Like he’s contemplating…
“Boe…”
He makes a noise, a deep sound that I can’t even begin to decipher. He brushes a thumb over the healing bruise under my eye, and I hear him swallow.
“Why can’t you just tell me what you want from me? Tell me, kitten,” he says low and rough. His blue eyes are looking straight into me.
What I want?
Tell himwhat I want?
You!
My heart stutters, and I struggle. “I want you to let me go,” I gasp out, and suddenly it's impossible to breathe. I struggle, but it's unnecessary because Bowen lets me go immediately. He’s breathing rough and looks ready to snatch me up again.
He clenches his fists at his sides instead.
“I don’t want… I can’t…” I stutter over my words. Maybe a part of him misses our closeness, too. But it’s all so damn complicated now. “Go back to Delaney, Bowen,” I say instead.
As much as I hate it, it’s probably best this way.
“When you’re ready to tell me what you actually want, Kit, you know where to find me.”
And with that, Bowen walks back towards the party. All the alcohol churns in my stomach when Brett seems to materialize out of nowhere, helping me up from where I must have fallen in the grass.
“Kit, you should have just told him…” Brett is saying softly, walking me back to the fire. But I’m too busy seeing the look Delaney is giving Bowen, like she feels sorry for him.
I can’t process what’s happening.
I’m never drinking again.
Dear B,
One year.
365 days since you've been gone.
I feel I've aged a century. I shake now when I wake up. It scares me, how terrible I feel. I didn't think destroying my body would make me so scared, but it does. I ruined our birthday party, because I saw your cake and the fucking wings on it and I lost my mind. I threw it, B. I threw it across the room and stumbled outside. I fell down the stairs because I was so drunk I couldn't see straight. He wasn't there, either. At our party. Because he knows I can't look at his face. Your face. He hasn't snuck into my room in days, and I miss him so much it's like I lost him, too. I did this to myself.
My theory is that if I don't drink, he will somehow know and come for me in the shadows of night. I've been clammy and nauseous all day long, but I've resisted. I couldn't help the sob from slipping out when I knew my theory was right, and my bedroom door creaked open long after the sun went down.
I wish I could roll over and look at him. I want to see how a year has changed his features. If he looks healthy or if he looks as lifeless as the reflection I see every day in the mirror.
But I can't.
But I sob. It's not a quiet sob, either. It's ripped out of me with his presence alone. I cover my face and cry into my shaky hands when he climbs behind me, grabbing me with frantic hands and pulling me back into his chest. It's hard and warm and everything I've missed. He hasn't spoken to me in a year. There were no words to say when our grief was heavy in the air. But my sobs have broken the silence, and he shushes me. Soft but deep. Raspy but still somehow smooth. It's like a shot of vodka. His hands fumbling for my skin another shot.
The scent of him is intoxicating. I want to drown in it and never come back up for air that's not soaked in leather and musk. The intoxicating relief doesn't come with numbness from him. It comes with a quickening heart and shallow breaths. It comes from a primal urge to possess everything he has to give. Because I'm selfish in grief.
I want to feel the hands that can soothe all over my skin. I want him to take it all away.
"I've missed you," I say, breathless and miserable. He groans, deep in his throat, pressed against the place that has come to know him so well. My neck tingles from his scruffy jaw.
"I've missed you so much," he says, just as breathless.
There was a time I thought I could have it all. My best friend. His brother, the guy I've loved since I was too young to understand it all. I thought I would live out my days in bliss with them both in my life. Now I can't have either. Not outside of darkness. All I can have here is his touch in the shadows. Where I can't see his face.
I open my eyes to see nothing. And nothing is exactly what I need to see. For the first time since he snuck in all those months ago, I turn in his arms.I turn until my chest is pressed against him. I bury my own face into him and inhale his scent. I revel in the feel of his racing heart against me.
