"Sadie," he breathes aloud in a soft gust of breath that grazes over his hands where they cover his own face. He can hardly bear to face it, for there is no doubt as to who the memory has come from. He can feel her in every inch of the recollection, from the wave of happiness and optimism and cheek that permeates everything, to the way that his own image smirks back at him from a blackjack table. Jonah is momentarily floored, because there are these strange thoughts of causing trouble and craving danger and absorbing adrenaline that are so similar to his own usual preoccupations, and it all throws him for a loop and he finds himself with a strangely familiar longing that reverberates deep in his chest. Under his ribs. Around his heart.
All of a sudden Jonah's phone buzzes with the hot anger of a thousand bees and flashes a message across the screen.
don't be afraid
The girlie knows you practically better than you know yourself, hums a quiet, dangerous man. Jonah remembers the night almost as well as he remembers the night of the accident, so vivid and heady and horrifying is his memory. Horrifying, because never before had Jonah needed to face the sort of grace and purity that Sadie had plucked out of the nighttime air. He longs to reach out and grasp her hand and trace the curve of her cheek and it kills him that he can't, and for a long moment he wonders - before he is left gasping by the retreating memory and is unceremoniously thrust into the next one.