Iris winced as he struggled to reach her on one foot. She moved forward, hands ready to catch him, but he took hold of the doorframe and found his balance, his blue eyes piercing hers. There was only a slender amount of space between their bodies, and Iris almost backed away, fighting the taunting pull she felt toward him.
“What is this request, then?” she asked coldly, but it was only to hide how her heart ached. “What is so important to you that you had to act like a fool and yank a needle from your vein, and possibly tear your stitches, and—”
“I never lied to you,” Roman said. His expression softened but his eyes remained keen, and he whispered, “You asked me this once, months ago, and I refused to answer. But I want you to ask me again, Iris. Ask me what my middle name is.”
She gritted her teeth, but she held his stare. Her memory began to roll like a phonograph, and she heard her past voice, snide and amused and full of curiosity.
Roman Cheeky Kitt. Roman Cantankerous Kitt. Roman Conceited Kitt …
Her breath caught.
“The C is for Carver,” Roman said, leaning closer to her. “My name is Roman Carver Kitt.”
He wove his fingers into her hair and brought his mouth down to hers. Iris felt the shock ripple through her the moment their lips met. His kiss was hungry, as if he had longed to taste her for some time, and at first she couldn’t breathe. But then the shock melted, and she felt a thrill warm her blood.
She opened her mouth against his, returning the kiss. She felt him shiver as her hands raced up his arms, clinging to him. When he shifted their bodies, Iris sensed they were falling and she was utterly helpless to it until she felt the wall at her back. Roman pressed against her, his lean body blazing as if he had caught fire. His heat seeped into her skin, settled into her bones, and she couldn’t stop the moan that escaped her.
Roman cradled her face in his hands. Yes, he had wanted her for a long time. She could feel it in the way he touched her, in the way his lips claimed hers. As if he had endlessly imagined this moment happening.
Iris hardly knew the hour or the day or where they stood. They were both caught in a storm of their own making and she didn’t know what would happen when it broke. She only knew that something ached within her chest. Something that Roman must need, because his mouth and his breath and his caresses were trying to draw it from her.
Someone cleared their throat.
Iris suddenly returned to herself, feeling the cool, astringent air of the infirmary. The lightbulbs, shining overhead. The metallic sounds of bedpans and lunch trays being moved.
She broke away from Roman, panting. She stared up at him and his swollen mouth, the way his eyes brimmed with dangerous light as he continued to stare at her.
“I’m going to have to restrict your visiting hours if snogging is bound to happen again, Mr. Kitt,” said a tired voice. Iris glanced around Roman to see a nurse was holding the intravenous needle and tube he had torn away from his hand. “You need to be in bed. Resting.”
“It won’t happen again,” Iris promised, face flaming.
The nurse only arched her brow. Roman, on the other hand, exhaled as if Iris had punched him.
What am I doing? Iris thought and slipped under Roman’s arm. This is foolish. This is …
She paused on the threshold, glancing back at him.
Roman continued to lean against the wall. But his gaze was wholly consumed by her, even as the nurse moved to help him.
Iris left him with the tingling memory of her kiss and her letters scattered across his bed.
Dear Iris,
What were you thinking?
How could you let your heart cloud your mind?
You should have known!!!
How did you miss this? How could you let him get the best of you? Roman “C.-is-for-Carver” Kitt has played you.
Kitt: 2 （1 point for columnist, 1 point for elaborate deception）
Winnow: 0
I just … I don’t even know what to think anymore. I’m embarrassed, I’m angry. I’m sad and strangely relieved. Attie and Marisol keep inviting me to the infirmary, but if I see Kitt right now I don’t know how I’d react to him. I made an idiot of myself this morning, so I think it’s best I stay away. I’m volunteering to dig graves in the field instead. I dig, hour after hour. I give all my anger and helplessness and sadness to the ground. And I help the people of Avalon Bluff take the names of soldiers before we bury them.
It’s backbreaking work. The blisters have burst on my hands, but I don’t even feel them. So many have died, and I’m just so tired and sad and angry, and I don’t know what to do about Kitt.
I reread all his letters last night. And I don’t think he tried to play me. At least, maybe he did at the very beginning, but not anymore. I also don’t know how to fully describe how I’m feeling. Perhaps there are no words to explain such a thing, but …
Sometimes I still feel his hand in mine, drawing me through the smoke and terror of the trenches. Sometimes I still feel him lifting me up as if I were weightless, spinning me around as if we were dancing. Or how he came between me and the grenade, and I still can’t breathe. Sometimes I remember how my heart stopped when I saw him sprawled on his back, staring up at the sky as if he were dead. When I saw him walking through the field during the eithral siren. When we collided in the golden grass. When his lips touched mine.
I am coming to love him, in two different ways. Face to face, and word to word. If I’m honest, there were moments when I longed for Carver, and moments when I longed for Roman, and now I don’t know how to bring the two together. Or if I even should.
He was trying to tell me. And I was too distracted to put the pieces together. It’s my own fault; my pride is simply wounded, and I need to let it go and continue with my life, with or without him.
I’m just furious mortified upset seething afraid.
I’m afraid he’s going to hurt me. I’m afraid to lose someone I love again. I’m afraid to let go. To acknowledge what I feel for him. And yet he has proven himself to me. Over and over. He found me on my darkest day. He followed me to war, to the front lines. He came between me and Death, taking wounds that were supposed to be mine.
There is something electric within me. Something that is begging me to remove the last of my armor and let him see me as I am. To choose him. And yet here I sit, alone, typing word after word as I seek to make sense of myself. I watch the candlelight flicker and all I can think is …
I am so afraid. And yet how I long to be vulnerable and brave when it comes to my own heart.
{35}
The Hill That Almost Bested Iris
Iris knelt in the garden, watering the soil. In the days that she had been away at the front, a few green tendrils had started to break the ground, and the sight of their fragile unfurling made her heart soften. She imagined Keegan returning from the war soon, and the joy she would feel upon realizing that Marisol had ensured the garden was planted. It wasn’t the most beautiful or orderly garden, but it was slowly awakening.
I grew something living in a season of death.
The words echoed through Iris as she gently traced the closest stem with her fingertip. Her watering can was empty, but she remained kneeling, and the dampness of the soil bled into the knees of her jumpsuit.
She felt so tired and heavy. They had finished burying all the deceased the day before.