Chapter 41 Chris
CHRIS
I woke up at four thirty after more nightmares. Only these weren’t about Mom or about vague scenarios of Larissa getting hurt. These were flashbacks of the real thing from the day before.
Anxiety pulsed through me, jolted me awake. And then I lay there thinking of every horrible, terrible thing. Hitting Mike. Larissa’s lips swelling. The sound of her wheezing.
The words biphasic anaphylaxis kept running through my head. A delayed allergic reaction.
Larissa was in the guest room across the hall. She’d been fine when she went to bed, and I was ten seconds from getting to her if she needed me. I tried to use this fact to ground myself, but it wasn’t enough.
I wanted to be where I could hear her if she started to wheeze again or called out to me and there were two doors between us—too many.
Over the last ten months I’d learned to live with the unbearable urge to be near her when I couldn’t, but the thought of her being in danger overrode my own will.
Like an electric charge zinging under my skin telling me to get to where she was, to claw through walls if I had to.
The worst-case scenarios pitched around inside me and no matter how tired I was, they wouldn’t let me go back to sleep.
I was not kidding when I said I was traumatized. I was.
I couldn’t begin to process the events of yesterday.
A large part of it didn’t even feel real. Like it was all some strange fever dream and I’d wake up back at the cabin without scabs on my knuckles.
I don’t know why I told her what I did earlier.
I think I was just exhausted and done, and my filter was gone.
Or maybe I was simply tired of not saying what I wanted to say.
Sick of covering for Mike and pretending and lying to her by omission.
And Larissa had said that she would have been happier with me.
I should have been relieved that the feelings weren’t entirely one-sided, but I wasn’t. Knowing just made it worse.
There was no happy ending for me. Or anyone.
I sat up and turned on the light, trying to shock my system back into reality. Usually after a nightmare, Woofarine helped, but he’d chosen to sleep with her. Larissa hadn’t been taking him lately, and the absence of his weight at the end of the bed felt wrong.
Everything was wrong.
A shift had happened in me yesterday.
I didn’t know if my friendship with Mike would ever come back from this.
I didn’t know if I wanted it to.
I’d never felt before like maybe we’d outgrown each other. Like maybe Mike was someone I wouldn’t have liked today if I hadn’t known him as long as I had. I kept hanging on to who Mike was for me in a previous life, ignoring who he was now, and I was tired of trying to cling to that.
We’re fed the narrative that you never give up on the ones you love. And I did love Mike. But it wasn’t my job to hold him up while he decided if he wanted to stand or not. To scream at him to change until I lost my voice.
I felt done.
Maybe in a few days, once the initial shock of what happened wore off, I’d feel differently, but for now I was angry. And the anger made me want to never see him again.
I hated what I’d done.
I’d never hit anyone before. I was ashamed even thinking about it.
But I also knew given the same situation, I’d do it all over again the same way. I would tear someone apart for doing half of what he did in that kitchen yesterday.
The image of the fear in her eyes would stay with me forever.
My hand on her thigh, having to hurt her to save her.
The way I just wanted to carry her out of there and put her in my car and keep driving and never look back.
But I couldn’t. No matter what happened now with Mike, I never could, because even if she wanted me to, even if in some colossal turn of events she wanted me the way I wanted her, I would never be okay with destroying him.
And it would. Even telling her what I did was a betrayal.
If Jesse and Xavier knew what I told her, they’d probably never speak to me again, and I wouldn’t blame them. It was no different than if I’d declared my feelings for Becca or Samantha. It was unforgivable.
Even her staying here was not okay, especially now. But for that I just didn’t care.
There were hard boundaries I would never cross, because doing it, no matter how much I wished I could, would go against my own conscience and values.
But I would comfort her. I would take care of her in the aftermath of what happened.
We’d both been through something terrifying, and right now I didn’t care that her staying here would get side-eye from my friends and their families.
Right now I needed to feel safe. I needed her to feel safe.
I needed to be still for a while, to keep her still, to recover emotionally and mentally from what we’d both experienced.
I could deal with the rest of it later when I was in a better place to wrap my brain around things.
And if that pissed anyone off, I didn’t give a shit.
I crawled out of the blankets and got up to check on her. I’d just crack the door, listen for breathing. Give myself some peace of mind that she was still okay and then maybe I could go back to sleep. But when I opened my door, she was coming out of her room.
I blinked at her. “Hey, is everything okay? You’re not—”
“I’m fine,” she said, hugging her arms around herself. “Couldn’t sleep.”
I nodded. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “Me neither.”
Woofarine came out from behind her and plopped tiredly between us, looking up at our faces like he was trying to figure out why his parents were awake before the sun.
Larissa watched me in the dim light of the hallway. She had on a hoodie and some sweatpants. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun. I’d seen her in pajamas before, but this was different.
She was never supposed to be here like this.
My house.
Just the two of us.
Another stolen moment. Something I wasn’t supposed to have.
I cleared my throat. “I was going to check on you,” I said.
She nodded slowly. “You do that a lot.”
I didn’t know what to say to this.
“I was going to check on you,” she said.
“I’m okay—”
“Are you?”
Her eyes dropped to my bandaged hand.
“That had to be hard standing up to him like that,” she said. “And covering for him the way you did. As long as you did.” Her eyes came back up to mine. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“None of this is your fault—”
“Yes. It is. I should have picked better.”
“No. I should have smiled more.”
She gave me a small laugh despite herself.
This tiny acknowledgment of the elephant in the room. I would have been happier with you…
We contemplated each other in the dark.
“How are you feeling?” I asked softly. “Any hives? Wheezing?”
She shook her head.
I reached out and put a hand to her cheek to see if she was flushed. She leaned into it and my heart split down the middle.
I just wanted to hold her. Run away with her. Fix everything in her world and keep her insulated from anything that could harm her.
“I keep thinking my throat’s going to close,” she whispered.
“Do you want me to stay with you?”
She nodded into my palm.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “I can sleep in your room on the floor.”
I kept my hand on her face. Mostly because she didn’t seem to want me to move it and touching her calmed me. She looked up at me with those beautiful eyes. Inches between us. Oceans apart.
I wanted to kiss her. Press my lips softly to her mouth, rest my forehead against hers and whisper that I would protect her and make everything okay. I wanted to end this fucking nightmare, the nightmare of not being with her.
But the nightmare would go on.
After what we’d said in the car, we didn’t discuss what would happen next. Because nothing would happen. We understood that and what’s understood doesn’t need to be explained.
I would love her. She would regret picking Mike. And we wouldn’t ever do more than that because anything more than friends would hurt every single person I cared about. No matter what, whether my friendship with Mike continued after today or not.
I could never kiss her. I could never call her mine or lay with her in the dark.
So I gathered her into a hug and held her instead.
Something I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing just twenty-four hours before.
It wasn’t that it was okay now. It wasn’t, really, especially after what I’d said to her.
It was that I just didn’t care. She needed to be held and I needed to hold her.
It wasn’t romantic, wasn’t sexual. This was the friendship.
Two people, comforting each other after something traumatizing and scary.
I needed to feel her in my arms to remind myself that she was safe, she was with me, she was okay.
Tonight I was operating on some primal instinct, telling me to do what felt good and think about the morality of it later. Like stealing food when you’re starving.
Stealing moments.
She breathed out and I tucked her head under my chin and squeezed my eyes shut.
For now she would be taken care of. I didn’t have to worry about what Mike was doing or not doing. I could make her secure. Make her happy. Help her in any way she needed.
Be her friend.
I could do that without hurting anyone.
Except maybe myself.