My voice cracks, my throat constricting.
I’ve never talked about any of those things before, not with anyone but Rush.
“Do you have any idea how just … being in here … in your apartment … is making me want to hyperventilate?” I laugh because it’s all I can do. “The chaos and disorder …”
He glances around as if I’m hallucinating. He doesn’t see what I see.
“That messy pile of magazines on your coffee table. I’d love nothing more than to sort through them, put them in order. And your shoes. Good God, you need a shoe rack or something over there. And this basket of laundry … how long has it been sitting here, waiting to be folded?”
“Are you offering.”
“No.” I shoot him a look. “I’m just saying … I guess what I’m saying is that we all have issues. We’re all messed up on the inside, all broken and cracked. And we’re all just trying to do our best.” I glance up at him again. “Well, maybe not all of us. Some of us could stand to try a little harder.”
“My mom,” he begins to say, pulling in a breath. “She had this heart condition. Didn’t know she had it until she was well into her thirties. Anyway, there were a couple of different protocols, each of them with their own risks, but my father knew a guy who was patenting some experimental implant. Wasn’t even FDA approved yet, but my father pushed the doctors to try it. I was just a kid then. Twelve. Didn’t leave my mom’s side. Didn’t concern myself with any of the doctors or nurses. I just know that my father chose the experimental route when there were other perfectly viable options, and I know that when she didn’t make it, he inherited the multi-million-dollar trust my mother’s parents had left her. She wasn’t even gone a year when he shipped me off to boarding school and married my nanny. God, it all sounds so trite when I say it out loud.”
I shake my head. “It’s not trite at all. Those are your wounds, those are the wounds that have given you the scars you carry with you today.”
“I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Me neither. All that stuff about my parents doing drugs,” I say. “Feels kind of good to get it out.”
“Anyway.” He rises, heading to the kitchen. “You want a drink or something? I feel like I need a drink after that. I have beer and whisky.”
“It’s all right. I should probably head out.”
The raindrops on his living room window are fewer and further in between than they were when I got here.
“Really?” he asks, turning toward me with one brow raised. “I just bared my soul to you and you’re just going to head out?”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
“Which is?”
“Sticking around and fooling ourselves into believing we actually give a damn about each other just because we exchanged skeletons.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it has to mean nothing.”
My heart ricochets and warmth blooms in my cheeks before dripping down the rest of my body and settling between my thighs. His dark eyes hold mine captive, and I could drown in his musky scent if he let me. But what’s the point? We’ve been down this road, and clearly we’re both too fucked up to handle this like two civilized adults.
That’s the problem with broken people like us: it’s second nature for us to go around complicating things, especially matters of the heart, and even more than that, things that scare us.
Things like lust.
Want.
Desire.
Love.
“What are you getting at, Calder?” I ask, swallowing the massive lump in my throat, only to have it return.
“You make it seem so easy.” He brushes a strand of hair away from my cheek and ignores my question.
“Make what seem so easy?”
“Hiding your scars.” His hand lowers to my jaw, angling my mouth toward his, though he doesn’t kiss me. My lips burn in anticipation, my skin on fire the longer he makes me wait. Grazing his thumb over my bottom lip, he offers a closed smile as he breathes out his nose. “What are we doing, Keane? What the hell is this?”
“I don’t know what this is,” I say, “but I know what it feels like. And it feels like you’re about to kiss me and we’re about to do something we may or may not regret in the morning.”
With that, his hands find my hair and his lips crush mine.
If he had any idea how many nights I’ve lain awake dreaming of what it’d be like to have one more go with him. Only this time there’s no hate or animosity fueling the fire—at least not on my end. In fact, I can’t quite be certain what kind of fuel we’ve dosed this fire with. All I know is there’s an explosion about to happen and there may or may not be casualties by the time it’s said and done.