Page 65 of Ominous: Part 1
No. The risk is for something far more lasting.
Eli closes his eyes.
There’s a weight pressing against my chest.
I reach for my phone, tucked into the black bra under my shirt. The fabric is stuck to my skin, and I have to work to yank it down enough to give me access to my phone, but I get it, and when I do, I swipe the camera lens with my thumb before I take a picture, the flash off.
I glance at the photo.
He looks even more like a god in it than he does in person. The bruises aren’t as visible, only smudges of shadows dotting his abs, you wouldn’t know if you… didn’t know.
But I know.
I tuck my phone away again, wanting to be here in the moment instead of observing it through a screen. I take a step closer, my boots splashing in the inch of rainwater and grime.
He doesn’t move.
His arms held at his sides look like wings.
Adonis. A mortal loved by a goddess.
Icarus. A man fallen.
I can’t breathe as I come closer, and he slowly dips his chin, relaxing his arms by his sides. His hair hangs in his eyes, rain slicing over the curve of his cheekbones. The edge of his jaw. The ink of his hair.
“I’ve never seen anything like you.” I have to shout the words, and I wouldn’t be able to do it—say them or shout them—if I didn’t have a mix of vodka and soda and cocaine in my veins. But I do. So I can. My eyes dip to his bruises.
Slowly, he follows my gaze.
I step closer, until the tips of our shoes touch. My boots and his, black leather, light gray laces.
I reach my fingers to his skin, noting the V of his hips just above the low-cut of his jeans. His abs rise and fall, and I realize, for the first time, I can see his tattoo, the darkness I saw beneath his shirt at the library.
When he left the gym, those quick minutes he was shirtless, I didn’t notice.
I was too busy looking at his bruises then, too. Faded, now I notice the old ones, just above the edge of his tattoo. It’s a skull, cross bones jutting out over his hipbones; I can’t see the entirety of the piece, but I see enough to know that. Thick, black ink, little detail and more straightforward darkness.
I press my index and unnecessarily bandaged middle finger to the biggest bruise, higher up, just under his sternum, with jagged green and blue edges.
Looking up, I see he’s staring at the contact of our skin.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, not touching me, not moving, not looking up. “You can press harder.”
A jolt of something like power lights through me, my chest expanding, the humiliation I had felt for a split second in his car, when I confessed the worst thought about myself last weekend, long gone. Miles away, we’re on a different plane now. This is the opposite. This is seeing intohisbrain. And understanding… it could be just like mine.
I do as he said, until his body tenses, and I know it’s taking effort for him not to back away. My fingertips blanch against his olive skin, the indentation where I’m pressing, it looks angrier, redder, like it was last weekend at the tournament. Rain pelts my exposed wrist, and I’m thankful my rubber bracelets are over my left arm, hanging by my side.
I feel the tension in his body. His skin is slick with the storm, his muscles firm beneath my touch, and I could slip. I could press along every wound. I could make them all ache, all over again.
It occurs to me to ask what happened.
I know I could. But I also know he wouldn’t answer me. Not here. Not now.
I let up on the pressure, flattening my entire palm over his skin instead. Even with my splayed fingers, I don’t cover the biggest wound completely.
But I can feel his pulse points, steady beneath my hand.
It’s jarring, knowing my own heartbeat is erratic, and his is… his is calm.
