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The words didn’t really change much, but they were a relief anyway. They’d said it now, they’d openly acknowledged the situation— not that it put them on more centered ground. Ellory did what he always did when he felt his most vulnerable self laid open and retreated into himself, his little silences and self-imposed spaces. Still, when the heat melted him down and he was limp and floating and away from himself just enough to admit how very much he’d starved himself of contact, his walls meant nothing. Maybe that was why this was happening now, he thought, maybe that’s what it took to make him open up to another human again. After all, that’s how it had been the first time. Taking relief from the heat in the cool skin of another, with the murmur of Spanish floating in through the hotel w
- Writer
