him to take his hand away and never touch me again.
“It should have brought us closer.”
He was right, of course. If only the circumstances had been different.
“We should have been there for each other,” he continued. “We needed it. I needed you.”
I knew he did. I’d heard it in his voice when he stood outside my front door and begged me to come out. I’d seen it in his face when he waited in the hallway outside my classes. I’d felt it in his touch when he cornered me in the alley, gripped my shoulders, and pleaded with me to talk to him.
“I need time to heal,” I had said.
More lies.
Lies I wish I could take back.
“I know.” It was too painful to meet his eyes, so I kept them on the ground.
“Why did it have to happen that night?”
It was a question I had asked myself so many times before.
“The same night I finally got to taste you,” he continued. “Had it happened any night after, you wouldn’t have slipped away so easily.”
Easily?
Breathe for me.
He thought my decision to run was an easy one to make? That it was even a decision at all? That it hadn’t eaten at me then and every day since? That his eyes didn’t remind me of all the years I’d lost, years I’d never get back, years where I could have had everything I wanted?
“I never planned on letting you go, Kyle.”
I looked up slowly, my arms squeezing my stomach. My knees were shaking. I knew my chest would be next, that my breathing would only get worse.
“I was going to bring you to Vegas with me, get you into college out there, and take care of you. I was going to love you.” He turned me to face him. “Fuck, Kyle, I did love you.”
“Stop.” I tried to move around him, but he wouldn’t let me. I needed to find air. I needed to forget the words he had just spoken. I needed to get the hell out of here. “I can’t listen to this.”
“Why?”
“It hurts too much.”
His hands were on my arms, so I rolled my shoulders to wiggle out of his grip. It didn’t work. He only clamped down tighter.
“Tell me why it hurts.” I didn’t answer, so he lifted my chin until I looked him in the eyes. “Tell me.”
“Because I wish I could rewind the past. I wish things had gone down differently. I wish we’d never lost Paulie, and things hadn’t changed between the three of us. And…” I was telling him the obvious. What I wasn’t telling him was my feelings. There was no reason to hide them anymore. “I cared about you so much. More than you’re supposed to care about your best friend. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to give you everything. My heart, my body. All of me. And I threw it all away—our relationship, moving with you, caring for you.”
My lips were soaked from the tears that I didn’t know had been falling. I tried to move again, but he stopped me. He wasn’t going to let me go until I got it all out even though there was so much that would never come out.
“When you kissed me at the bar, all of those memories resurfaced, and the guilt slapped me right in the face.”
His bruised eyelids narrowed. His mouth stayed still. His expression hadn’t changed at all. I didn’t know if I had scared him or given him the answer he’d wanted to hear. The unknown was as terrifying as what was waiting for me outside this cell.
But there was more. The biggest part of all this was resting on my tongue. He had to hear it. He had to know. It was the most honest I would ever be with him.
“I’ve loved you since I was a kid,” I said. “And I still do.”
Fourteen
Kyle
I waited for him to speak; he said nothing. I waited for him to step toward me; he didn’t. I waited for his face to give me some sort of reaction; it remained still.
Seconds passed. Then, suddenly, my body was pressed against his. I didn’t feel the movement. I didn’t see the room flash before me. I didn’t even have a chance to take a breath. But, now, I was resting on the far wall of the cell, our mouths locked, his tongue swirling around mine.
The air I inhaled smelled of him. The saliva that ran down my throat tasted of him. That