Page 16 of Fragile Touch (Fragile 1)
Pain? Lillian immediately thought of her last flare-up and, lifting her head to the sky, let out a sad cry so soft only she could hear it. She tried to get up, but her legs wouldn’t hold her. She saw her drink on the other side of the chair, and wished it was close enough to reach. But it was much too far.
She slumped over, her chin on her chest.
At some point, the crickets started chirping.
“Are you hurt?” The voice was distant, but it sounded so tangible.
“You sound so real,” she wailed to Amelia.
“I am real.”
“I need you!” Lillian buried her face in her hands, hoping it would stop the tears from flowing. It didn’t. “I wasn’t ready for you to go; why’d you leave me like that? You were all I had!”
There was a thick silence before the reply. “I’m sorry...I didn’t realize you wanted me to stay. Why didn’t you say so?”
You’re dead, she tried to say, but her throat tightened. She coughed and the words came out in a terrible crack. “You couldn’t have stayed if you tried! You couldn’t have known about that truck...”
As she let out a wracking sob, she felt arms around her and smelled a sweet, musky scent.
That doesn’t smell like you, Amelia. Her body tensed and she looked up, right into Cayden’s bright eyes. Shocked, she put a hand on his chest and tried to push him away, but she was too weak to do anything.
“Why are you here?” she demanded, wiping the tears away with the back of her hand.
His face drew a blank. “I thought you just said you needed me.”
“I was talking to Amelia.” At the sound of her name, Lillian lost control of her emotions and curled up into a ball against Cayden’s chest.
AT FIRST CAYDEN WENT stiff, taken aback by how willingly she fell into him. It
was a total contrast to her mysteriousness emotional distance before. Every time they talked, he found himself growing increasingly curious about her. But right at the perfect moment to start a conversation, she closed off. Which normally involved walking away.
He didn’t mind her walking away, as long as he could watch. But when she was gone he felt words on his tongue so ready to release, and the one he wanted to share them with wasn’t there anymore.
And now she was weeping, her sweaty body plastered against his shirt, her fingers groping at his arm like a newborn kitten. She was white-knuckled, but he could barely feel any pressure on his skin. The smell of alcohol radiated from her, and he looked around for a bottle.
“Where’s the bottle?” he asked.
She sniffed, and pointed a trembling hand at a tiny glass by the chair a few feet away.
“That’s it?” Cayden wondered out loud accidentally. “How much have you had?”
Lillian held up two fingers.
“Only two?” He didn’t say it too loudly. She made no response; her mind was obviously in another place. An odd combination of emotions he hadn’t felt in a long time were starting to rise, and he didn’t try to stop them. With a sigh of empathy, he put a hand on her arm and softly rubbed it back and forth. After just a minute, she took a deep breath and her muscles relaxed.
“Let’s get you inside.” He kept his voice low.
She nodded, her head still directed at the floor. Cayden moved to stand up, but she began to fall back without his support. He couldn’t figure out how she was so drunk after less than two drinks, but now was not the time to be thinking about that.
Stooping down, he put one arm under her back and the other under her legs. She was so tiny compared to him; he guessed he’d never noticed it before because they had never been this close.
In fact, this was the first time they’d ever had physical contact. He couldn’t deny that he wished it were under different circumstances.
He hooked his pinky finger into the door handle and pulled it open. One of the cats was asleep on the chair and opened one bright eye to assess the situation when he stepped inside, then returned to sleep.
Her house smelled different now, and it had a different energy. Maybe it was the music she had playing from a little speaker on the desk. Quite frankly, he was a bit surprised that she owned a speaker. The inside of her house was so quiet last time. It was almost unsettling, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave when she had just thrown up in his bushes. He knew something wasn’t right, because while she was sleeping he casually looked around and couldn’t find any drugs or alcohol that would have caused it. There were a lot of bottles, some prescription and some vitamin and mineral supplements, but he didn’t recognize any of them as being particularly dangerous. They were all separated into those day-of-the-week boxes which, in his limited knowledge, didn’t scream addiction or abuse.
He suspected it might have been food poisoning, but he had looked in the fridge to get some cold water and saw perfectly preserved foods, all homemade in their wrapped dishes and sealed containers, and if the groceries were store-bought, they were all natural.
