“I know.” And those words that other people are good at saying, I find myself lost trying to form.
“Tell me you aren’t going to the club about the picture and Kyle.”
I wish I could lie to her, but I can’t. I fucking can’t. “I don’t know.”
“If you go to them, then we’re over.”
If I don’t go to them, she’ll forever live in that box she’s terrified of being chained in for the rest of her life. I love Breanna. Love her more than I thought I was capable of loving a person. She brought me peace, light and happiness and I should give her something in return.
I step into her, and because Breanna is brave at her core, she doesn’t step back.
“Don’t do it,” she whispers as I run my finge
rs through her hair. “Don’t make my life more complicated than it already is. I can’t trust them. I can’t do what you’re asking.”
I hear her words, but I’m too busy making my own memories to respond. Breanna’s hair is soft, and when my fingers glide through, it’s like touching silk. I caress her face next and enjoy the smoothness of her cheek against my knuckles.
Her lips are perfect. Dark pink to light red. Curved just so that when she smiles it has this seductive tease. I’ll go to bed night after night thinking of her lips. Kissing them. The feel of them on my skin. I curl her into me. Our time is almost completely gone. Not nearly enough left for me to love her properly—enough for memories.
“Razor,” she says as a plea. “Please tell me you aren’t choosing to end this.”
I lower my head so that our foreheads are touching. “I’m choosing to love you.”
“What does that mean?”
I kiss her. Slowly. Softly. As if she’s glass on the verge of breaking, because that’s what I am. I’m shattering on the inside. Her lips move with mine with as much deliberateness. Her taste is so sweet, her smell so enticing, this moment is fucking shredding my heart.
“What will they do to Kyle? He’s wrong, Razor. He’s more than wrong, he’s sick in the head even, but I can’t live with the idea of someone being hurt over me.”
The front door to the house opens and the voices of multiple people talking at once cause Breanna to ease back, but I keep my arms locked around her. We stare at each other. She’s still begging for an answer I don’t possess. Screw it, I do know the answer, but it’s not the one she craves to hear. But for her happiness, for her safety—I’d do anything.
“I love you,” I tell her. “I don’t have fancy shit inside me or other pretty words to say, but know that, no matter what, I love you.”
She opens her mouth, to possibly say it back, but someone knocks on my door. “Come in.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at—” School dies on Dad’s lips as I glance over my shoulder at him. His gaze lands on Breanna, then jumps to me. “Pigpen didn’t tell me you had company.”
“He didn’t know. Did I hear Rebecca?”
“Yeah.”
I rest my arm over Breanna’s shoulders and edge her forward for the living room. I kiss her temple and briefly close my eyes with the embrace. This could be the last time I touch her. “I need her to take Breanna home.”
Breanna
RAZOR’S GOING TO tell his club. The way he kissed me, the way he told me he loved me, the return of the frozen blue eyes as he watched me riding away in the passenger side of Rebecca’s car—it was all there, the answer I didn’t want to hear. The answer that is tearing us apart.
Rebecca’s car idles at the end of the driveway and she waits like I’m walking the last few feet of my life. Maybe I am. Maybe when I enter the kitchen, my family will literally kill me, but when I round the corner, Mom’s and Dad’s cars are still missing.
I slip in the back door to buy myself as much time as I can without Clara and Liam and drop into a chair at the kitchen table. Weeks ago, I stood at the sink washing dishes—being the good little girl most everyone has predicted me to be. The smart girl, the best friend, the one who follows every command, the sister keeping a secret.
A secret.
I now have so many secrets that I’m buried alive—still in the box, still chained inside, and I’m losing air. Razor’s words come hurtling back at me... Are you ashamed of me?
What causes bile to slosh around in my stomach was the internal hesitation. How come I never told my parents? Why didn’t I proudly hold his hand at school? Why wasn’t the love from this fantastic man enough for me to rise above the thoughts and fears of everyone else?
Because I’m a coward... I’m afraid...