“You’re gonna need bandages.”
The voice. His voice. It’s soft and low.
It’s exactly as I remember it but with a rougher edge. An edge that wasn’t there before. His voice is probably the only voice that I can recognize out of a thousand voices, even from far away, even after years.
God, it’s awful. It’s fucking terrible.
Whydo I know so much about him?
Why is he touching me? He’s never touched me before.
With suspended breaths, I look up at him, ready to tell him to get away from me and snatch my hand back. But all I can focus on is that his hands are not the only things that are bronzed.
For some reason, I hadn’t noticed it before. But his face has become darker as well. Tanned.
“Don’t,” I say, somehow finding my voice.
With his face still dipped, he lifts his eyes up to me. He studies me for a beat and I squirm under his intense scrutiny.
“Don’t what?”
I swallow against the impact of his voice. It hits me in the chest and I wince slightly.
Of course, he notices.
And maybe to mess with me even more, he rubs his thumb over the pad of my palm. The touch is gentle, not more than a whisper of his skin over mine.
But it’s the only thing that I can focus on.
I snatch my hand back and fist it. “Don’t touch me.” Then I add, to make it super clear, “Ever.”