusion working its way into my heart like a parasite. I fought the traitorous smile pulling at my lips.

“I meant your room,” I elaborated. “There is not anything … personal in it. It looks like a guest room.”

Lamb gave a half-shrug, the sheets rustling with the movement. “Is there a need for something like that?”

“Not aneedper se, but …” I drifted off, unsure where I was going with that statement. Having never had a room for myself, I was not confident I could be the authority on what to do with his room, or his house, for that matter.

“This is the colour thing again,” Lamb interrupted my thoughts. I scowled in response, not liking how that synced up in my mind. The last thing I needed was for Lamb to be able to read my thoughts. He saw too much already.

“It is just …“ I paused, the words sticking to the tip of my tongue. I toyed them over in my mouth, my hesitation growing.

Lamb’s fingers threaded through mine, squeezing tight onto the back of my hand, drawing my attention. “Tell me,” he pressed. “I want to know.”

I sighed, my free hand finding clasped ones as I mimicked what Lamb was doing before. My fingers trailed over his, the self-soothing gesture of tracing the length of his fingers feeling hypnotic. “I have never been allowed to personalise anything. Never had a single thing with my name on it. Or an ornament of something I liked, or a book on something I enjoyed. I just assumed everyone would personalise their room if they ever had the chance.”

Neglect was the most accurate way to describe my life. But it was not simply that my parents never paid attention to me. It was more that they wanted to scrub the earth of my existence. My neglect was intentional, even encouraged. I had been abandoned by the world around me, forced to live as a ghost, barely alive, barely existing. I always felt like I could disappear into the air if I wished for it. The world would go on, and nothing would have changed.

“Saying I’m not like anyone would feel cliché.” Lamb pursed his lips in thought. “I’ve always done what I thought I should do. What people wanted of me. What I was expected to do. It wasn’t until I was older that I realised people did things because they felt like they should. At that point, it didn’t take me long to realise the difference between me and them.”

“How old were you?” I asked. “When you realised?”

“Young,” Lamb answered. “Self-awareness came to me faster than it did other children. Something to do with my brain’s development; that’s what my psychiatrist said—my mom made me go.”

It was the first mention of a parent I had heard from Lamb, and it piqued my curiosity. I had not seen a photograph or overheard a distant phone call that would have indicated their presence. “Your parents, are they …?”

“They’re alive,” Lamb filled in the gap. “They live overseas, but I don’t visit them much, and they return the sentiment. I think pretending to be a normal family got too uncomfortable for them in the end.”

I knew the feeling. Only, I wished my family had long since abandoned me before I had no choice but to flee from their side.

“Do you know your mom?”

I jerked in surprise; I had not expected Lamb to whip the table back on me so abruptly. Processing the question led to an uncomfortable ache throbbing in my chest and my hand abandoned our joint ones to rub away the phantom pain.

Light splashed across the room, catching the sharp glint of Lamb’s golden eyes, piercing through the vague darkness and straight into my soul. Knowing who Lamb was, along with everything he had just explained, I knew there was nothing behind those words. To him, it was a simple question. Fortunately, I had a simple answer.

“No.”

Lamb tipped back, one hand bracing behind his head as he stared at the ceiling. “Does it make it easier for you? Not knowing?”

I frowned at the man sprawled on the bed beside me, reconsidering the words I had just thought. “Are you asking about how I feel?”

“As someone incapable of gauging it myself, I must ask; otherwise, I’ll never know.”

“You are slow,” I corrected him, shuffling down the bed until I was propped beside his prone form. With my free hand, I reached to brush aside the wisps of golden hair framing his face. “But you are not incapable of feeling. I find it hard to believe you are incapable of anything.”

Lamb measured me softly, his head turning into my hand, those piercing eyes flushing heat across my face and down beneath the covers where our naked bodies lay inches from each other. His own free hand slid from beneath his head, turning and cupping my own pressed against his cheek. Electricity tingled from his hand into mine, washing over my arm and chest, rushing straight south. He laced his fingers around it, holding it still as he turned his face towards me. His lips pressed into the valley of my wrist, teeth grazing the slight raise of my veins. “I’m not perfect,” Lamb whispered against my skin, and I tried not to squirm.

Even in the dark, Lamb would see my smirk. “I would rather you not be.”

Lamb’s mouth pressed back into my wrist with bruising brutality, his teeth scratching and nipping at the tender, flushed skin. I winced but did not pull away, my eyes tied to his actions with avid fascination as he began to turn the dial on my temperature higher and higher with each bite of pain.

He watched me like a predator, capturing every detail of my face, his own transforming with a keen fixation that had myheart thundering in my chest. It pounded to the sound of the storm rapping against the window, and I became unsure what was the storm and what was me.

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