“He’s yours now.”
There was a potency in those words I couldn’t ignore. I could taste the letters on my tongue, feel them tapping at my chest and slipping through my veins.
The voice that whispered them greeted me as nothing more than a faint tickle. Days later, it felt like thunder crashing into my chest, and for each second I spent with Sebastian, it’d only gotten louder.
“He’s yours…”
“He’s yours…”
“He’s yours…”
The tone was a foreign one, something I didn’t recognize as it left marks across my subconscious. The more I listened, the more I thought it sounded a lot like my own voice… and the words it spoke were no longer simple omens perched lightly on my shoulder.
They were assurance—a pledge.
“He’s yours now.”
Sebastian’s eyes were on me as I shifted in my chair and reached for the bottom drawer of my desk. The brass handle was loose, lopsided and barely hanging on. It made a grinding noise when I tugged it open, and I caught Sebastian’s flinch from the corner of my eye.
The first-aid kit was wedged haphazardly between the drawer’s narrow walls. I was reluctant to believe this thing had ever been used, and I was suspicious about every counselor that had come before me and what the hell they did all day.
My whole desk rattled when I yanked the kit free, and I wrapped my palm around its edge to steady it. Placing the kit on my lap, I popped it open and looked over the contents. Instant ice packs lined the bottom of the kit, cushioning gauze and cheap band-aids. I grabbed one and set it aside before picking up a disinfectant wipe and tearing it open with my teeth.
I held it out to him.
Sebastian glanced at it and shook his head.
I rolled my chair a little closer to him and tried again. “Those cuts need to be cleaned, baby bird.”
He lifted his chin. There was an adorable divot between his eyebrows that I wanted to press my lips against.
“Say it again.”
“Baby bird,” I whispered.
His movements were cautious as he wrapped one thumb around the other and flapped his hands as though they were wings. They moved in a silent pattern, rising and falling as they danced through the air.
His wings fell apart, and the curve of his eyebrow lifted with a quiet question. He pointed a cautious finger at his chest, and his eyes were shy as they glanced up at me… waiting.
I smiled. “Yes, that’s you. My baby bird.”
Soft, pale cheeks filled with color. His finger left his chest, and he held it outward, tracing the outline of my smile in the air. His eyes grew, and he studied the shape he made as though it was something new to him.
“Are you comfortable with me calling you that?” His nod was quick, and I chuckled. “Alright, baby bird. How about you give me that bloodied wing, and I make it look brand new?”
I felt the pulse in his fingertips against my palm when he slid his hand into mine. The touch settled something inside of me, and I felt my own pulse shift, searching for the tempo that matched his.
It took several passes with the wipe to get him clean, and even then, he was stained—painted in purple and blue undertones that would soon turn yellow and green.
The rigid way his knuckles curled against my palm was an indication of the pain he still felt. I tossed the wipe in the wastebasket below my desk and grabbed the ice pack. I squeezed until I heard the telltalepopthat signaled it’d been activated. The chill was immediate, and I laid it carefully across the top of his hand, adjusting it so it touched the most battered of places.
Placing my palm over it, I applied pressure, worried it was too cold for his skin. The thumbs up he gave me told me it was just enough to offer him relief.
I waited several more seconds, allowing the ice pack to mold to the divots of his fingers before I started to pull my hand away.
Sebastian surged forward. His hood slipped off his head and his unbroken hand shot outward, grasping at my fingers and tugging them with a force that had my entire arm lurching.
“He doesn’t want you to leave.”