Haunt Me (Heartbreaker Duet #2)

fifteen

“I love you. I love you.” I can’t stop saying it.

My hands tighten around her waist and I push her against my chest. I can feel her heart beating frantically against my ribcage. I can still taste her lips on my mouth. I want more. Her whole body goes weak as I look deep into her eyes, and I have to suppress a smile of pure joy .

I am doing this to her. I am making her breaths coming short, her skin hot.

“I have never felt this way before in my life,” I tell her again. “I am beyond serious right now. I love you, Eden.”

This time, I think it finally sinks in, because she turns away, choking on a cough, her face a mask of fear.

“It’s going to be ok,” I try to tell her, but she’s already pushed me away. She looks like she is about to bolt again. “Don’t run away from me. Please don’t. I won’t… I won’t do anything to hurt you.” She goes still, her body still poised for flight. At least she’s not running. Yet. “What’s upset you? Is it what I said?”

She nods.

“I’ll…” I almost say I’ll take it back, but my mouth won’t let me. “I can’t take it back. It’s the truest thing I’ve ever said in my life. I can’t take it back, Eden, I won’t.”

She opens her mouth to say something, but she can’t draw breath.

“I have to go home,” she murmurs.

“I’ll walk you there,” I say. She gives me a look. “I’m not leaving you alone when you are feeling like this. Especially not after today. I’ll stay with you until you’re safe back home.”

She laughs at this, and I don’t get it. What? Won’t she be safe at home?

We walk together towards her home, and I can see her get visibly more and more upset the closer we get. My heart breaks inside me. She won’t come back tomorrow, will she? It was too much, I shouldn’t have said it. Especially after what she went through today.

The danger we both faced made me realize my own mortality in the way grief never had. At any moment, something might happen, something might change drastically, and I wanted her to know just how much she means to me. If I had died in that highway today, she never would have known: I wanted to tell her, my lungs were bursting with it as if with the need for air.

But I see now it was a mistake. I stop in my tracks and grab her sleeve to get her to face me.

“I’m sorry I said it, ok?” I tell her. “I shouldn’t have.” I watch her face for a reaction; there is none. It’s killing me. After all these cars nearly slammed into me, and this is how I will die. “Say something to me, Eden. Is it… Are you this upset because you don’t feel it too? ”

“No,” she replies at once, looking surprised at my reaction. As if I should know better. “It’s because I do, you idiot. And I shouldn’t.”

Wait, you do?

I think this is what it must feel to have your brain and your heart explode at the same time. Yes, the highway was definitely preferable to this.

“Why the hell not?” comes out of my lips hoarsely.

“Because I’m not allowed to.” She is suddenly white with anger, furious almost. I don’t get it. “I’ll go to hell if I do.” What? “Please tell me that all you meant to say was that you lo—you like me like a friend, right? That you—”

I bend down and kiss her again.

As soon as I’ve done it, I second-guess myself and kind of back away from her—I can’t believe I just did that. But then.

She kisses me back. With so much force and desperation, it nearly knocks me off my feet. I grab her to steady us both, and my knees threaten to give out, I am shaking so badly. She is trembling as badly as I am. She opens her lips and lets me taste her, explore her, in a way I never even dreamed I would be able to. I press her to me, the need to climb out of my skin into hers so great it almost hurts. It’s unbearable.

Our bodies are melded together as I moan against her lips, hitching her up against me so that I can fit my lips on hers perfectly.

I am addicted to her kisses. It’s as if I have been kissing her all my life. As if I have been kissing her in my dreams for years before today.

A soft moan escapes her and it completely shatters me. I tilt my head to the side, letting her explore me, and she tilts the other way, imitating me. This is so delicious, I think I might be losing my mind.

I let her take complete control. I give her all the power, scared to death of the minute this stops. One wrong move and she will stop and I will stop existing. That’s what it feels like right now.

But she doesn’t stop, not even to breathe. We trap the air between our lips, and pant against each other, our bodies growing hot, our hands clutching each other for dear life.

Finally, gasping for breath, we part. Her lips are swollen and red, almost bleeding. I look at them hungrily. I did that.

I try to ask her if she is ok, but I can’t speak. This is holy ground. This thing that happened today between us… It has burned my lips. It has burned my heart. I will never be the same after today. My legs are shaking so badly I can barely stay upright .

“Was it bad?” she asks in a small voice, and I close my eyes and press my lips to hers reverently, like a prayer. The skin is so sensitive it hurts in the most delicious way.

“It was perfect,” I sigh against her skin, my breath caressing her cheek. You are perfect, I want to say, but I can’t. It’s too much. Too soon. She is already shaking in my arms. She is still shaking.

I am too. I’ll never stop.

“Eden,” I whisper, her name a broken prayer on my lips.

“I feel so much for you, I’m going to die,” she whispers into my mouth.

“You are not going to die. Not on my watch.”

“I could happily die after this.”

I could too , I think. After a kiss like this. I would happily die—except for one thing: I want to kiss her again.

“Stop talking about dying,” I say abruptly.

“But I know I will,” she says. “I am condemned.”

I fit my lips to hers, trying to steal these ugly words out of her mouth, but instead I taste tears on her skin. I freeze. She pulls away.

“I n-need to go,” she says, and her voice is trembling and hoarse, and instinctively, I get how much effort it took her to say those words.

So I let her go.

She turns around and runs, and as she disappears around a bend in the road, I hear a sob escape her. My heart shatters in pieces.

Back at school, I get caught trying to get in, and I get detention. There is a lot of yelling going on. I barely pay any attention to it. I don’t even care about all the other things I should have gotten in trouble for today—or whenever they eventually get discovered.

My mind can’t concentrate on the victory of surviving a busy high-speed highway. It is completely occupied with reliving that kiss.

Over and over and over again.

The principal is yelling, my therapist starts calling me nonstop, and a fist of fear clutches my heart at the memory of how Eden ran away from me.

But without even realizing it, I slip back into the memory of her kisses. I live there now. Nothing else matters, nothing else exists. In the middle of all the yelling and punishing that’s going on around me—to me—I smile.