Page 56 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
The wind didn’t move. The earth didn’t answer. The stars stared like they were waiting to see what she’d do next.
She yanked her shorts back into place with shaking hands, as if dignity were something you could put back on.
His words kept repeating in her head like a bell that wouldn’t stop ringing.
“You’re burning.”
“I can’t lose another.”
She didn’t know what hit harder:
That he thought she was unraveling.
Or that someone else had done it first.
She walked home barefoot, shaking, buzzed like a wire about to snap.
She opened the door and locked it behind her, out of habit, even though she doubted locks meant anything to whatever Asher was.
She peeled off her tank top and stared at her chest in the hallway mirror.
Her skin looked normal now. Maybe a little flushed. Maybe a little too perfect. But no glow. No sparks.
Still, she didn’t look like herself.
She looked like someone pretending to be okay.
She sat cross-legged on the couch, clutching the obsidian stone like it might offer answers.
It didn’t.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said. To the room, to the desert, to herself.
There was no reply.
But her palms started to tingle again.
She dropped the stone.
It hit the floor with a soft thunk and didn’t move.
“Cool,” she muttered. “Thanks.”
She leaned forward, pressing her elbows into her knees, head in her hands.
He’d looked at her like he couldn’t stay away. Like he was made of need.
And then he’d pulled back. Like she was poison. Or fire.
You’re burning, he said.
Good.
She hoped she set the whole goddamn desert on fire.
What made it worse was how much she still wanted him.
Her body didn’t care about metaphors or past traumas. It wanted his hands again. His mouth. His voice. So deep and ruined and human and sad. She hated how much it shook her. How much it mattered.
