Page 63 of The Otherworld

“That’s true,” Adam says, his eyes reading mine back and forth like jots of Latin. “I never saw it like that before.”

An indescribable feeling comes alive in me again, dancing and fluttering like the butterflies in the greenhouse. We’re standing only a few feet apart, but it’s not close enough. My body hungers to feel him. More of him. All of him.

Without thinking twice, I wrap my arms around him and pull him close—my face against his chest, breathing in his fresh, clean scent. Soap and pine. I avoid his broken ribs, letting one hand catch on the belt loop of his pants, and spreading my other hand over his back.

Why am I hugging him?

I have no idea. I just need to.

After a stunned moment, I feel Adam’s arms circle around me. His warm hands settle on my hips as he hugs me in response, not saying anything, just holding me. There is a wordless conversation in our embrace. And somehow, it communicates more than any language could hope to express.

19

Logic V. Emotion

ADAM

I don’t believe in soulmates. I never have. In my youth, I toyed with the idea of fate and destiny—questioning every impossible thing that laughed in the face of logic and turned our neat-and-tidy theories into chaos. I wondered about fate, studied it like a crystal casting prisms around me. Is this real, or just a trick of the light? Maybe love is like that. A glance into the fourth dimension, something intangible yet beautiful—darting away from you the moment you try to hold onto it.

Tenens infinitum.

Impossible.

The infinite cannot be held.

Yet when Orca wrapped her arms around me, I couldn’t stop myself from embracing her. I couldn’t help wondering if the infinite could be held, and this was it—this unexplainable magnetism between us.

I’ve never felt anything like it before.

It defies all logic, it tramples my preconceived ideas of what love should feel like, it shakes the very ground I stand on, and yet—

I’m not afraid of it.

I’m hungry for it.

There used to be no person in the world I would talk about the multiverse or the butterfly effect with. No person in the world I would feel comfortable discussing the idea of soulmates with. No person in the world until now.

Orca, the girl who saved my life.

Orca, the girl who wears flowers and butterflies in her hair.

Orca, the girl I feel myself slipping, slipping, falling for.

If I were a man who acted upon the impulse of his feelings, I would have kissed her right then and there. I would have told her she was beautiful when she looked into my eyes and told me I was handsome. Instead, I said thank you.

Thank you? Honestly?

I should have told her the truth—that she is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. Not just on the outside. Not just the way the light sparkles in her eyes like turquoise and gilds the soft folds of her hair, not just the lilt of her voice or the music of her laughter, not just the elegant shape of her body, like a marble sculpture straight out of Michelangelo’s proficient hands.

She is beautiful because she is one of a kind—a single, glorious star lighting up her own solar system. Beautiful because she lives in this hidden utopia, far from the madness of the world she desperately, foolishly yearns for.

These thoughts keep me awake late into the night as I lie on her father’s bed and listen to the waves crashing outside the window.

There’s a reason Orca’s father has gone to such great lengths to keep his daughter safe from the harsh realities of the “other world.” There’s a reason why he doesn’t allow trips to the mainland.

Orca’s life is a radical, carefully executed plan of protection.

It may not be what she wants now, but she doesn’t understand how experience can ruin someone. She doesn’t understand the value of what she’s been given. How could she? When she’s never known anything but this?

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