“Did you love him? The other guy, I mean.”
His mouth hangs open, and I wait an eternity for him to speak. “No, but he loved me, and that was enough.” He chuckles softly, but not because what he says is funny. An uncomfortable laugh. “Kevin stopped saying it years ago. I mean, I never loved him, but him loving me was enough to make me willing to live in the dark. So, when he stopped, I found someone else whowould say it. Someone else who would make me not feel like the loneliest guy in the world.”
I make my way down the steps, passing through the shadows of Mary and the Three Wise Men. Each step feels like a nail being driven through my calf. “Why are you letting me pry?”
“I spent so long on this road alone that the thought of letting someone in terrified me.” He cranes his head upward just as I reach him, standing completely bare in front of him. “You scare the shit out of me, Seven.”
“What’s so scary about me?” A curious smile passes over my lips as I caress his flushed cheek with a hand. “You know, other than the fact that I killed a man. Well, two men now.”
“Scared of what I feel when you look at me. Scared of how I feel when you touch me.” He ducks away from my touch. “The truth is I’ve never been in love before. Have never felt it. I think the only person I’ve ever loved in this life was my dad, and he died when I was five.” He buries his face in his hands
I take a seat on the bench beside him. The cold, untouched wood cools me. I stretch an arm out along the back of the pew, ready to catch him if he falls.
“I’ve spent twenty-seven years in this world, and I’ve never come close,” he continues, and then looks right at me. Right into me. “So, I know you think you love me, but you’ve only known me for a little over a month.”
“And I’ve seen you at your worst.”
“Which just means you’re completely fucked in the head to stick around.” He laughs with a glisten in his eye. He’d probably say the tears are because of allergies and I’d be content to let him lie right through his pretty teeth. “Guess I’m fucked up in the head too, because what the fuck, punk?”
My ears perk up. “I’m still your punk?”
“Don’t get sappy.” He rolls his eyes. “It just rolls off the tongue.”
He never fell. Never let me catch him. So, I climb onto his lap and straddle him with my naked body. Wrap my arms around the back of his head and smile a shit-eating grin. “Instead of talking, maybe I could suck your dick?”
“Absolutely fucking insatiable.”
“God made me this way.”
“I don’t believe in god.”
I wipe the wetness under his eye with a finger. “What would god say if he had to watch me suck your dick right now?”
“Absolutely fucking incorrigible.”
It’s the sweetest compliment I’ve ever fucking heard, but I’m not ready to pack away our feelings like we always do. There’s just one more thing I have to say.
“We’re not bad people. We did fucked up things to fucked up people who did fucked up things to us. Hurt people hurt people, but sometimes, people deserve to be hurt back.”
“Yeah,”he whispers.
“And you’re right. I did mean it.” Okay, maybe it was actually two last things to say. I brush a hand over his swollen cheek. “I do love you.”
I wait an eternity to hear him say I love you back. But it never comes. Maybe that’s my curse to bear, to love someone who refuses to love me back. The price I must pay for the sins I refuse to repent for.
Four walls and a roof, and the only god I believe in is whatever the fuck this feeling inside me is.
And it’ll choke me.
Drown me.
Devour me.
Destroy me.
CHAPTER 17
NOAH
