Chapter 11
The night air is cold as it nips at the exposed skin around my eyes.
The sidewalk is still busy as I wander to nowhere—just thinking.
Thinking about my life. The decisions I’ve made that lead to this point in my timeline.
Thinking about that night, the day we met, the mistakes I’ve made.
I wish we could go back to the way things were before, before that night, maybe even before we met.
That may have been better…never meeting at all.
There’s a line of people leading out the door of a building ahead.
Luminous yellow lights shine from the building through a large, plate-glass window and onto the concrete sidewalk.
I keep my head down and push my way through the crowd.
As I lift my head, a devastating scene enters my view.
The man I’d just been thinking about, leaning into the man who sends a fire through my bones.
I grin when my presence stops them just in time.
My constitution is weak, and I don’t want him to stay any longer with that man.
Especially after seeing where “being alone together” leads them.
I pull down the mask from my mouth and command Miles to come out and meet me, and after some urging, he finally does.
I drag him into the alleyway near the building. He plants his feet, prohibiting himself from going any further. And the second that he does, I can’t stop the spiteful spew that bleeds from my mouth.
“What’s it to you? Are you upset seeing your used goods being enjoyed by someone else?
” His words are like kerosene to my internal fire, and I can’t stop myself.
I grasp onto his shoulders, fingers digging into his flesh.
I watch him wince, but I don’t stop; the frustration that’d been building takes control of my actions and I push him backward into the wall.
The yelp that screeches from his throat brings me back to my senses.
All the rage and frustration I had been feeling simmers down to nothing and is replaced by guilt, sorrow, and regret.
“What’s wrong with you?” He growls. I release him, a lump in my throat forming.
“I—I didn’t mean…” I can’t get the words out as everything that’s happened up to this point and everything I’ve done, and true understanding fills my vision as I stare into the pain-filled eyes of the man in front of me—realizing what I should have realized before: connection, attraction, interest, captivation.
I want to hold him in my arms again, fall asleep entangled in each other, feel his soft lips on mine.
Though I can see his lips moving, I can’t hear the words.
The only sound reverberating through my ears is the pounding of my heart.
He’s mad—yelling at me, overtaking me in the alleyway.
My feet and body move on their own, and I can’t grasp what he’s saying to me.
The only conscious move I can make is taking his face in my hands and crashing my lips into his.
Pain surges through the tender flesh, and I jerk away.
“Fuck you, Kane.” Is the last thing that he says to me before abandoning me—alone and helpless.
I stand in that alleyway a long time, recounting the events that have just happened.
Picking out everything I did wrong, what I should’ve done better, what I could have done better.
I kick the gravel at my feet and send a metal trash can hurling onto the sidewalk.
It scarcely misses hitting a parked car, and I go retrieve it, the embarrassment overriding my anger.