“What does it feel like?” she whispered into his chest.
“Hmm?” he said as he rubbed small circles into her back.
Her breath was already slowing, finding an even pace of ins and outs. He could feel her chest rising. Her body curled into him so close he could not only feel her breathing, but he, with an unexplainable certainty, was somehow sure that he could also feel each individual heartbeat which set her breath into motion.
Sarah Jane looked up. Her big brown eyes still half closed, sleep had almost overtaken her. She mustered up her strength. Joe could feel her butterfly heartbeat grant her a deep breath. She looked firmly into his eyes. She did not speak for a long while, but instead, simply stared. Joe, at this point, found himself slightly uneasy in the way one does when they are being accused of a crime they know they’ve committed. Joe felt accused under her gaze, and, in a way, he couldn’t quite explain he wanted to apologize. He wanted to hold her porcelain face in his fumbling fingers and beg for forgiveness. He wanted to dampen her curls with his wet tears. He wanted more than all of it though to make it right. Or he would if he knew what he was making right.
Sarah Jane coughed, her back bending over, the spasms shaking her tiny frame. Joe rubbed circles into her back again, slightly harder this time, in his state of concern, as he pulled her closer to him, letting her bury her face in his shirt.
When Sarah Jane finished coughing, and Joe felt each of her heartbeats go back to their regular rhythm, he asked her again what she meant.
She lifted her face from his shirt, a dead stare in her brown eyes.
“What does it feel like to deserve everything?”
Joe took a long time answering. Sarah Jane’s head once again dropped onto his chest, her soft rhythmic breathing echoing into the night. When he had thought long enough he looked back at Sarah Jane. Her dark curls lay aglow in dappled starlight from the window, and the moon cast its soft slender shadow over her sleeping face. She was still sleeping when Joe whispered his answer into her hair, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“It feels like a lie.”