Page 43 of How I Met Your Murderer

fifteen

When Your Crush is Invisible

Eric

October 2 nd, in the earliest hours of the morning: that was when Raff first kissed me. I hadn’t cared about the days of the week in such a long time, but we only had until Halloween before his time at Ardruin Castle would end and I’d have to watch him drive away.

He deserved it, the safety and warmth and freedom that would come with being anywhere else. He deserved someone with blood in their body, blood that would run hot when they kissed. He deserved someone who had skin and bones and real hair to sink his fingers into, someone with a future and goals, just like him. Maybe someone who loved looking at the stars, too. That would be nice.

I liked the idea that a little piece of me might follow him and keep him company on lonely nights. And be there for the good times, too.

But as far as I knew, I had twenty-nine days left to spend with Raff. Six hundred and ninety-six hours. And I wasn’t going to waste any of it.

I was glad he had invited me to the van, because I’d been trying to invite myself and didn’t know how. My mom would’ve been appalled at my manners, would have said she raised me better than to sleep with a guy on the first date—even if I was just hovering nearby—but then, she wasn’t here to judge.

Of course I loved her deeply, and I told myself she was still out there somewhere. Still at the same house on Maple Lane almost sixteen years later, still working for the government and trying to change things from within, still arguing with Dad about the water bill and eating off the good blue-and-white plates that had belonged to her mom.

I wondered what she would have thought of Raff. He would have been the first boyfriend I’d ever brought home (and I would have brought him home to my parents’ house, even before the kiss I couldn’t stop thinking about). I think my mom would have loved his accent and wanted to try his mam’s colcannon way more than I did. She would have let him fix her flowerbeds that she could never quite figure out, and probably would have bought him a bunch of expensive shirts in a well-meant attempt to get him to wear something other than black. They would have watched reality TV together and had spirited discussions about the participants and their antics. She would have cackled watching him kick my dad’s ass at Wii Sports and invited him to come over any time he felt like it, whether I was around or not.

Raff would have made home feel warm and fun in good new ways.

Last night when he kissed me, I had remembered what it was to be warm. Not stuck in stasis, but really twenty-seven again, being adored by someone I adored.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The kiss, and the blur of the night’s events that led to it. It had felt like a dream—or the closest I got to dreaming these days, a sort of half-waking state where my thoughts flowed without interruption—from the moment Raff walked into the kitchen wearing that suit, his hair wet from the shower and glistening like garnet, the scent of birch and pine from his soap reaching me all the way down the hall.

I was so drawn to the spark of his energy, so overwhelmed by the way it danced against my skin, that I had done something big and vulnerable and asked him to eat for me.

I hadn’t meant to make it sound so intimate. But Raff’s daring grin had made my own energy flare, bright and dangerous. The table we shared was so small that our knees touched beneath it, putting us so close that, if I’d still had a heartbeat, my heart would have been doing some high-flying acrobatics.

Watching Raff eat was overwhelming. Every bite he took, every small sound he made, every description he murmured— sweet, sharp, creamy, warm—reverberated through my entire being. Not taste, not exactly, but sensation. Memory. Hunger. Raff’s lips glistened with juice from a strawberry, and I’d had to look away before I reached out to wipe it with my thumb. Or, worse, licked it off the way I was burning to.

Then Caoimhe had swept in, all perfume and praise and mischief, and I’d had to sit there pretending I wasn’t falling hard for the man beside me while she handed him a bottle of whiskey and called me cute. Watching Raff blush as she studied the pair of us, I’d wanted to laugh and kiss him at the same time.

The whiskey had loosened Raff’s shoulders, then his tongue. And all the while, I found myself imagining a life where I really could sit beside Raff at a kitchen table, warm and solid, arguing about mashed potatoes and favorite seasons. A life where Valentine’s Day would have been a perfect excuse to give Raff something handmade and stupidly heartfelt.

Then there had been the chandelier. I was having one of those wild bursts of energy that sometimes overtook me when I decided to yank the chain clean out of the ceiling rather than scaring the knife-wielding robber off some other way.

I didn’t even know I possessed that kind of strength. That was new, and strange, and I wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it yet.

But I’d always wanted to ride one of those things, since I was a kid watching pirate movies. And I was desperate to get that knife away from Raff. To save him. I’d let instinct take over, grabbing the chain and using momentum to yank the whole thing sideways, closer to Raff’s attacker than Raff himself.

For a glorious second, I’d been flying.

And then I was back on the ground with Raff, watching him try to push himself up off the floor on shaking limbs as I put myself between him and the intruders. I’d wanted nothing more than to tell him I’ve got you, and I always will.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Not when our time together had an expiration date.

Later, when we were finally alone after the cops left with those two losers and the Dolans had driven back to their apartment in the village, Raff was the brave one again. The one who said exactly what was on his mind. He spoke of missed chances, about wanting this, wanting me—each word carving out a new shape inside me. A shape I wasn’t quite ready to name, even though his hand cupping my jaw was the first real touch I’d had in years. The first one I had ever wanted beyond reason.

I could look at you forever, he’d said, and I didn’t know what to do with that. I’d been admired before, but never like that. Never like I was something worth memorizing.

And then he’d kissed me.

And I’d kissed him back right away. I was so ready for it. The moment our lips met, the world went silent. I felt the rush of heat first, and then I just felt him. The way he poured everything he’d been holding back into that first fierce press of his lips. Felt the way his longing wrapped around mine and pulled us both under in a welcome flood of warmth—finally, I knew what it was to be warm again.

I kissed him with everything I hadn’t yet said to him, clumsy from years without practice, but I let instinct guide me. Let myself crave him. The scrape of my teeth against his bottom lip made him gasp, and the sound shot straight through me, lighting up every dim corner of my being. His hands slid to my waist, telling me without words that he wanted me here, wanted me close.

When he parted his lips for me, inviting me in, I followed tentatively. I was both eager for everything and terrified of doing it wrong, of not pleasing him, but I was still more terrified of stopping. The cold of my mouth against his warmth made him shiver, and it echoed like sparks all through me.