I breathe out and count backward from ten until I’m composed again. “You always did ask a lot of me,” I say softly. “Too much.”
He reaches out tentatively and pushes back a stray lock of my hair. “Junepenny…” he whispers, voice cracking with pent-up emotion.
Hearing that word in his voice does what the pinch and the breath couldn’t: it makes me finally believe in this. It’s not a dream and it’s not a hallucination.
As for what that means… I have no idea.
I close my eyes as my skin pricks up in goosebumps all over. The blast of the air conditioning from the vents is frigid. Graveyard air. Morgue air. The air of dead things.
“Do you remember why I started calling you that?” he asks suddenly.
I cross my arms and turn my face away from him. Some things hurt too bad to look at. Wounds are
