We’ve been the least intimate but sometimes, I feel like he’s the most. His touch is low-key disturbing to my psyche. I feel it everywhere, mentally and physically. I’ve never felt devotion so dedicated to someone who’s barely said shit-all to me as I do with Ozzy.
He says nothing but everything at the same time.
This shit is psychotic and fuckin’ weird.
“You never chose me,” I emit tersely. “Understand?”
“No.”
“No,you,no. I’m not going to get?—”
“You’re my wife.”
It’s the first time he’s ever acknowledged it, and my body suddenly melts into molten lava.
Wife.
I wonder how much he thinks about that. If it means as much to him as the word does to other people who chose it.
I turn my face to the side, trying to escape his hold, but Ozzy only tightens it, causing his whole body to go taut and unstable with each exhale.
He can’t contain me for much longer, stretching his mind to be this close to me, but I can’t say I don’t love it. I can see the physical effects it has on him, so I can only imagine the mental.
Raising my palm between us, I give him an out. Something he’s more comfortable with. Ozzy immediately drops his hold from my face and presses his palm firmly against mine while putting some space between us.
“I want you safe,” I convey through the thick emotions of everything from tonight threatening to choke me alive. “From anyone and everything that comes my way. And the method to do that is to push you away. I want you to find something else to occupy your time.”
He blinks once, listening and possibly waiting for more.
The thing is, I know what I’m about to venture on. My path has already been laid out for me.
“I’m not going to be here much longer.” His brows slowly pinch together through my vagueness, but I desperately need him to hear this. Because I might not get another chance to tell him how I feel. How his existence means something to me, since it doesn’t seem like anyone else besides the boys has given a fuck about him. “When I make my move on Matteo…” Tears burn the backs of my eyes, because if it weren’t for me dating my ex, I wouldn’t know who he was. He wouldn’t have killed my best friend. I wouldn’t be standing here with my heart fractured into a million pieces. “When I go after him…I have a really good feeling that I’m either not going to be walking away, or I’m going to be severely traumatized.”
His palm presses harder into mine to reassure me of something, but the next word he says doesn’t. “Torin.”
Oh, God, no.
I blow out a long exhale through my lips, preparing myself forhim.
Pretty Boy.
God, no more. I can’t do any more tonight.
“Please,” I utter through some shakiness of my breath. “For the love of God…tell me, he’s fine.”
Ozzy nods, and I’m grateful for that.
“Bay…I’m sorry.”
I focus on the gentleness of his tone. Not the fact that I’m going to have to face people in a few days and express that I appreciate them coming to support Levi in death.
To celebrate his life when he shouldn’t be gone in the first place.
“Shoreline Peaks.”
My eyebrows crash together in confusion. That’s Matteo’s stomping grounds.
I continue to stare up at Ozzy and can’t fathom why he’d mention that right now. I know where he’s from and where that prick stays.
