Bryce

Shit, shit, shit. I couldn’t believe what I had just done.

My heart was beating out of my chest and I could feel the heat rising in my face. My ears felt like they were on fire, and I kept having to stop from reaching up to reassure myself that they hadn’t burnt away.

I heard Thea scrambling to get up, followed by her fighting the elevator doors as they tried to close on her, but she didn’t say a word.

I had decided that the best way out of the hospital would be to take the elevator from the private offices to the basement, then take the stairs at the corner of the building up to where, I assumed, there would be some sort of fire exit.

It was around two or three in the morning, and I figured it was early enough for most of the staff to be sequestered in the more vital areas of the hospital, such as the ER or the overnight patient rooms.

I was incredibly thankful that I had made that decision. If anybody saw the two of us walking through the basement at that moment, they would make the kind of assumptions that you didn’t want people to make when you were trying to be forgettable.

Thea seemed entirely unaware and kept knocking into me as we fast-walked through the mostly concrete basement. She was chewing on her bottom lip with a fanged tooth and a half smile. Her all-black eyes were glazed over and they had a distant look about them.

I had fucked up. I hadn’t meant to break the poor girl, and this definitely wasn’t the time for her to be zoning out like this.

Although, at this distance, I could see that her eyes weren’t entirely black. The outer sclera was as black as pitch, but her irises were a few shades lighter, almost a brown but not quite, and there were tiny flecks of an opalescent gold mixed in.

I had been staring for a while before I realized they weren’t flecks. Rather, it was an underlying light that was almost entirely obscured. The light managed to snake through in places when an amorphous black fog would shift above it, seemingly of its own accord.

It was as if somebody had poured living black ink into a pool of golden light. It felt almost tragic.

I could understand why I hadn’t noticed the subtle variations of color before; because, from any more than about a half-meter away, they melded together, and it just looked like a solid black.

That was the thought that made me realize I was less than half a meter away, much less, and that we had stopped moving.

“Hey, uh, Bryce… I really don’t mind the, uh, proximity,” Thea audibly swallowed before reluctantly continuing. “But is now really the time for this?”

I nodded a few too many times to reassure myself, and scrambled together something that sounded at least somewhat similar to a response.

Thea must have somehow interpreted the strange sounds, because she slowly nodded while maintaining eye contact.

“Later then? When we’re safe. Well, safer.” Thea had a look of genuine concern and she was talking slowly, almost like she was trying to talk down somebody who was standing on the edge of a cliff, threatening to jump.

That was entirely fair though, because that’s exactly how I felt.

I took a moment to gather myself before I could respond.

“Yeah, uh, later. Later is, later is good.”

“Are you okay, Bryce?” Thea asked. “You’ve been through a lot. More than a lot, actually, and you looked a little spaced out there.”

I couldn’t just tell her I was lost in her eyes, right?

That’s the stupidest line in existence. Real people don’t actually say that outside of terrible rom-coms or overacted serial dramas.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

But my mind started racing, trying to think of literally anything else.

“I’m fine. I was just a little.” Oh fuck, I was going to say it. I couldn’t stop myself before the rest just came spilling out like so much toxic garbage.

“Lost.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“In.”

No, seriously, I tried thinking of anything else, but my brain was hyper-focused on the one thing I didn’t want to say.

“Your.”

I prayed for the gods to strike me dead where I stood.

“Eyes.”

It was done. I was done. There was literally no coming back from a line like that. I probably should have just lied down and waited for the corporate bounty hunters to come and take me away.

I watched the evolution of Thea’s expression with a terrible fascination as she went from concern, to confusion, to realization, and ending in a sort of mortified joy.

She was trying really hard to stop herself from laughing, but it was coming out in snorts and suppressed giggles.

Thea finally doubled over and gave into a full-bodied laughing fit.

I just turned and began mechanically walking towards where I thought must be an exit.

“Wait, please, Bryce, just wait,” Thea started calling after me through fits of breathlessness. “I’m sorry, Bryce, seriously, wait.”

I stopped moving and kind of just stood there in the infinite embarrassment of the situation.

Thea pulled herself together enough to walk over and place a hand on my shoulder before she looked up at me.

“I’m so sorry.” She was still a little breathless but managed a sincere enough sounding apology. “I was just so concerned, and I’m still really worried about you. It’s just that I really wasn’t expecting you to say that out of nowhere, and right now, with everything that happened, and that stunt you pulled in the elevator was… wow, just wow. Like mind blown, you know?”

Thea made a gesture like an explosion near her head, then continued with her frantic explanation.

“I had been mostly just flirting to ease the situation, you know? Kind of, keep your mind off everything that has been happening.” She seemed to realize how that sounded and quickly tried to correct herself. “I mean, wait, please don’t take that the wrong way. I like you, I really do, and I’d love to see what could happen between us, but… Bryce, you’ve been through a lot, like really a lot. Nobody, and I really mean nobody, can go through that kind of shit without it affecting them. Please, Bryce, just try to take it a little slower. At least until we’ve had a moment to process this shitstorm, alright?”

I was starting to understand. Not only her words, but also my actions.

She was throwing me something of a life preserver, something to hang onto and distract me from the trauma that we didn’t have the time, or the energy, to deal with at the moment. I had taken that and was pulling her down with me.

I pulled the woman into a tight hug that lasted maybe a little longer than it should have.

“Thank you, Thea. I just… thank you,” I released her and she smiled back up at me. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.”

“Oh, you would’ve died. Like for sure, one hundred percent. Dead on the floor, I’m talking completely gonzo. Almost from the moment I got to the mortal plane, everything I’ve done has basically just been to keep you alive.”

I managed a chuckle at that, because she wasn’t wrong and there wasn’t much else I could have done after realizing how close to death I had really come.

“You really know how to humble a person,” I said.

Thea responded with a cheesy thumbs-up and a pretty decent attempt at a charming smile.

“That’s me! Build them up, and knock them back down again.”

“Let’s get out of this place and see if we can’t find one of Teolix’s goons who can set up a meeting.”

Thea tapped her chin a few times before responding.

“I don’t know, I’ve got some pretty fond memories of this exact basement. Like remember that time you said—”

I leapt forward to cover her mouth, but the amusement in her eyes said it all anyway.

“Oh no you don’t. We’re not speaking of that ever again. You understand? Never. Again.” The golden light shone through the black ever so slightly more than usual.

Nobody could have noticed it, not unless they knew exactly what to look for, but it spoke to me on a weird level that was almost certainly just my dread projecting itself onto the situation. Because it promised only a single word. Mischief.

I kept my hand over her mouth but asked anyway.

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

Her smile widened under my palm, and the glint in her eyes spoke to the sincerity of her response as she shook her head slowly back and forth.

I sighed as I dropped my hand from her mouth. “Okay, go ahead, say it.”

Somehow, her grin widened, and she rocked back and forth on her feet with her hands laced behind her back.

“I’m sorry, Bryce. Were you saying something? Because I didn’t hear you, I think I was just a little… lost. In. Your. Eyes.”

I groaned audibly, and she marched off with the most smug aura that I have ever had the displeasure of witnessing.

I couldn’t help but smile as I followed her.