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Use it…before it gets cold. I’ll be back for you soon.

Eli

Use what?But I find out soon enough when I dip my hands into the water bucket. It’s warm, teeming with light green soap bubbles.

He actually took the time to give me warm water.

Unable to contain myself a second longer, I strip, removing the ring and blue stone from my bra and setting them on the nightstand. I’m lost in the decadence, washing from head to toe. The cold hits seconds after, but it’s worth it. Shivering, I pick up the dry outfit, and a wooden comb falls to the floor, landing in front of my bare knees. I have to poke my finger on each fat tooth to believe it’s real. Swimming in the excess fabric of his clothes, I wash my underwear, socks and bra and drape them over his drums to dry.

Eli arrives after his shift, unbuttoning his blue jumpsuit as he assesses the room. A breeze circles my body and swirls down my legs, fresh like the dew of dawn, invisible lightness emanatingfrom him. He stares at me, sitting on the edge of his bed and working through the tangles in my hair, then his eyes travel to my underclothes taking over his drum set. He raises a hand to his ear, tugging and twisting the lobe with anxious fingers.

I lower the comb and slide off the bed, stepping closer to him, to this man who has me puzzling over him. “What’s waiting for me in the clearing tonight?”

He glances down at my braless chest and quickly finds the floor to look at instead—no smirk, no lewd comment, no attempt to claim a second pair of underwear.

Something’s wrong.

“Nothing. Put yourthingsback on. We’re going up to the house.” He grabs a white shirt, pants and something like boxers for himself and closes me inside his room.

I put my damp clothes on under the dry ones and return to the nightstand for my treasures, sneaking a jade button out of his drawer and tucking it into my bra.

He opens the door and shoves a bar at me. “Eat on the way.”

We stand in the grand shelf-lined room again, the house motionless and quiet, the unspoken stories written on the walls as heated and charged as the air between us. I still can’t look at him without thinking of Kelter. And his hand on my bloody neck. The scarlet soda’s forced desire. His song that stole my escape. And feeling and seeing and hearing all that at once—it paralyzes me. So I try not to look.

Eli circles the room, head dipped, watching me. His white shirt takes on the warm tones of the room, and the remaining daylight slips through the missing shingles on the roof.

“Aren’t we going to start?” I ask, my breaths stumbling with nerves over the next trigger.

“Patience, my little prisoner. I’m waiting for something.”

Great. Very specific.Such an impressive tolerance for the torturously slow passage of time.

My damp socks make my feet cold inside my boots, so I take them off, gambling on the room not turning into a furnace again, and dig my toes into the carpet. The fibers tickle and rub against that rarely touched skin as I follow the shelves, inspecting the trinkets on the walls. I arch and roll my feet every time I stop to pick up a new item, turning it over in my hands and poking at buttons and springs and knobs and gears that remind me of Caldera. Then I spot a tiny silver key—a real one, not a stone. And simply to have a little piece of home, I wait until the staircase is between us and add it to my treasures.

After four laps he calls to me from across the expanse of the room. “Is that a Hollow thing?”

“What?”Did he see me?

“Your feet.”

It comes back to me with such ease that I startle at the memory—my bare feet slapping the stretch of sidewalk between Kelter’s place and mine, rough and cold and puddled from the night rain, my arms outstretched, fingers tapping the glass store windows on my way by.You’re wild, he told me with a grin when I showed up at his door, toes exposed and wet to my knees, windswept hair. I hid his shoes and dragged him out the door, his jeans cuffed much too high above his ankles. Anyone else in Caldera would have been appalled. Not Kelter.

“Maybe. Try it.” I trace my finger along the shelf, focusing on anything but him and avoiding the surge of thoughts. It’s strangeto walk freely like this after so much time locked up, cuffed or held tight in his grasp.

“No.” His jaw falls open a notch. “I don’t go barefoot.” He crosses the room, and the sofa sighs under him as he sits—stiff, back straight, knees at ninety degree angles.

“You could.” I flop down on the opposite end of the sofa. “Are we just going to sit here?”

“For the moment.”

My knees bounce, hands squirming in my lap. The room dims as night approaches. Pink-orange rays of dusk beam into the room from the shambly ceiling above, but Eli carries that light aura tonight, warming the space.

“Why are you sitting like that?” I ask, holding my hair down as that breeze of his sweeps over me.

“Like what?” He looks down, then at me, and I make the mistake of looking back. It all comes rushing in—the blood, the desire, the song. I can’t move on the sofa, even as the cushions ripple under my bottom and up my back.

His hand raps his thigh, soft, ceaseless taps.