christina

“I'm sorry," Gansey said, not looking at her as she leaned on the car beside him. "That was very rude."

Blue thought of a few things to reply, but couldn't say any of them out loud. She felt like one of the night birds had gotten inside her. It tumbled and fumbled every time she breathed.

He's going to die; this is going to hurt--

But she touched his neck, right where his hair was cut evenly above the collar of his shirt. He was very still. His skin was hot, and she could very, very faintly feel his pulse beneath her thumb. It wasn't like when she was with Adam. She didn't have to guess what to do with her hands. They knew. This was what it should have felt like with Adam. Less like playacting and more like a foregone conclusion.

He closed his eyes and leaned, just a little, so that her palm was flat on his neck, fingers sprawled from his ear to his shoulder.

Everything in Blue was charged. Say something. Say something.

Gansey lifted her hand gently from his skin, holding it as formally as a dance. He put it against his mouth.

Blue froze. Absolutely still. Her heart didn't beat. She didn't blink. She couldn't say don't kiss me. She couldn't even form don't.

He just leaned his cheek and the edge of his mouth against her knuckles, and then set her hand back.

"I know," he said. "I wouldn't."

Her skin burned with the memory of his mouth. The thrashing bird of her heart shivered and shivered again. "Thank's for remembering."

He looked back over the valley. "Oh, Jane."

"Oh, Jane, what?"

"He didn't want me to, did you know? He told me not to try to get you to come to the table that night at Nino's. I had to talk him into it. And then I made such an idiot of myself--" He turned back to her. "What are you thinking?"

She just looked at him. That I went out with the wrong boy. That I destroyed Adam tonight for no reason at all. That I'm not sensible at all--"I thought you were an asshole."

Gallantly, he said, "Thank God for past tense." Then: "I can't--we can't do this to him."

It was jagged inside her. "I'm not a thing. To have."

"No. Jesus. Of course you're not. But you know what I mean."

She did. And he was right. They couldn't do this to him. She shouldn't do it to herself, anyway. But how it made a disaster of her chest and her mouth and her head.

"I wish you could be kissed, Jane," he said. "Because I would beg one off you. Under all this." He flailed an arm toward the stars. "And then we'd never say anything about it again.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves