Esha had to touch him. She cupped his jaw. Until now, when she touched him, all she’d been able to think about was how she couldn’t feel anything other than the physical textures on her hands. Now she felt something else. A tug deep inside. A sensation she remembered experiencing a long time ago, before she’d learned to push away every feeling. A real feeling that belonged to her and her alone.

He pressed his hand over hers, a greedy pressure, sandwiching her hand between his palm and his skin. She could tell that he felt the tug too and he wanted more of it.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” she asked.

The smile on his face shone like the sunlight that was bathing them from all sides. “Our mother loved to make a big deal of our birthdays and I just never felt like telling her that it really wasn’t mine.”

“I’m so glad your headmistress picked that birthday for you. But it seems to me that it was luckiest for your mother.” And for Esha. He wouldn’t have been here if his mother hadn’t found him.

“My mother would agree with you.” His voice was barely a whisper. “Do you always know the exact right thing to say? The exact thing people want to hear?”

She pulled her hand away, suddenly needing to move. “Is that what I did?”

He took her hand again as though he wasn’t ready for them to not be touching. “I didn’t mean on purpose. I meant it’s a skill to say the right thing. A skill I’ve never had. I don’t do well with words. I . . . I’ve never told any of this to anyone.”

Why did he keep repeating that? Esha’s heart stuttered in the ugliest way. Was this a new form of her oddity? Instead of feeling someone’s feelings, they just felt compelled to tell them to her? To pour out their secrets to her?

Pulling away from him, she went to the rattan couch and dropped into it and hugged her knees to her chest. He came to her and squatted down in front of her, brows drawn together. He was wearing those calf-length pocketed pants again. She’d never seen any other man wear anything like that. Even though her exposure to men was restricted to her cousins and their significant others, something made her certain it was not a thing many men wore or carried off like this.

“What did I say?” he asked, in that way he had of speaking to her that landed somewhere between feeling like he’d known her forever and feeling like he didn’t know a single thing about her but wanted to. As badly as she wanted to know about him.