“I sat next to my grandfather for six hours before I realized he was dead.”
She gapes at me. “What?”
“I chose to stay with him over the summer when I was eight while Kiervan and my parents went to the Hamptons—Kiervan and my father are both textbook psychopaths, and I try to avoid them at all costs,” I explain. “My grandma was already dead, and I didn’t like my grandparents on Mom’s side—and didn’t want to fly to see them either.”
I can still picture the estate clearly: perfectly mowed lawns, gardens to the nines that my grandma planted before she died, giant white colonial pillars, and a door twice my height. It was just outside the city, where the air is cleaner and, at night, I could see the stars.
Dropping my hand from Blaze’s throat, I reach for the pulse point at her wrist. “He always worked late into the night, holed up in his office for hours on end. Once or twice, I found him asleep at his desk or napping on the couch. When I was five, I woke him up, and he was so upset with me, I could barely sit for two days from the bruises he gave me. I never did it again.” I never would have done it to begin with if Kiervan hadn’t convinced me to do it under the pretense that Grandpa wanted us to wake him. “When everyone else was away in Vermont, I woke up from a bad dream and went to his office because sometimes he’d tell me a story or a life lesson that was so boring I’d fall asleep. If I was lucky, he’d let me have a sip of his scotch, then send me away.”
I pause, looking down to see her slender hand covering mine, but mainly looking at Grandpa’s ring on the thumb running over my knuckles.
He would have hated her because of how wild she is, but there’s another life lesson he wasn’t around to tell me. If the intention is to control them, then it isn’t true love, it’s loving the idea of them.
“He had bad lungs from contracting pneumonia as a kid. The whole house could hear him snore every time he slept—but it was quiet that night. He was in a maroon dressing gown that Grandma made him before she died. I remember finding the silence weird, but I didn’t dare try to wake him.”
Blaze’s copper hair falls in loose waves around her face, and I almost reach out to touch it. I remember when I entered his office, a soft fire crackled in the hearth, slowly dwindling from embers to ash. When I found him asleep, I sat on the floor, barely an inch away from the couch, to watch the fire glow from gold to bronze to red. I remember thinking how calming it was to watch chaos dwindle intonothing.
“At some point, as the sun was breaking into dawn, I saw his blue lips and touched his hand, thinking he must be freezing. I started worrying when he didn’t warm under the blanket I got for him. Or the second. Or when I moved heaters into the room.” I smooth my finger over the ring Blaze is wearing. “There was a trash bin by his desk that I moved right next to the couch. I piled it with paper and kindling and struck a match. But it grew too big too soon, and I tried to put it out myself so I wouldn’t hurt Grandpa.” I look down at the scar on my thumb from the first time I tried to control fire. “I cried out when I accidentally burned myself, and the cook came running up.”
“Kohen,” Blaze whispers.
My gaze snaps up to hers when her cold fingers touch my cheek. “They think he might have died around the time I got there.” She sucks in a sharp breath. “Overdose,” I explain. “Opioids.”
She drops her hands from my face, and I hold them in mine to warm them.
“I’m sorry, Kohen.”
I’ve always heard her voice in my sleep. Imagining her talking nonstop or huffing and puffing with how much she wishes I’d leave her alone. I pretended I could feel her heart beating, and there was a pink blush between her freckles. I’d tell myself she was lying in her bed. Warm.
But I knew she wasn’t.
I helped myself into her room more times than I could count just to check if I could still feel her breath against my skin.
It was always worse when she’d go on benders, because sometimes I’d find her room empty, and I wouldn’t be sure if I’d find her nameon the obituary list instead.
“It’s not your fault,” I say. I finished grieving my grandpa a long time ago, but the wounds will always remain.
“I know,” she says softly, searching my eyes for something I can’t see. “I’m not your grandfather.”
“It doesn’t matter if you are. Dead is dead, and I’m not losing the only other person I’ve ever cared about to something I can prevent.” My hold on her tightens. I can’t go through something like that again. “I can lock you up, keep it all away from you, but none of that will mean shit if you don’t want to.”
“I’m not your responsibility,” she says breathily, peering up at me with blue eyes.
“And yet, there is nothing in this world that will keep me from being by your side. Dead, alive, or somewhere in between. I was there for you before. Then once everything is said and done, and you’re looking for someone to hold your hand or be your gun, I’ll still be there.”
Crimson deepens her complexion as her lips part. I want to kiss her right now and know what it’s like to mean something to her. But the way she’s looking at me seems too fragile for what I want from her.
She takes a deep breath and shakes her head like she doesn’t want me to notice the teardrops gathering in her eyelashes. “I don’t understand where any of this is coming from. Why haven’t you told me how you felt after all the time we’ve known each other?”
My brows twitch together. “Just because the words aren’t said, doesn’t mean I don’t wake up and feel it every day—regardless of how much you piss me off.”
Blaze squeezes her eyes closed. “How am I meant to know about it if you never tell me?”
“I thought my sacrifices were enough to make you see me.” I brush my lips over hers, feeling her breath stutter against my skin. “I won’t stop until you do.”
The stress is going to give me a heart attack. After going to the bathroom three times in the past hour, I wring my hands together once I resume my spot by the car park. Nervous peeing is a real issue.
It’s visitation weekend, and I’m just about ready to go to the bathroom for the fourth time.
