“You sound very mature.”
I shrugged. “What she said about your dad and the people he works for made me realize how bad things could be if you went back to Cuba. She’s not just scared that could happen, she’s bone-deep terrified.”
So was I.
“And you don’t feel the same way about what could happen to you? To your dad?”
“We still have some time. We’ll find another way.” I didn’t even want to think about putting Lily in danger. It twisted my stomach into knots. “So. I’m an apple, huh? The apple of your eye?”
“Kaleb.” She stopped walking and her cheeks turned bright pink. “I’m uncomfortably aware that you know how I feel right now.”
“I do?”
Hope. Anticipation. Uncertainty.
“Yeah, I do,” I admitted. My heart sped up in my chest. “But I try not to rely on my … ability in situations where a misread could be fatal.”
“Fatal?”
I was losing cool points so fast I was running into negative numbers. “What if I read you wrong?”
“Pretty sure that won’t happen.” Her expression was as direct as her words. “I was thinking about something last night right before I fell asleep. When people feel emotions, you feel them, too. So it’s a … mutual experience kind of thing?”
Her perceptiveness was unnerving. Almost as unnerving as the fact that she thought about me while falling asleep. In her bed.
“Mutual. Yes. I mean … it … it’s complicated.”
Intrigue. “So how would you feel right now … if … we touched?”
“I guess it would depend on how you felt about me. There are a lot of triggers with touching. Intensity, circumstances.” I lost track of what I was saying when she smoothed her hand across my chest and halfway down my stomach. Her touch made my toes want to curl all the way through the soles of my shoes, and not for purely physical reasons. “I don’t … I’m not sure.”
Smiling, she pulled her hand away and started walking again. No one had ever caught on to this part of my ability before. Except my mom. And that was a whole different thing. We shared happiness when we made cookies together.
Lily was not referencing cookies.
I realized she was ten feet away and I caught up.
“It would depend on how I felt,” she said. “If I felt good, you would, too?”
“Yup.”
“If I felt good physically, or emotionally?”
“Yup. Either. Both.”
“Am I making you uncomfortable?”
“Yup.” I didn’t know why, exactly. It’s not like I was shy. Or innocent.
“Knowing that things rebound back to you has to be addictive.” When we reached Murphy’s Law, she stopped at the stairs leading up to her apartment. “I’d be spending a lot of time making people feel good.”
“The appeal of making a lot of people feel good isn’t what it used to be. I think maybe I’d just like to focus on one.”
“You sure about that?”
“Yup.”
And it shocked the hell out of me.