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Setting his mug on the counter, Jordan looked into my eyes. “We can’t let this be the end, Asher.”
“What else do you think we can do?” I snapped. “Slap your grandma’s face? Kick my grandpa in the balls? We fucked up, Jordan. We knew this would happen and we still did it.” We deserve this, I thought. Even looking at him brought on more pain. He was beautiful. Few people were that beautiful. Sometimes, you’d meet a handsome guy, and he would open his mouth, and his beauty would fade the longer you listened to his bullshit. It was such a rare thing to spend years watching someone grow more attractive every time you saw them, only to find the connection transcended his looks. It was his beautiful mind and heart and soul that I admired. And missed already.
“Don’t do that,” Jordan said. The hurt in his voice ripped me to shreds, but I gripped the edge of the counter and remained still. “Don’t make it sound like it’s our fault.”
“But it is,” I said. “And I can’t look at you without thinking that.”
He took an abrupt step back as if I’d swung a knife at him. “You don’t mean that.”
“What do you know?” The words squeezed through my teeth in the last ditch effort to break out of this circle of misery. I didn’t want to have this conversation. I didn’t want to have to look at him and see all I’d lost. I didn’t want to remind myself that, deep down, I knew I wouldn’t have done anything differently. But what chance did we have anymore? If we spent the rest of our lives together without ever fighting, ever giving one another an annoyed look, we would still carry this morning’s burden on our shoulders.
What had happened in this house today was impossible to change. It would forever remain between us and even the strongest relationship couldn’t carry that weight. Ours had never been a steady relationship that exemplified strength. Ours had been a willful, fiery one.
Jordan’s face was awash with various emotions. He was angry, I knew that, but he was just as hurt.
When he nodded, something more went out of him. It wasn’t just his eyes. His muscles tensed in his face as if to bottle up whatever else he felt, and he turned away from me, leaving his coffee where it was.
“Jordan,” I whispered.
He walked on. “Leave me alone, Asher.”
I deserved that too.
And I would respect his need for privacy because that was pretty much the best either of us could do. We were both very experienced in the art of pretending we didn’t know each other. When we return to Northwood, we would act no different than we had the entire last year.
I left the kitchen and returned to my room, piling my stuff into the backpack and duffel without any care for my clothes. Let them wrinkle. Let them tear. I didn’t care about anything at all. I was beyond caring. My heart now beat only to keep me alive, and I was indifferent to that, as well.
Jordan had walked out instead of returning to his room. So when the car I had called arrived, he wasn’t there to see me and make things harder than they had to be.
I stuck my pair of black sunglasses on my face and dragged my shit outside. The driver got out to help me load my luggage into the car, then took a hint and drove silently while I stared out the window. The nature around us slowly flattened. Mountains receded behind us as he drove me into the city. From there, I would book the next flight back to Northwood. Once I was in my room, I would let myself think about what to do next.
Until then, I shut my eyes, held my breath, and accepted that everything I had ever held dear was gone from my life.
SEVENTEEN
Jordan
My wet clothes didn’t bother me. The drizzle soaked them through while I stood still on the edge of the pier. The storm had passed, leaving torn leaves and flattened grass in its wake, but no real damage. The tree behind the house was a freak accident, all in all, and its brief fire was put out by the immense rainfall almost immediately.
Another storm, with far more consequences, had played out inside the house, and my head hurt because of it.
Even as I walked at a grueling pace back to the house, the pain throbbed in my skull. I was tired of this day. I was tired of this life. The anger that ran through me felt like someone had injected fire into my veins. My muscles were bulging threateningly even when I stood all alone.
Yet I could only be angry with myself.
Had I not left my own door unlocked, I could have hidden in his room. Had I done so, Asher could have distracted them. But I had only sat there like a fool, naked, dazed, waiting for my life to fall apart.
If I walked back further, it was still all my fault. Had I not taken the lead, Asher and I would still live in that sweet torture of longing after the impossible. Had I not made him wrestle me in the grass, I never would have discovered his desperate attraction to me.
My whole life, I had done all the right things. When they made me live with a gorgeous guy whose sulky face turned me on without failing, I killed my ability to feel anything for him. When they sent him to Northwood after me, I juggled my forced apathy with the need to watch over him. We had a good thing going on. Why the hell had I imagined a drunken kiss was a smarter idea than doing what had been working just fine for years?
You were alive, the wind whispered in my ears.
Was being alive worth the pain that followed? Asher couldn’t look at me without remembering the price we had paid. Dad was still a mystery and I expected an unbearable conversation with him when he returned.
Eileen was a problem I didn’t even think about. I couldn’t. The entirety of this morning was too absurd for my mind to process. Grooming? Had that been what she’d tried to say? We’d both been kids and I hadn’t put a finger on my stepbrother until this summer. I had barely spoken to him. I had made him feel unimportant precisely because he was my biggest weakness and the most important thing in my life.
My fists tightened. My heart sank.
