SilverSwan: yes
The light changes, and I turn that way, heading north of town on the interstate. I haven’t driven this way in weeks, and my pulse quickens when I pass the cotton fields on the drive, then the rice paddies. I turn off at his exit, my heart still beating erratically in my chest. I pull up to his building and punch in the code to his garage, since I don’t have the opener anymore. It doesn’t work, so I have to go back to my car and text him. I’m unaccountably hurt that he changed his garage code.
Preston’s no saint, but he’s the reason I’m alive right now. Not just because he pulled me off that tree, though he did save my life that day. There’s no doubt in my mind that I would have ended it if it weren’t for him, though—more than once. With him, everything was always simple, as simple as I needed it to be. He allowed for that, for whatever I needed, and didn’t ask for more.
He didn’t have to. He took what he needed, too.
A minute later, the garage door slides up. Preston is standing in the doorway that leads from the garage into the building, his mask over the top half of his face and a gun in his hand. Only when I park the car and climb out does he lower the gun a few inches. “Are you alone?” he asks, jerking his chin toward the car.
“Yes, I’m fucking alone, now stop pointing a gun at me.”
“Last time you showed up with a Dolce,” he says. “You can’t blame me for bringing a gun to a gun fight.”
“This isn’t a gun fight,” I say. “I was lonely, and my mom’s spun out, and I couldn’t be at home.”
He looks me over. “Royal dump you again?”
“Can we not do this?” I ask. “I just needed somewhere to go, okay?”
He must hear something in my voice, because he puts the safety on and tucks his gun in the back of his pants. Then, he pulls me into his arms and hugs me hard, pressing his pointy chin into the top of my head. It hurts, but I don’t mind. I want the ache that anchors me, the smell of his soap, the familiarity of his arms. He’s the closest thing to family I have besides my mother.
“Can you spend the night?” he asks after a while.
I turn my face into his chest, pressing my forehead to his sternum. “Preston…”
“Am I not supposed to want you anymore?” he asks. “You’re not a Darling.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Okay.” He squeezes me tight and then pulls away, holding me at arm’s length. “You okay?”
“Not really.”
“I’d invite you up, but there’s nothing left but a couple pieces of furniture.”
My heart stumbles in my chest when I remember what they did to his fancy house last year, the way there was nothing left but a shell when they were done bombing it with their hatred. “What happened?” I ask, looking up at him, my arms still around his strong, slender body.
“I sold the loft,” he says.
“Because of me,” I say, feeling like a complete asshole.
“Because the Dolces know where I live.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Want to go somewhere?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say, drawing away at last. “Want to show me the new place?”
“Do you still associate with the Dolces?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “Probably.”
“Then no.” He pulls his keys from his pocket and hands them to me. “Start the truck. I’m going to load the kayaks. I have an idea.”
I want to ask what the fuck we’re doing with kayaks, but he’s already gone to take them down from where they hang on the wall. He loads them into the truck bed while I start the truck and then sit there watching him, admiring the beauty in the way he moves. I noticed toward the end of my time with him, when I’d started to come back to myself, how he’s as graceful and strong as some kind of big cat, like a panther or a leopard. But I’m more myself now, more able to appreciate him without needing him.
Part of me wishes I did need him, that I could love him the way I love Royal, that I could feel something for him that I don’t. Whatever love my heart is capable of giving, it does. I love Preston, I suppose, in some way. But I’m not capable of loving someone else the way I love Royal, the way I could have loved before he destroyed me. Now, the only person I’ll ever love that way is the boy who shattered me.