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“I want you here.”
Her hand freezes on the handle, and for a moment, she just stares.
I didn’t mean to be so blunt, but there it is, and my response has nothing to do with my injuries.
In truth, she’s the last person I want to see me like this, all busted up and weak, yet somehow, at the same time, the reality of my situation is a little less devastating when mixed with her presence. Like maybe my entire worlddidn’tcome crashing down and maybe thisisn’tthe end of it all. Sitting in that hospital, I felt like my entire life had fallen apart. It was all I could think about on the trip back to Oceanside, how things might have changed for me forever.
That I’d lost everything I worked for, my future included.
Then there she was with big blue eyes and the softest fucking touch I’ve ever felt. She sat beside me and smiled, and everything else fell away because it was a real smile. One without all the pain I’ve watched her carry the last several months.
I knew right then I not only wanted her to stay, but I needed her to. I just didn’t know if I could say that to her, so when exhaustion hit and the pain doubled, I used it as an excuse to go into another room. I would have rested on the couch next to her, but I didn’t want to have to watch her walk out.
Yet here she is, still here hours later, and she’s not asking if she can stay.
She’s telling me she’s going to.
A ripple rolls through me, realization breaking through the last layer of fog in my mind.
There’s no moremaybe.
No moreI might.
All that’s left is I am.
Because Iamcompletely fucking gone on this girl.
I don’t know how it happened, and I don’t care when.
All I know is she snuck up on me, and I’m not mad about it.
Someone’s shouts intrude from outside the cracked-open door, and the moment is broken.
Payton slips onto the back patio, and I drop my head back with a huff.
The minute I’m alone, it’s like the light she brought left with her. All the negative thoughts come rolling back, coiling around my limbs like a snake has snatched me as its prey.
Fangs forge their way into my lungs, and I gasp. I blink, but the haze won’t clear, my heart now working overtime, threatening to tear through my rib cage. I try to swallow, but knots form in my chest, panic threatening to suffocate me where I sit.
I’m an athlete who can’t play. A student who can’t go to school. A man who can’t protect.
I’m completely. Fucking. Useless.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Payton
Now,September
Pressure fallsheavy on my chest, and I reach up as if rubbing the ache away was a possibility. It isn’t. I should think pain is something I would be used to by now, and maybe in some ways, I am. I am in the sense that I know when I open my eyes in the morning, pain is quick to follow whatever sensation I wake to, and when I lie down at night, pain is the last thing I remember.
Sometimes it’s a hollowness that seems never ending, one that grows, chipping away at the density of my bones, leaving me brittle. Other times it’s like an avalanche, and I go tumbling, buried under mounds and mounds of pressure.
Then there are the times when it’s but a tangled web in my mind, memories and moments spun into fear and fate. I’mcaught in a loop ofdamned if I do, damned if I don’t, and I don’t know how to get out of it.
I don’t know what’s right and wrong, and lately, I wonder if I even care.
I should, but do I actually? Or is it some sort of societal ideal that frowns on falling for someone new so soon after losing the person you promised yourself to that has me messed up?
