“I know,” he breathes. “I love you too.”
“I know.”
CHAPTER 25
Christian
Lana is sprawled out on top of me when I wake up. Her hair is somewhat in my face, her face is squished against my pec, her arm is on my cheek, and she’s full starfish.
Just how I always woke up with her before.
She always swore she didn’t move in her sleep and that it was me, but obviously that isn’t true.
I kiss her once, but it’s enough to make her stir with a soft moan. Lana adjusts her position, removing her arm from my face, but doesn’t get off of me. “Hi,” she rasps and kisses the center of my chest.
“Hi.”
She moans happily, smiling with her eyes closed—her dimples just for me. I press my thumb into one of them and her smile widens. “I missed that.”
“I love you,” I say, just for the sake of saying it. To say it out loud and know she hears me, and to know that I’m not just talking or thinking to myself.
“I know,” Lana breathes. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
She rolls off of me now and there’s a weight in my chest that wasn’t there before.
“Don’t think I forgot, Christian,” she says gently.
“I didn’t.” I shake my head. “I just…don’t really know how to talk about it.”
“It’s me,” Lana whispers, nestling into my side with her hand on my cheek. She throws her leg over my hip and I hold onto her thigh. “It’s me, Christian.”
I swallow and nod. “I know, baby.”
“I would never judge you, and I can never hate you.”
“I know,” I rasp. “It was just…a mistake.”
Lana nods, telling me to take my time.
“We were just all… It was a party. I made friends who weren’t friends and they just…enabled me.” I turn onto my back and rub my hand over my chest. But Lana moves it aside and puts her hand on my heart. “I’d started experimenting, if that’s what you want to call it. I was always drunk, always high. And that night, I don’t know. I just over did it. These girls that were there… One of them had been trailing after me for a bit, flirting because I was one of the thirty under thirty. Then she saw an opportunity to take advantage of me… I don’t remember much of that. I just remember pushing her off me and leaving her on the couch to go to the bathroom because I was thinking of you.”
And I left to get higher.
With every girl, I imagined Lana’s face, even said her names a couple of times and got slapped for it. But when I didn’t, I just pictured her. Then it would end and I’d blink, wake up from the sex haze, and it wasn’t her. It was never going to be her.
I don’t know why I kept doing it, I think back on it a lotand I hate it. I hate myself for it. I can’t tell her that though—not today, not this morning.
“Christian…”
“I was just trying to get over you—I thought I could. I wanted to forget about this town and my dad. I hated the company, I didn’t want it. I hated my mother for putting me in that position when she could have just taken over herself.”
She reaches up and kisses my jaw before burrowing her face in my neck.
“Nothing I did worked, obviously. I couldn’t get you out of my head, no matter what I did. But, I guess that night, I was just so angry about it because all I saw was you. There were a lot of people there, people I didn’t even know but somehow they knew me. They had all the stuff, stronger things no one had until they got there. The guys brought all these pills and…and one of them was cutting lines for everyone. And I did them. Almost all of them. Or all of it, I don’t remember.”
I pause for a moment, my body prickling with shame as I talk about it. But as Lana holds me tighter, that shame dissipates some, overthrown by her love for me. I try to finish what I have to say, searching for the words even though I can hear Lana’s quiet cries.
“I don’t remember all of what happened. I don’t even remember what I took. I don’t think I knew what it was when I was doing it. It was a bad night, Lana. I was with…this girl.” I grimace, disgusted with myself. “I was drinking and taking whatever was put in front of me. I…”
