I couldn't do anything but blink at him, taken aback. I felt my heart pounding in my bullet wound.
"I don't mean it's your fault." He dropped the curtain and paced in front of the carved wooden armoire, both his hands in his hair. "I don't know why I said that."
I stood in the middle of the room, my feet cold on the brick floor. "But some of them are good?"
I didn't know why I'd said that.
Stellan stopped pacing and looked up. He crossed the room in two long strides, taking my face between his hands, obviously warring with himself. The side of him that had nuzzled into me in the hospital because someone was showing him a tiny bit of kindness. The side that had been a huge pain since Jerusalem. The side that, when he couldn't sleep, had decided the thing to do would be to come to my bedroom.
He let out a long, shaky breath. "Yes. Some of them are good."
My hands found his chest. It was just about the hardest thing I'd ever done not to reach up and kiss him.
And then it wasn't, because I was doing it. I was stretching up on my tiptoes and pulling him closer, and he responded so quickly, I knew he'd been about to do it himself if I hadn't. There was no should-we, shouldn't-we, no trying to pull away, no trying to stop.
That kiss for the Circle hadn't counted. This, as far as my body could tell, was the second time we'd ever kissed. More deliberate than the first time. Much more complicated.
I wasn't sure who led us to stumble across the room and onto the stiff sofa, and it didn't matter. I didn't know how I ended up with my knees on either side of his hips, my hands running through his hair, damp and smelling of unfamiliar soap.
I let myself get lost in it and my focus narrowed down: his lips-his hands-my skin. Just like it had after the bomb in Jerusalem: live-survive-escape. Just like after my mom-
Screams. Thundering of a stampede of footsteps out of the room, but too late. The metallic smell permeating that room, hands slick with blood.
The memory broke and I was left blinking at Stellan's concerned face.
I pushed away. Stupid. What did I expect would happen if even thinking about kissing him triggered it?
His eyes shuttered. He dropped his hands from where they were tangled in my hair. "It's okay. I'll leave."
I couldn't even pretend. That's how much of a lie it would have been. "No. Don't."
He rested his hands by his sides, his face wary, confused. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." I rubbed both hands over my face. "I don't know. It's stupid."
He gestured for me to go on.
"All the stuff I told you earlier. It doesn't just make me feel weird about Lydia and Cole and my mom . . . It's all tangled up in you. Us. Not that there is an us. I don't mean-" I felt myself flush. This was a ridiculous conversation to be having anytime, but it was especially mortifying while I was straddling him. I continued in a rush, "Just the first time we did this, it was only a few days later-" I shrugged helplessly.
He linked his hands on top of his head and leaned back into the sofa. "Are you saying you think our kissing each other that night had something to do with what happened?"
"No. Of course not. I mean, not exactly," I said, because he was right. That was crazy. "It's just that if I'd been paying more attention those days"-I tried to explain-"or if I'd let my mom persuade me to leave the Circle . . ."
"Is this why-I thought-" Stellan's hands moved tentatively back to my thighs, his thumbs making circles. "When we kissed at the Melechs'. Or when we were dancing, or anytime I hold your hand. You tense up. Is it because you associate that with . . ."
So he'd noticed. Of course he'd noticed.
I shrugged. But then I whispered, "I don't know. Maybe. Yes."
He looked off into the dark over my shoulder. "I'll stop kissing you if you want. It doesn't mean I have to leave. We could just talk."
My fingers clenched in his shirt. My nails were ragged, one of them torn at an awkward angle. Every time I moved my left arm, my shoulder burned. I was exhausted. I should just go to sleep. I shouldn't want to do anything that made me feel this panicky. What I should want and what I did want were annoyingly at odds right now. "No," I said in a tiny voice. "Don't. Please."
His lips twitched up. "So are you using me for some kind of desensitization therapy, then?"
"I don't know."
The look in his eyes was still complicated, but he didn't resist when I pulled him to me by the shirt and kissed him again. It wasn't long until the bad memories started knocking against the place where his lips touched mine. I pulled away. The corners of the room were all shadows, too heavy for the single lamp to extinguish.