Zach grunts, his head bumping against the ground. “Fuck, you’re heavy, Blue.”
I try to scramble off. “Jerk.”
It only makes him laugh and tighten his hold around me. “Relax. I could carry you in my sleep with one hand.”
I stiffen over him. “Are you kidding?”
A small smile is still playing on his lips as he shakes his head once. “Cross my heart.”
Then, he goes and does it.
He makes a little cross on the left side of his chest with his long finger, and I feel it on my chest. The rough pad of his finger dragging lines like I’m making a promise too. Only I don’t know what I’m promising.
“And hope to die?” I breathe out.
One slow nod. “Yeah.”
His whispers are deadly. They are.
And so are his eyes.
I’m finding out that I don’t care though. I’m relieved they’re on me after such a long time.
“You never look at me anymore,” I blurt out.
“Because it hurts.”
His words make me flinch, even though there wasn’t any meanness in them. They held a kind of emotion I’ve never gotten from him before.
It resembles a weird mixture of torture and desperation.
It makes me breathless and shivery for some reason. A little sad for him, too.
“Why does it hurt?” I ask.
His arms wind around my waist and his legs go on either side of me, sort of cradling me into his body. My knees are digging into the grass and so are my elbows but that barely registers, seeing how I’m flung over him.
“Because you look at me like…”
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t hate me anymore.”
My heart’s banging in my chest. He must feel it. He must feel my heart knocking on his chest through mine.
“I do,” I’m compelled to whisper.
And for some reason, I don’t want to even think about how I’m lying right now.
“Good.”
His raspy voice makes the butterflies take flight in my stomach. There are so many of them and they are so wild that if they want, they could fly me away with them.
“You’re going to die soon, you know,” I whisper lamely.
Slowly, amusement comes to line his features. “Am I?”
“Yes,” I explain. “Cross my heart and hope to die? You’re dying. Because you lied.”