Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 114247 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114247 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 571(@200wpm)___ 457(@250wpm)___ 381(@300wpm)
“I like your hair,” I said as I stared. Maddie’s green eyes lifted. A blush coated her cheeks and my stomach tightened at the sight. Every time I looked at her, my stomach clenched. And when her eyes looked at me like they were doing right now, my heart always raced. The pulse in my neck always beat faster.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and I caught her full lips hook up at the side. It made her look even more beautiful than I already thought she was.
The room became silent. Maddie took a deep breath and told me, “I like your hands.”
A feeling of heat suddenly filled my body. But it wasn’t the flames. This felt different. My muscles weren’t burning. My skin wasn’t crawling. It felt… strange…
… I frowned. Maddie had liked something on me? No one had ever liked me. No one had ever commented on how I looked. I forced my hand to move. It felt like a dead weight underneath me, but I pushed it out until it lay flat on the floor in front of me. I studied the colored tattooed skin, flames covering the entire thing.
“Why?” I croaked, and glanced up to still find Maddie watching me. “Why do you like my hand?”
The blush on her face deepened. But her eyes were watching my hand as it lay on the floor. Suddenly, Maddie moved. She began to lie down, mirroring my position. My heart fired off like a cannon, when she lowered her head and pressed her cheek to the floor. Like this, she was looking directly into my eyes.
“Is… is this okay?” she whispered.
I nodded my head and replied, “Yeah. Just…” I tried to hold back my panic, and said, “Just don’t come near this hatch. Don’t… don’t touch me.”
“I will not,” Maddie confirmed quietly. The hand resting near her head inched forward in my direction. I stopped breathing as I thought she was going to touch me. But her hand stopped about an inch from mine.
I wondered what she was doing, when she said, “I like how your hand looks next to mine. It is so big and mine is so small. Yet I feel they look compatible.”
I focused on our hands and noticed that my hand was bigger than hers. Maddie’s little finger then extended, landing right next to mine. I thought of ripping my hand away, but something stopped me. I didn’t want her to touch me, because I didn’t want her to be hurt. My touch only ever caused people to be hurt. But I left my hand where it was, our little fingers staring at each other.
“I sometimes imagine what our hands would look like... touching. What they would look like with our fingers intertwined. I wonder if it would make me smile. At times I daydream that it would be something we could do.”
Maddie’s voice was so quiet as she spoke. I couldn’t take my eyes off our hands. I tried to picture in my head what she described. I saw her hand reaching out for mine, but then I thought of how it would make me feel, and I shook my head.
“Our hands can’t ever touch. I can’t… I couldn’t do it.”
Maddie’s lips pulled into a half smile, but water filled her eyes and her voice hitched.
“Why are your eyes filling with water? Why is your voice breaking?” I asked, confused. I had to understand what she was thinking. What she was feeling. I didn’t know, and I had to.
“I am sad, Flame. It makes me sad to know that we can never touch.”
The muscles in my stomach pulled tight with the knowledge that I’d made her sad. Then that warm feeling I’d felt cooled and I no longer felt good. “I don’t want to make you sad. Not you. I just can’t be touched. It makes the flames worse. I can’t touch you.”
“It is okay, Flame,” Maddie said in response. She looked up at me and added, “Because I cannot be touched by a man either. But I dream about it regardless.”
I took a deep breath as I looked around my cabin. It was different. My things had been moved. It was clean. And… Maddie? No one ever came inside. But Maddie was inside now. And she wasn’t running away. No one ever wanted to stay.
They always left.
I was always here alone.
“Why’re you in here, Maddie?”
Maddie’s body tensed, as she replied, “You have not been well and I came to try and make you better.” Her head tilted to the side and she asked, “Do you not remember?”
I tried to search my mind, but all I could hear were screams and shouts. I could hear bullets. Then I could feel people tying me down.
“I don’t remember. I just woke up to you. Woke up tired but seeing him standing behind you. And I had to save you.”
Maddie stared at our hands and whispered, “You always save me.”
“I have to.”
Maddie stopped breathing, then asked, “Why?”
I searched my head for the answer, then said, “Because I think about you all the time. You look at me in a way no one else does. I think about what those men in that fucking cult did to you, and I can’t stand it. I need to make sure no one touches you like that again. And…” I sucked in a breath seeing an image in my head.
“And what?” Maddie asked.
“And you touched me,” I hushed out. In my head I saw her wrap her arms around my waist in that commune. “And I touched you back. And you weren’t hurt by me. The flames didn’t burn too hot under my skin at your touch and make my head full of noise.”
“And I did not fear you,” she replied. “I fear a man’s touch. I find it abhorrent. But not yours. I wanted to embrace you that day. I needed to. Even if we cannot ever embrace again.”
My chest tightened as she told me she didn’t fear me. She wasn’t scared of me.