May
“Is it true you covered my tab with the apartment and the tenants, and that’s why I’m not getting sued to hell and back?” The question rolled lazily off my tongue, but that wasexactlywhat Oran would do, and he didn’t hesitate to nod absently. Crawling to sprawl across his lap, I pursed my lips thinly as I stared up at him, and his fingers burrowed in my hair to rub my scalp gingerly. Today hadn’t been too bad, my freak out in the women’s changing room at Ruffle’s aside, and I reached to take off his glasses before speaking up.Best Oran can’t see the embarrassment on my face. “I was wonder . . . hoping, really . . . that I could ask for a favor. I promise, I won’t make a habit of it, and I’ll pay you back once my business takes off-“
“Whatever it is, May, I’ll do it. No hesitation.” My lips quirked up as my cheeks flamed, and discomfort tightened my chest at Oran’s absolute determination. His eyes found my face, and I wasreallyglad I’d taken his glasses off as I licked my lips nervously.
“Would you mind helping me put a down payment on a house? I have the bonus that you gave me during the audit, but I don’t want to be stuck with a massive mortgage.” Oran’s eyes narrowed, but I knew he still couldn’t see me, and I gulped harshly as fire engulfed my entire head. “I hate asking, but since we’re already essentially homeless, I figured why not. Apartments are cheaper than mortgages, but I have way more than just the twenty percent.”
“Are you asking me to move in with you, May?” His tone was so tender that I nodded stupidly, and Oran smirked lightly as he scratched my crown gingerly. “Sure, I would love to. What happened to creeping on apartments?”
For a long moment, I didn’t answer as firecrackers danced in ecstasy in my rib cage, and I rolled over to bury my face in Oran’s hard abs. The smell of him flooded my brain, and he caressed my face and neck as I wrapped my arms around his waist. In this scant few seconds of the day, things were justperfect, and my life wasn’t falling apart at the seams.
“I’m falling in love with you.” My eyelids fluttered closed as a huge weight I didn’t know I carried lifted from my chest, and Oran tensed at my murmur. Hugging him tighter as his hand froze on my cheek, I nuzzled his taut muscles through his shirt with a sigh. Seconds ticked by slowly before he palmed my cheek and took a deep breath, and colors popped behind my lids.
“May.” Oran’s smile shone in his voice, and he stroked my cheek with his thumb as he relaxed against my forehead. “I was caught the moment we met when you hunted me down on the sidewalk. You’re the highlight of my day, but there’s something I should confess.”
That familiar lilt in his tone gyrated painfully against my ears, and I stilled as Oran threaded his fingers through my hair. Oran went quiet, as if he was working up the courage to just say it and be over with whateveritwas. Anxiety flooded my veins- what he was married or something? What if he confessed something I couldn’t get over?
What if heliedat some point about something unforgivable?
“I never saw a future with Kara. She came to me for protection, and I protected her. I’ve been in a few relationships in my life, but none of them were true, truly pleasurable just being what they were. Kara was different, worse, I suppose, because she was innocent. She’d told me on several occasions that Roquelle was bad news, but I was the one who didn’t listen.” Holding my breath, my heart thundered against the bars of its cage as I waited for the ball to drop. I already knew all of this, but Oran took a shuddering breath in preparation. His palm on my cheek was cold and clammy, and blood drummed in my ears, muted by his voice when he continued. “I couldn’t protect her from the worst threat— me. It was the most devastating event I’ve ever caused. All because, when it was said and done, I had two options— Kara could suffer cripplingly for the rest of her life or it could be quick and gentle. She didn’t say it out loud, but it was the merciful thing to do. I strangled her with my own two hands.”
My heart almost stopped completely at the grave confession, and Oran’s palms left me cold and confused and, honestly, kinda scared. So shocked, my mind couldn’t even conjure questions, force my muscles to recoil, make me scream and run out, and he flung his head back against the sofa with a noticeablethumpwhen it hit the wooden support.
“She wouldn’t have lived long, anyway— a week or two at most— what was I supposed to do? I let that happen, and she was going to keep suffering for it? When I could just . . . just end it? Kara and I had been together so long that I j-just couldn’t . . . ” His voice crackled harshly, and my lungs screamed for air as flames shriveled and burned me up inside. “If I had listened to her about Roquelle, Kara and her friends would still be alive. I betrayed her trust. Everything I did up until that point, it was all for nothing. In the end, she ended up just like she would’ve with her husband. And I looked into her eyes as I wrapped my hands around her neck, and she . . . she was s-sohappy.”
Oran, this force that seemed so rock solid, trailed off with a croak, and I cracked an eye open as my brain puttered into action. I didn’t dare look at his face, and he turned away from me when I sat up to straddle his waist. His apartment faded into white, and I hugged him to bury my face deep in the crook of his neck. The furiousness of his pulse beat against my forehead, and his breath shuddered against my chest as his heat seared through his shirt and mine.
“How could I have been so ignorant? Why wasn’t she angry? Why didn’t she fight? She was just happy . . . happy that it was me. How?” Oran’s jaw ticked wildly against my temple, and the fine hairs on my face bristled painfully when something wet dripped onto my cheek. “How could I tell her I was sorry . . . when I wasn’t? I was so, so,so angryat myself for being such a pompous dick that I . . . I ignored someone whose opinion should’ve mattered. I didn’t have the room to feel bad for her when I felt so disgusting about myself.”
He shook his head, reaching over my arms to wipe his face with a massive bluster of a sigh, and Oran sunk deep into the sofa. When it became clear he was done talking, I tried to get my mind organized, but nowhere in the dense fog did my groping reveal horror. Of course, it was ahorribleevent, but I personally didn’t relate. Obviously, Oran was so damn torn up about what happened, and his Adam’s apple bobbed sharply before he suddenly spoke up again.
“My therapist asked me a few weeks ago why I talk like my problems aren’tmyproblems. And I think that’s because I’m not the same man that I was when that happened. In that moment, watching Kara’s eyes go red and her face and feeling that . . . her . . . ” His chest stuttered as he cut himself off, and he inhaled a ragged breath, as if trying to use air to hold down his sobs. My heart ached for him, and I tightened my grip on him as his arms fell on either side of me. “I stopped being that person. I don’t want to be that person. I killed that person when I killed Roquelle. But it haunts me, May, and there’s times when I’m so, so,so ashamed.”
“That’s the important thing, Oran.” My voice scratched my throat painfully, and tears pricked my eyes as I squeezed him between my knees. Slithering my arms under his head, I held the back of Oran’s head and ran my hands through his hair soothingly, and his own crept up my back to lock me against him. “You’re ashamed. That means something to me.”
“You should run and not look back.” Even as he said that, Oran’s grip on me turned to iron, stiff and unyielding, and I arched to press flush against him. Even through our clothes, he was so hot, and I shook my head as words failed me. “I could kill you, too. You should run away.”
The strangest, most calming sensation possible flooded every nerve in my body at that when any sane girl would high tail it out of here. Oran wasn’t telling me this as a warning, no matter what he said, and I couldn’t take it as one. He wasn’t telling me to expose how awful he was, how many red flags he owned, or trying to drive me away.
No . . . he was trying to draw me closer the only way he knew how.Oran was sharing with me the most traumatic experience of his life, telling me things he didn’t even tell his therapist, I’d bet. He was laying it all bare and giving me the choice, the reasons I should leave him. If he could kill someone else, he could kill me, too.
“No, you can’t, Oran.” The assuredness with which I spoke, the absolute rock-solid certainty in my tone, was his breaking point, and Oran quietly began to cry as my heart tore to shreds.
