Snow

16 | i missed you too, neva

❝'cause you are water twelve feet deep,
and i am boots made of concrete.❞

❘❘

JULIAN WATCHES ME CAREFULLY. The weight of his gaze is heavy, so heavy that it could drag me down; even if I writhe and thrash, cry for help, gasp for air, the trace of metal and gravel in his dark eyes could capture me, drive me, skidding, swerving across a fatal scrape of black ice.

Somewhere on the surface, a flicker, a glint, a spark blinds me.

Like flint against steel, a fire to ignite whenever and wherever we please, it's an indestructible feeling that I always embrace around Julian—that invincibility that comes with his proximity, those sensations that sear me into infinite impulses.

I can't quite tell which is him, and which is me, and as we stir in silence, in a crackling, tense quietude, I start to believe maybe we're the same.

Maybe we're both iron and carbon, steel, torched and twisted metal, heavy-hearted and cold-blooded, cursed to forever be grounded.

Anchored.

That inked anchor keeps me in his grasp, drowning in the lies that keep stealing breath like salt water, spilling through cracks of walls in a capsized ship. I'm frozen, arctic anxiety paralyzing me into hypothermia; I'm losing heat too fast to find more, and I think I might stop breathing. 

Because with each gentle caress of his fingers against mine, the temperature drops. With each fucking second of sleeted silence, my pulse weakens, and my breathing...slows...and my...heart...

"Are you okay?" 

Worry flashes in his eyes when I finally pull my hand free, but I reach for my glass of water silently. 

"Did he hurt you?" 

"No," I say numbly, even if I know that the throb in my wrists isn't from the imaginary shackles tied to concrete boots. Because instinct tells me I should never confess. "I'm not hurt." 

Julian curses under his breath, collapsing back against the booth with a clenched jaw. I follow the action warily, a pinch in my chest loosening when his shoulders slump. "Debería matarlo."

As the words roll off his tongue nonchalantly, I stiffen again. Panic ices my limbs, my blood runs cold, a blistering gust of winter air crushes my veins and collapses in on me.

I'm shivering.

"Neva, hey," Julian says quietly, reaching across the table. Warm palms swallow my freezing fingertips, pry them from the icy glass. "Hey, are you okay?"

I don't know. I don't know what it is. It feels like fear, the kind of fear that locks everything in place as you wait to...die...una muerte fría.

"He didn't...pay you," I breathe, peering up at him timidly. "So you trashed the bar."

A weary smile ghosts across his face. "I just had to scare him a bit, Neva."

My bottom lip sneaks between my teeth, and I nod cautiously, feeling too small across from him. I'm not afraid of Julian.

"But if he doesn't pay you, you'll really kill him?"

Julian stills. "Me pagará."

His stealthy escape of answering doesn't sit well with me, and a million questions tumble up my throat, stale and stiff with worry. What if he doesn't? Would he kill Jesse? Julian gave me a few grams, and I didn't pay.