White tape is wrapped around his torso.
He’s not moving.Not in the cocky, wired way he usually does.
He looks broken, as if hollowed out by pain alone.
Even so, he’s beautiful in a rough, broken way.
The boy who doesn’t bleed just for show.
He keeps bleeding because he doesn’t know how to stop.
And I don’t believe anyone has ever told him he doesn’t have to.
My chest hurts as I watch him.
I almost turn around, almost let him have this—the quiet, the hurt, the mess.But he lifts his head before I can move, looking right at me.
“Red,” he says.It’s not sharp, smug, or loaded with that usual fire he throws at me when we’re mid-argument, mid-flirt, mid-whatever the fuck we are.It’s quiet.Hoarse.Honest.My name stripped bare on his tongue.
I move toward him before I can talk myself out of it.My footsteps are loud in the silence, but my heart is louder.
“Are you okay?”I ask, even though I already know the answer.It comes out softer than I want.Stupid and small.But that’s all I’ve got.
“I will be,” he says.
I sit down on the bench next to him, close enough that our knees brush.The shock that runs through me is immediate.Electric.Bone-deep.He notices.His breath shifts as his eyes drift down to my mouth before slowly going back up.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he mutters.
“I know.”
“Don’t tell me the good girl’s finally breaking the rules.”
I smirk, heat rising in my throat.“Guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
A breath of laughter escapes him, but it twists into a wince halfway through.Pain flashes across his face, and I move instinctively.My fingers brush his arm gently.Flesh on flesh.
He stiffens.Every inch of him tenses up, as if I’ve short-circuited something inside him.
Neither of us speaks.
His fingers graze my jaw, gentle enough to undo me, rough enough to remind me why I want him.There’s a tremor in his hand that matches the one low in my stomach.That same ache I thought I had buried after the last time.The same one that left me ruined for anyone but him.
My breath catches on it.
His eyes darken at the sound, and for a moment, neither of us moves.We sit there, suspended in this charged space between memory and what still lingers.
Then he speaks.
“You’re beautiful, Red.”
This isn’t a typical line from him.There’s no smirk, no play behind it.Just truth.
My throat swells, and I have to swallow the lump before I speak.
“Even when I’m pissed at you?”I ask, trying to pull us back into safer territory.
His mouth quirks, pain flickering behind it.“Especially then.”
