The delay of a memory, one I’d tried to scrub from my mind.
I swallow, squeeze my eyes.What had I done?
When I reached for the gun, wrapped her hand around it and pressed it to my chest, it’s as if I’d blacked out.
But as I feel Laiken grab for mine now, curl her palm against my skin, I wake up.
Because I feel the disgusting prickling phantom of my father’s grip at my arm.
However, this time, there is no grapple for power, no fight. Just resignation, and maybe a little bit of trust, too. For us, for me, for her, to do,and say, the things we both needed to.
A tear rolls down her cheek, and I want to lean forward, catch it on my lips.
“Why were you my flinch?” She smooths her lips together, swallowing her tears. “Because, Chase, I fucking hate you…just as much as I…”
I press my brow to hers, and she goes silent.
She arches her throat, her lips right on mine. She swallows so tightly, another tear rolling down her cheek.
“Just as much as I love you. I’ve. Always. Fucking. Loved. You.”
Her words reach into my chest, take my heart, along with my breath, and all that’s left is my fucking life beating in her hands.
I can’t speak.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t even fucking look at her.
How could she love me?After everything I’d bled from her?
My silence pushes the barrel into her chest deeper, and when she cries over the weapon harder, she tells me, “So, pull the trigger. End me, Chase Keller, so I never again have to feel the way you made me feel three years ago.” She pauses, only to swallow. “So, I never again have to feel the way you made me feel yesterday.”
I’m frozen, and when words don’t come, when silence opens and closes between us, she rises to the balls of her feet, brings her lips just below my ear.
“Who’s flinching now?” she goads, and when words are still lost on me, she returns to her heels with a scoff, her hand slipping away from me, from the gun,away, away, away…
She steps back, shoulders slumped.
My jaw tightens.
I whirl around, watching the way she drags the arms of my hoodie over her wrists, using the fabric wrapped around her knuckles to dry her tears and stop the blood from dripping off her palms.
I disarm the weapon, throwing it across the room, making sure it's as far away as it can be from us. Her shoulders hit the wall at the same time it hits the floor and she bounces off it, the same way it does, too.
She’s watching me carefully, though her chin is to her chest, her tongue to her top teeth. “You’re going to fuck me up again, it’s only a matter of?—”
I don’t let her finish. I’m across the room, one hand wrapping around the top of her throat, and instead of pulling away, she leans into me, into my touch, into the hold I have on her. My other hand cups her cheek, fingers her hair.
She’s trembling harder now.
A silent mounting need for the other writhes between us.
“That’s exactly what I plan to do,” I growl.
My lips slam down on hers as I lift her into my arms.
Her own wrap around my shoulders, her heels digging into my lower back, holding me against her, and when I slam her back into the wall, brushing my tongue to the seam of her lips, she lets me in.
