Only she wasn’t that nine-year-old girl anymore.
And if I wasn’t careful, I would find myself in trouble.
I tried to remind myself that I checked her out before I even knew it was her. But it wasn’t just her body that kept flashing through my mind.
It was her plump mouth, hung open in shock as she looked at me. Maybe it was from her thinking that she recognized me. Or it could have been that because of the whole I’d just killed someone right in front of her thing. But something inside told me it wasn’t the latter.
And those eyes. Deep blue, like I’d always remembered them. But now they held wisdom and a deeper sense of sadness.
It was wrong to have the feelings I did as I pictured them now.
And I couldn’t forget the way she’d rushed into my body when she got here. She held me like she couldn’t believe it was really me. I might have been pretty fucking out of it, but there was something about the way her hands felt on me. I wanted that feeling back even if I couldn’t explain what it did to me.
It felt all wrong but so right at the same time.
I groaned again as I pushed up to stand.
“Silas?” her voice called from the other side of the door.
Thank God, she stayed.
“I’m coming in,” she said before I could reply.
The door opened and there she stood in a new outfit and I briefly wondered how she’d gotten new clothes. It definitely wasn’t anything like the short, tight cocktail dress I’d seen her in. The opposite actually, looking more like workout clothes.
Yeah, she still did something to me.
It wasn’t fucking right.
“What are you doing?!” she screeched as she ran to my side. “You shouldn’t be out of bed. What do you need? Let me get it, please.”
One sentence blended into the next as she pushed all the words out of her mouth.
“I’m fine,” I assured her as she wrapped her arm around me to help steady my shaky legs. “Really, I just need to walk it off.”
She looked up at me with wide eyes as if she couldn’t believe I’d said that.
Then she smiled, her lips slowly spreading across her face before she let out a laugh.
“You are insane.” She shook her head. “And you haven’t changed.”
That one statement seemed to get to her more than it should have. Whatever was going on in her head had her eyes swirling with sadness. I wished I knew what it was. Though if I really thought about it, I had an idea what she was thinking.
Ihadchanged.
I probably didn’t grow into the man she thought I’d be. But there were parts of me that were still very much the same.
“Have you eaten?” I asked as a way to change the subject.
“Oh, no. I made soup… but I left it out.” She seemed disappointed at that and I wondered how long it’d had been.
“Given that I don’t have much here, I’m sure whatever you put in it will be fine if not eaten right away.”
“We could try it, I guess.”
“Lead the way,” I told her jokingly.
She eyed me for a long moment.
