Page 80 of People Like Us

I blinked. “I know that.”

He winced immediately and I sighed. “I don’t mean—I don’t mean it’s obvious.” I softened a little. “My mother has OCD too. I recognize it because of her.”

That made him look back at me.

“It’s not that I don’t want to touch you,” he admitted quietly. “God, I want to.” Heat curled low in my stomach despite everything.

“Then what?”

He struggled for the words, fingers flexing restlessly inside his jacket pockets.

“My brain…” He laughed weakly. “It does this thing after.” He swallowed hard. “I get scared.”

“Of me?”

“No.” Immediate. Fierce. “Never you.”

I guessed softly, “Do you feel dirty afterward?”

His eyes snapped to mine. He hesitated. And somehow that hesitation hurt him more than it hurt me.

“I won’t be offended if you say yes,” I said quietly. “I know that wouldn’t actually be about me.”

August looked miserable trying to explain himself.

“It’s not… sex doesn’t gross me out.” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “It’s just…” His voice cracked slightly. “I’m scared I’ll ruin you.”

The confession hollowed something out inside my chest. Because suddenly everything made sense.

Every careful withdrawal. Every stretch of distance afterward. Every tense expression when he looked at me too long. Why he didn’t care if I had a boyfriend—why he cared if I enjoyed myself with Andy.

August thought he was poisonous somehow.

I stepped closer before I even realized I was moving. “How could you possibly ruin me, August?” my voice broke around the words.

He shrugged helplessly, eyes glassy beneath the alley light. “Because I have this terrible thing inside me.” His voice dropped lower as he pressed a hand to the center of his chest. “And if I let you get too close then maybe it’ll make your life worse too.”

The ache that hit me then felt almost maternal. Painfully tender. Slowly, carefully, I reached for his hand. He froze the second our fingers touched.

“There is not a single part of you,” I said softly, “that could ever make my life worse.” His breathing caught as he looked at me with a silent plea.

“You cannot hurt me. Or contaminate me. Or curse me, August Brooks.”

The words felt old somehow as I spoke them. Like something pulled from childhood memories I usually tried not to touch. I suddenly recalled sitting outside my parents’ bedroom as a little girl listening to my father soothe my mother through one of her spirals, his voice low and exhausted through the thin trailer walls.

“You cannot hurt her. Or contaminate her. Or curse her. She is better because you are her mother.”

“You are so good, and I am better for knowing you.” I said softly to him.

August’s eyes filled immediately. “Honest?” he whispered.

I nodded slowly. “You only get me honest.”

Chapter Thirty-One

The trees behind our trailer park had gone nearly bare with October, their remaining leaves crisp as old paper beneath my heels while my stepmother fussed with the camera. The little clearing beside the woods always smelled faintly of damp earth from the river and rusted metal from the abandoned factory nearby. That night the cold air carried the sweet burn of someone’s bonfire smoke drifting low through the pines. It clung to the hem of my dress as I stood still beneath the branches, Andy’s hand spread warm against my side.

The dress had taken me three weeks to finish. Green and gold jacquard curtains I’d found at a thrift store in Salisbury for four dollars, thick enough to hold shape like something expensive, heavy duty zip ties in place of boning in the bodice. Under the dying evening light the fabric caught bronze at the seams, vines woven into the material curling around my waist and down the flare of the skirt. Andy’s tie matched it exactly, though he’d complained the whole time I stitched the thing into place because he said it made him look like a couch cushion.