"As if this isn’t real eno?—”
"So you know what?” She barely stopped long enough for me to answer her. “I’m not an airy-fairy girlie girl, but I think Konnor’s one of those guys who falls in love once and forever. Like a psycho. You’ve had his heart since he was, like, five.”
"He might not feel that way when he knows everything about Erik and me. He might find me disgusting.”
“Yeah, nah.” She snorts, dubiously. “Delusional you are. He dated Pemberton, a blonde-haired, brown-eyed girl just to be closer to you. He’s been trying to fill your void since he was nine. Don’t you get it? He’s never getting over you. Damaged. Tainted. Weird. With boundaries or without. You’re it.”
I frown at her, absorbing her words. Maybe… What if she’s right? “You should be studying psych.”
She scoffs from the back of her throat. “And deal with head cases like you all day. No, thank you.”
We both laugh.
Then, I blink at her and ask the same question that sits on my tongue every moment of every day for the past week. “How is he? I know you’ve seen him.”
“I saw him yesterday with Jaxon. He’s...” She hesitates. “Not great. He still texts me daily, asking for updates, but he barely leaves his flat. He’s drunk all the time."
He went to the shops…
For bourbon at least.
I try to stop the guilt and shame spiral from creeping in. I look across at the unicorn on my bed side table, his hoof proud and pointy.
Elise follows my gaze to the small trinket. "What is that then, Blesk? Is it from your past?”
Sighing, I remember the last story I told Elise. I'd seen Konnor on the television when I was eight. His mum crying. The cluster of confusion and guilt I experienced for helping my father hold him in that cell. "That’s another story."
"Tell me."
I smile tightly. "The night we escaped, I called the police, but when they asked me for the address, I couldn't remember it. I hung up on them. So, I went to the basement and used the key I always had on me and let him go. We were so scared. More scared than ever before. One minute we were climbing from underground, the next we were running from my father and his dogs through the forest. It was life or death this time. I remember the moon was huge that night, drilling beams of light across the terrain. We had no one to trust but each other —both helpless children with no understanding of why these things happen. Lights and voices surrounded us. I turned to Kon so terrified for his life. Not mine. I kinda accepted I might die anyway. I’d get to see my mum, I thought. That’s not so bad. I knew my dad would do it.
“Kon had that" —I motion towards the unicorn—"with him. He was clutching it the day he was kidnapped and kept it all those years under his mattress. It was the last remnant of his past life. And he gave it to me." I swallow that feeling down. "As I held it, I knew what I needed to do. I pressed my lips to his and kissed him. Then I ran towards the lights, hoping I could divert my dad's search party away from Kon." I find her eyes, glossy. "And that's the last time Isaw him."
"No, Blesk,” she says, eyes watery and full of meaning, “it's not.”
I breathe out fast.
It’s not…It’s not the last time I saw him! Realisation spins through me. I'd been so wrapped up in not being Liz, in hiding who she became, to really acknowledge Konnor.
Who he was—is.
To me.
I'd lost him, too.
He's my Hero Boy.
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
konnor
I didn’t give up, and I didn’t stop texting her, but I lost my temper after a bottle of bourbon and a six-pack of beer, and I introduced my phone to a hammer that created a spiderweb in the glass.
Friends?
She wants to be friends…
I don’t want to be fucking friends. How can she even suggest we be just friends. Soulmates is still an underwhelming title for what Blesk and I are, but friends?
