Page 40 of Partnering with the Artist

Zakery

I don’t know where those words came from. She’s just…close. And the air feels…tense. And I… I’ve forgotten myself. What Viktor said Monday night shouldn’t still be tumbling around in my brain today. It’s Wednesday. I never let words cling to me for this long.

Stomach turning over, I stand. “Forget…I just said that. Please.” Ireallyneed that cliff or building right about now…haha. Gripping my hair, I clutch my tablet to my chest and mutter, “I don’t even knowhowto kiss someone. What am I…” My feet move toward the door, fleeing.

I don’t know how.

She’s still recovering from the number Harry did on her.

I’mnotin love with her.

Love is…love is deeper, kinder, all-consuming. Love ispeace. Not whatever this building anxiety alludes to. Love is resting in the knowledge that Viktor or Lukas or any of my brothers will be there for me if I need them, at a moment’s notice. Love is the compulsion to be there for them in the same capacity.

“Zakery?”

I freeze, one foot out of the dark, dark pit of a room hosting a single ivory angel. Looking back at her, I lose my breath. Which cannot be good for my already struggling brain.

She’s just so…celestial.

I wish I could do her justice. I wish my hands knew ways to give life to the pure fantasy ofher. She sits, like a star, amid thedarkness of space. Glowing. Twinkling. Enrapturing.

And I, the fool, lost in her gravity, spin aimlessly around in a futile off-kilter orbit, that will send me eventually careening into the licks of her zealous flames.

Oh, what cruel fate.

That I would be Icarus, aflight with melting wings.

Doomed always to fall and never to soar.

Maelin slips off the bed, and my heart clenches. She glides to her craft cabinet, retrieving a measuring tape wound tight in a circle. Lifting it, she looks at me. “I need to measure you. So I can start on your suit.”

Right.

Yes.

Reasonable.

I return myself to the room, where the air must be liquid.

She gathers a pad and pencil. “Are you wearing an undershirt?”

“Do I need to take off my jacket?”

“It would make it easier.”

Very well, then.

Keenly aware of her approach, I put my tablet on the bed then undo the silver buttons from the high neck of my jacket all the way down to my waist. Slipping out, I reveal the oceans of ink on my arms that disappear beneath my tank top to crash over my chest and down both my legs. I’ve long since run out of real estate. Unless I want a face tattoo.

I do not, shockingly, want a face tattoo.

Maelin gasps. “You have tattoos?”

Yeah. A couple.

Smiling, I say, “No? What gives you that crazy idea?”

Without warning, she takes my hand, examines me. “Wow…” She turns over my forearm, looks at the semicolon on my wrist, goes still.

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