Page 67 of The Wrong Heart

Melody must notice my tension, my mounting panic, because her hands unlink from behind me and glide up my chest, gripping the material of my t-shirt between two fists. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” I force out, shoving her hands away and sliding them back down to my hips.

I don’t want her touching methere.

Melody fiddles with the beltloops as she drops her head, forehead pressed to my front. “Talk to me.”

“No.”

“You’re shaking.”

Shit, am I?

Stupid, traitorous body. My hands ball into fists on either side of me as my teeth gnash together, and I grit out, “I don’t like the dark.”

I wait for her reaction, her imminent pity. Laughter, maybe. I don’t really know what to expect because I’ve never shared that with anyone before, but I can’t imagine anything but ridicule.

She surprises me, though. She’s always surprising me.

“I don’t like it either,” Melody responds softly, her index finger tracing the hemline of my pants. “But it’s not so bad with you here.”

The whooshing sound grows closer, and the house rattles around us, causing me to stumble, my balance off-kilter due to the surmounting anxiety. My back hits the wall beside us, and I take her with me, instinctually wrapping my arms around her and tugging her further against my chest.

Melody lets out some kind of breathy moan, maybe a gasp, but I’m not sure if it’s out of fear or because we’re fully entangled with one another now, and my fingers have somehow crawled their way up to her hair, weaving through the strands and fisting gently.

My panic seems to ebb the moment she’s in my arms—the moment I give in and hold her back. She’s chipping away at my brick walls, and her sunny rays of light are seeping through the cracks, trying to bring me warmth.

Fucking hell, what is she doing to me?

I slide my back down the wall, and she goes with me, until we hit the tiled floor together and Melody straddles my lap, her knees caging me in. My right hand is still knotted in her hair, while the other curves around her back, and even though I can’t see shit, I know we’re face-to-face by the way her warm breath skims my lips with each arduous exhale.

I want to blame the raging storm—I want to say it’s the threat outside that feels greater than the threat ofher, therefore, justifying the way I’m letting her cling to me.

Justifying the way I’m clinging right back.

Only… there was no threat yesterday when I let her touch me—when I let her take my hand between her palms and drag a lazy finger across the creases, like she was carving herself into me somehow. Branding me with sunshine.

There was no danger earlier today when some sort of fucked-up possessive feeling shot through me like a drug, and I felt the need to stake some sort ofclaimover her.

It’s maddening.

It’s confusing, nonsensical, and fuckingmaddeninghow I hate everything she stands for, everything she represents, and yet… I don’t hate her at all.

“You’re not shaking anymore.” Melody’s voice infiltrates my dark musings as she continues to invade me. She continues to trespass. “My father used to tell me that the dark is the very best secret-keeper. The things we say in the dark never have to leave it.”

Her cheek dips back to my chest, her words muffled by my shirt, and the fine hairs on her head tickle my nose as I inhale a shuddering breath. Thoroughly entwined and swallowed by darkness, reckless thoughts spill out of me. “When I was a kid… some real bad shit happened to me. I spent a lot of time in the dark, and it fucked with my head. Played tricks on me.”

I feel her head lift slowly from my chest, her eyes searching for me through the thick shroud of darkness, trying to see me.

She’s always trying to see me.

“Parker,” she whispers delicately, her face close,tooclose. Her hands start moving again in a skyward journey from my chest to my neck, trailing up to my face until both palms are cradling my jaw.

My body tenses at the contact, wanting to reject the tenderness of her touch—like it’s some kind of foreign entity that doesn’t belong. I snatch her wrists up. “Don’t. I don’t want your pity.”

“It’s not pity.” Melody wriggles her arms free of my grip and returns them to my face, her fingertips featherlight against my rough jaw. “It’sempathy.”

“I don’t want that either.”

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