makes me come once again. I don’t even know what number orgasm this is. I’ve lost count.
As Zach shudders inside me with his own climax, I realize that I also lost the secret I wanted to tell him. I can’t remember what it was.
A second later though, I can’t think of anything except going to sleep.
Even though I don’t remember falling asleep, I jerk awake in the middle of the night.
I’m in Zach’s bed, naked and feeling like a noodle, lumpy. The room’s dark, the only light from the bathroom.
There’s a sheet over me, courtesy of Zach, I think. But he’s not by my side.
I look around and find him in his armchair by the big glass window. The night’s dark with bright stars and I guess it’s way past midnight.
“Hey,” I whisper, sitting up and clutching the sheet at my breasts. I can still feel him between my legs, him and his body.
Zach’s naked too, the muscles silhouetted by the silver moonlight. His thighs are wide, and his elbows are resting on them as his gaze rests on me.
Actually, no.
His gaze isn’t resting. There’s turbulence in it, a strange intensity that shines brighter in the near-darkness.
“You love me,” he says.
My languid, warm, thoroughly-fucked body feels cold at his words. Cold and dead and numb.
“What?”
“You. Love me,” he repeats. Like, he’s trying to taste the words in his mouth, roll them around between his teeth and tongue.
What comes out is not something he likes.
His frame gets angrier. His elbows dig even harder in his thighs.
I feel like a criminal, the way he’s watching me. Someone who’s committed a crime.
I don’t know where I get the courage from but I raise my chin and fist the sheet on my chest, nodding. “Yes.”
I swear I can hear the gnashing of his teeth. I can hear the grind. The angry rush of his blood.
“Since when?”
My heart should be racing right about now. I should be panicky. I should be trying to salvage this. But after the initial icy blast of shock, all I feel is relief.
He knows now.
It’s out there. My horrible secret, or at least one of them, is out of my system.
“Since forever,” I reply. “Probably since the first day I saw you.”
I watch the impact of my words on his body. A deep breath. Flaring nostrils. The tautness of his veins and clench of his muscles.
Before he can grill me some more, I ask, “How’d you know?”
“You’re not very good at hiding things.”
That’s when I realize that I might have said it out loud. The thought that made me climax and lulled me into sleep.
God, I’m stupid.
“Actually, I’m pretty good at hiding. It’s just you I can’t hide from.”
“And isn’t that the real fucking tragedy?”
My sinuses sting.
Yeah, this is a tragedy. It always was. Knowing that doesn’t make it easier to live through, though.
“What about the second day?” he asks, all calm-like.
But I know it’s all a lie. He’s seething inside, getting ready to blow up.
“Second day of what?”
“When I destroyed your notebook? Did you love me then, too?”
“I –”
“Or the third day, when I asked one of my friends to trip you on your way to class? Or the fourth? And the fifth? Did you love me through the years of humiliation and pranks I pulled on you? All the times I could’ve saved you with just one flick of a hand and I didn’t. How much did you love me then? What about when I ruined your prom, huh? You loved me that night when you came here to give me a piece of your mind? Was that love when you told me how much you hated me and how I made you worse every day? A worse version of yourself?”
I thought I could be unaffected through this. I could go out with dignity as he interrogates me and not cry once.
But I’m already spilling tears.
They’re streaming down my cheeks, silent but ever-flowing and Zach’s watching me without a twitch on his face.
“I… did.” I nod in reply. “I did love you through all of that. I didn’t know it back then, but I loved you. Every time you or your friends pulled something on me, it hurt me. It made me angry. I used to cry a lot. I used to plot revenge. And I thought it was because I hated you. But it was because I loved you and the guy I loved was incapable of loving me back. So yeah, I did love you through