Kai’s back bows, his head falling into his hands, elbows on his knees. It muffles his sobs, but seems to intensify the shaking in his body.
I cringe away, horrified that I’m still skulking in the dark, witnessing such a private moment. Every sob is an emotional gut punch. Soon, my eyes are brimming with secondhand despair.
I don’t dare move.
Don’t dare announce that I’m here.
What the hell was I thinking?
I want to scream at myself for just sitting next to him while he crumbles into pieces. What the hell was I thinking? I jerked off to my best friendwhile he was shattering.Who does that?
Ten, maybe fifteen minutes later, those awful sounds taper off. Kai sniffs, drags his hand over his face, and slowly collapses onto his side. Slowly, with his back to me, he curls into a fetal position, shudders, and passes out.
I want to go. Desperately so.
But I can’t leave him after what I just saw.
I don’t know what the fuck he’s going through, and he might not know I’m here, but maybe…maybe there is.
Like how I always knew when he’d follow me home from school. The first few times it happened, it made me mad he thought I couldn’t look after myself. But the shortest route home was also the dodgiest, and more than once I regretted turning down that alley between the factories.
Looking back, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t still be around if Kai hadn’t made sure I got home safe.
So I’m staying. Watching. Making sure he’s safe, just how he made sure I was safe.
I’m so tired, so drained, that it only takes a few minutes of listening to his slow, steady breathing before I slip away into sleep.
The sun is shining and birds are tweeting happily outside when an arm slides around my waist and drags me across the bed until I’m nestled against Kai’s warm, hard body.
“When did you get here?” Kai rasps in my ear.
My eyes flutter open to take in the warm light suffusing his room.
“Not long ago,” I lie.
“How’d you get in?”
“Through the window.”
“You what?” Kai chuckles—throaty and warm—into my ear. “You could have broken your neck, Heavenly.”
It’s such a fucking wholesome sound compared to those I’ve recently been subjected to. Bastian whispering filth. Kai growling about what a slut I am.
That sound feels like the first few splashes of rain in a desert. The promise of new growth, life, a fucking future.
I push out my ass, snuggling my shoulders against Kai’s chest. He slides an arm under my head, using the other to mold my hip against his.
He must have gotten up to go to the bathroom and spotted me then, because his breath smells like mouthwash, and the stubble under his bottom lip is a little damp as he kisses his way down the side of my neck.
“Remember when we made up stories about going to live at the beach?” I whisper, eyes fluttering closed when he gently scrapes his teeth over the back of my neck, sending a wave of goosebumps chasing down my spine.
“’Course. Remember the RV we said we’d buy?”
I hold up a finger. “Steal.”
“Klepto.” He chuckles again, grabbing my hand, dragging it down between us, forcing me to touch myself.
“We were just dumb kids,” I murmur, letting Kai manipulate my hand so I’m massaging gentle circles over my clit.
