Chapter 34
Dear B,
All of us are dying. Every day we get closer to that inevitable end. My Dad’s beard is streaked with gray now. My Mom has lines around her eyes I don’t remember seeing without a smile on her face.
I’m dying.
I feel it as sure as I feel your loss, B.
I feel it in the way your brother holds me when I finally drag myself away from the bottle long enough to crawl to his door.
He whispers his pleas to me in the dead of night. To get help. To get better.
It lost its purpose somewhere along the way. It lost its cheap escape and became my downfall.
Almost three years, B.
Three fucking years without you.
Help me.
Please.
No one at the bar knows who I am, or that my heart is in a townhouse at an address burned in my mind, and half of my soul is buried six feet under across town. No one knows that every drink I order is like a ticking time bomb that I continue to deny is about to implode on my life.
I drink until the other half of my soul, the one still chained up inside of me, drags me to face the redwood door.
I don’t remember the drive. I don’t remember the Uber driver parking his car or climbing out of the back seat.
But I remember the way my hand trembled when I lifted it.
The way the wood under my palm was still warm from the sun that just set, and how I had tears in my eyes from the very real possibility that the man in this home wouldn’t want this version of me on his doorstep.
I didn’t want it for him.
I felt like I was tainting the new welcome mat under my feet.
I stood there so long, ignoring the way my skin felt wrong on my body and how my stomach cramped with the all too familiar reminder that I haven’t had enough poison today to satisfy, but the few shots I had taste fresh on my tongue when my trembling hand finally balls and knocks. Once, twice.
The moment hangs there, nothing but the crickets breaking up the quiet of the evening. I step back, my heart in my fucking throat. My nerves fizzle with each second, and I'm about ready to tuck tail and run when the door opens.
And he's there.
Barefoot. Black sweatpants. I flick my eyes briefly up, just enough to see black curls longer than I remember, a hoodie pulled over his head. A scruffy jaw.
My focus drops once more to his bare feet, but I can feel his eyes taking me in. I watch those feet step closer and close my eyes.
“Kitten,” he croaks.
I flinch at the name, suck in a breath at the visceral ache it causes, but nothing comes out.
Too much and not enough lodged in my throat.
Words I want to say, words that I should have already said.
Instead, I lift my face just enough to look up as far as I dare.
His Adam's apple bobs with a swallow, and I want to fucking cry at how good it feels just to have his damn eyes on me.
I don't have a clue what I look like. I haven't slept in days. I'm half hungover, half buzzed from the amount I had to drink just to get my body to stop shaking. I'm a fucking mess, and we both know it.
“Have you been drinking?”
I shrug.
He exhales harshly through his nose, and I think maybe he'll slam the door after all, but he steps aside.
“Come in.”
I do. Of course I do.
I barely make it past the entryway before I feel fingers brush my wrist. A grounding touch, needing to assure himself I'm really here.
His house smells like clean laundry and cedarwood, with that subtle hint that's purely Bowen. It's small, quiet, and warm. It feels calm, and nothing at all like the mess I've made of my life. My space at home is chaotic and messy, a perfect representation of what I've become.
“You shouldn't be here like this,” he says softly, but he doesn't mean it. Not really.
I'm trembling from the inside out when I step closer to him. Watch the way he sucks in a breath and holds it in his chest when I let my fingers reach out for his arm.
“How else should I be?” This is me now, Boe.
“It’s been weeks, Kit.” I can hear the strain of pain in his words. The subtle accusation they hold.
“I know,” I whisper.
I tried to save you from this. I tried.
Something in him crumbles.
He reaches for me, and I fall into him.
His hands are gentle.
Mine are anything but.
I grip and claw the front of his hoodie in my hands like he's my only lifeline in turbulent waters. I'm slowly drowning without him, and that's the truth. His hoodie is warm and soft when I bury my face into him, and I let out a sound of tormented relief when his strong arms envelop me.
Bowen exhales, long and low, and I feel it move through both of us.
One of my hands releases the fabric long enough to search for his neck. To feel the proof of his life racing against my palm.
He's real. He's here. He's okay.
He tilts my chin up, and I let my eyes slide closed.
I don't know who kisses who first. Just that it starts slow. Soft. A quiet, terrifying kind of kiss. A kiss not shared amongst the monsters in the dark. Not a kiss that feels necessary for survival, but a kiss of pure aching want.
Bowen's lips part, his hands moving to the back of my neck, and the touch of his tongue against my own is a fuse lit in both of us. His gentle touches from a moment ago are replaced with hands that feel desperate, just as desperate as my own.
I don't protest when he runs them down my back, but I whimper my displeasure when he takes his mouth away long enough to lift me.
Then I'm wrapped around him, consumed by him.
His scent, his touch, his nipping teeth on my lip, his fingers gripping my hips.
Holding me as close to his body as he can get me.
It's not close enough. I don't think it could ever be close enough.
My legs are still squeezed around his waist when we tumble down on a soft bed. His bed. The kernel of my old self that survives somewhere inside is absolutely buzzing with satisfaction that I've found myself here. Under Bowen Briggs. Boe. My Boe.
My Boe, who huffs a deep and raspy laugh when I grumble at not being able to get him out of his hoodie and shirt fast enough. I drop my hands and legs, keeping them bent on either side of him, but I watch with hooded eyes and a racing heart as he leans up on bent knees and shucks off the clothes.
His chest is familiar, but not. He's not the same seventeen-year-old that I used to try not to stare at and inevitably fail miserably.
There is a smattering of black hair over his chest that tapers down an abdomen he has obviously spent time sculpting.
The ridges of his abs flex with his movements, and I'm loath to lose the visual, but then he's leaning over me again, hands on either side of my head.
I stare at the mole over his lip.
“We can slow down, kitten.”
Slow down? My body is screaming for him.
My answer is to struggle out of my own shirt, pulling his stomach down to mine when there are finally no barriers between us.
And his answer to that is warm lips on my jaw.
My neck. Teeth digging into my shoulder.
Fingers a gentle contrast running up and down my sides.
The contrast of rough and soft makes my already fuzzy head positively spin.
His hands are a shot of Whiskey. His mouth is a cocktail full of everything I need.
I don't know when the rest of my clothes came off, or when he shucked out of his own.
But absolutely nothing in my life has ever felt as right as I feel now, completely naked and completely wrapped up with Bowen Briggs.
I feel stripped down in every way possible.
The evidence of our want is pressed together between us. He groans softly when I press up against him, and I shudder when he returns the movement.
His curls tickle my chest when he leans down to kiss and suck across my skin.
I want him to leave marks all over my body.
I want there to be a visual reminder tomorrow, when I'm no longer cocooned safe away from the world, that this was real.
For a short time, I was his, and he was mine, and nothing else fucking mattered.
I bury my fingers in his soft curls and let the rest of the world go. It's just him and I here.
I moan, my hips bucking up when a hand engulfs my erection. Bowen Briggs is touching me.
“Is this okay?”
Okay? Is he serious?
“More,” I moan. I need more. I need everything.
He grasps us together as best he can, stroking slow and steady. Sure movements that have my eyes rolling closed. Pleasure explodes in tiny bursts through my whole body when his thumb glides across the head of my cock, and I whimper.
“More,” I say again. My voice is quiet but needy, and Bowen hums an approving sound. His breaths are just as choppy as my own.
To my dismay, he lets go of us and leans up, taking his mouth and touch away.
“How do you… Do you want me… Or I could…” I wish I could find whatever emotion he's feeling in his eyes, but I'm a coward.
Instead, I roll onto my side, heart beating a frantic, nervous rhythm when I bend my top leg, exposing exactly how I want this to go.
In another universe, there is a version of myself that's not emboldened by hardship and depression.
A version that's softer and looks at Bowen in the eye when he finally comes to this pinnacle with me.
It's tender and full of the kind of nerves that only come with the moment one loses their virginity.
But I'm not the same person I used to be. In this universe, I'm desperate for the sanctity of Bowen's touches. The monsters are waiting for me just outside this room, hovering. Waiting to dig their claws back in and drag me back to hell on earth with them.
I don't have time for the shyness that used to own me. All I have is the honesty of my need, and right now, I need Bowen to own me.
There's a pop of a cap and a warm breath on my nape a few seconds later. Lips. Kiss after kiss. A nose taking a deep inhale in the hair at the back of my head. The heat of a chest at my back, and a slick glide down my ass with searching fingers. We both shudder when he finds where I want him.
I gasp at the first feel of intrusion, but Bowen is there with a sucking kiss right below my ear. “Have you dreamt of this, kitten? Of me?” he rasps softly.
I moan, nodding as he presses in deeper with his finger. When my tense body relaxes, one turns to two. And when the pressure becomes uncomfortable, Bowen is there.
“You're so tight, kitten. So soft.” He groans, pulling his fingers out slowly and then pressing back in. Deeper. More. “Is this what you thought about when you couldn't keep your eyes off of me?”
I flush, from pleasure. From him calling me out. Confirming that he knew, that he always knew. I tilt my head back into him, and he bites into my neck. He works me until I'm open and on the edge of a place I've never been taken to before. Then his fingers are pulled gently from my body.
“No,” I groan, but Bowen just shushes me. There's another snap of a bottle cap, and the feel of Bowen moving behind me. Then his warmth is back.
“Tell me,” he says. I can feel him right. There.
“Please, Boe…” And before his name is even off my lips, he's pressing into me. It's too much and not enough, and I moan loudly, the sound mixing and dancing with the noises of his own pleasure. I don't breathe until he's fully seated inside.
“This could be us, Kit. All the time. Don't you want that? Want me?” His stuttered words fan over my cheek, his hands feel like they're everywhere. It's all I can do to grab hold of the sheets and hang on.
Yes. I think. Yes, I want you.
But my monsters don't care what I want. I'm not strong enough, not like Bowen. But I reach back for him, holding his head against me while he takes us to a place I'm not sure I deserve to go.
“Boe,” I choke out, tears clouding my vision.
I lost my virginity to Bowen Briggs. The love of my life. Back to his chest. Hiding. A coward. Stealing moments of bliss.
I didn't look at his face once.