Read Glass Heart for Free Online

where he is. I want to ask if they had any traditions, even if they were just dinner out somewhere or an afternoon at the movies. Three’s not a big number, but it’s still a family. For a long time, it’s all I had with Mom and Robin.
    But even without Gabriel’s psychic gift, I can feel shutters banging closed in his head, the locks to every door turning sharply. Even his body is tense now, and I rub my palm in circles over his chest until he relaxes.
    “Well then, I’m glad,” I whisper, and stretch up to kiss him, licking the cinnamon of the apple pie on his lips.
    “No singing, though,” he says. “I draw the line at singing.”
    I laugh against his mouth, and he takes it in, smiling even as our mouths meet. I want to know so much more—the big stuff like where his dad is, how his mom died, and the stupid stuff, too. What his first-grade teacher was like, if he ever dreamed about being a fireman or a space cowboy when he was a little kid.
    But he’s kissing me, which makes it hard to think about anything else, or anything at all. I’m dizzy with the scent of him, spicy boy and worn, soft denim, and the faint taste of sugar and coffee on his tongue. I close my eyes and let go, until there’s nothing left but all the places we’re pressed together and the sound of our breathing, rougher and ragged now. Just another minute, I tell myself. Maybe two. Enough to pick apart and remember later, when I’m alone and wishing I had more.
    And then it starts to change. I feel it in my blood, liquid gold sliding slow and hot through me, shimmering. When Gabriel takes my hand, pressing our palms together and twining our fingers, our heartbeats are right there, suddenly one, a sure, steady pulse echoing through our skin. It’s hypnotic, perfect, seeping into every cell as if we’re fused, and all the ways I can think to describe it are too much and too little. It’s like a candy buzz, or the first dizzying swoop of beer in your stomach, the sensation of floating right before you fall asleep, the needling heat of a foot gone to sleep. All of it and none of it, but good . So good . . .
    Gabriel wrenches his mouth away, creates space between us somehow, and blinks up at me, shuddering. “Wren. What . . . it was all . . . bright and hot and . . . like falling. Did you . . . feel that?”
    It takes me a minute to remember how to breathe, to remember how to think and speak. I’m shivering, cold now that we’re not pressed so tightly together, and whatever was running wild inside me is seeping away, nothing left but a pale shimmer of light.
    “Yeah,” I whisper, and sit up, pushing my hands through my hair and taking a deep breath. “I mean, something like that. It was my power, I think.”
    He sits up, too, blue-gray eyes dark and hot, and runs a hand across his forehead like it hurts again. “What do you mean?”
    “I don’t know, okay?” I need some water, some cold air, a minute to think. I don’t know what would have happened if he hadn’t stopped. I know I wasn’t even considering it. It was delicious, even if it didn’t exactly feel real. It was hard to care about how far off our usual map we were in the moment, and that scares me.
    Gabriel follows me into the kitchen, and I fill glasses with water for both of us. He leaves his on the counter while I drain mine, gulping the last bit and wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.
    “You okay?” His voice is low, and he’s still flushed. I nod, and for a minute we just stand there, looking anywhere but at each other. The kitchen floor is ancient red-brick linoleum, and I trace the outline of one rectangle with my socked toes.
    I slept with Danny, after we’d been together for months. I didn’t regret it then, and I don’t now. It still feels right that we gave each other that, because he’d never slept with anyone, either.
    Going slow with Gabriel isn’t really about not wanting to sleep with him, though. It’s about what happened