Chapter Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Eight
“SYDNEY.” SOMEONE IS REPEATING my name over and over, their voice frantic. But I can hardly hear them. Screaming spears my ears, drowning everything else out.
“Sydney. Look at me.”
Look at me, bubbeleh, you don’t have to be afraid.
You have to see what you’ve done. Look at me!
I squeeze my eyes tighter, my throat burning.
“Sydney, I’m right here. It’s okay. You’re safe. Look at me.”
My heart is pounding so hard it’s going to crack into a thousand jagged shards.
“Sydney.”
Peter.
I open my eyes and the screaming finally stops.
Peter’s face is half-glowing from the lights outside.
His hair is ruffled, sticking up in the back.
His lips are pressed together in this sort of anguished way, his eyes searching mine.
Both his hands are holding my face, so lightly I can barely feel his fingertips.
But they’re there. My body is shaking, shaking, shaking.
“Sydney. What’s going on? What was your nightmare about?”
“I …” The words are all there, raging, mauling each other in my throat, but if I let them out, I’ll never be able to get them back in.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Peter says, his palms still on my face. His thumbs brush my temples, his green eyes holding mine. His hands, my face, his fingers threading through the back of my hair … I want to tell him. I do. But I can’t.
“Sometimes …” Peter pauses, his voice low. “Sometimes trying to understand you is like turning on a light to get a better look at a shadow. You just … disappear on me.”
Oh god. He looks so … sad. And my heart lurches, like it’s trying to reach out and grab him. But he’s right. I’m so unbelievably fucked up. And I do—want to disappear sometimes. I’m cursed. I drop my head, focusing on the zigzag pattern on the comforter. “Peter … I’m sorry, I just …”
“No, it’s okay,” he says. “That’s not what I mean. What I mean is …” He stops, his breath steady and even, like he’s focusing really hard on staying calm. “What I’m trying to say is … we don’t need to turn on the light. I can sit with you in the dark.”
I look back up at him, my eyelashes wet. And I just … God, the needing him is suddenly so strong it’s pulling at my chest, yanking on every part of me. But I still can’t bring myself to do anything. To even speak.
“And it’s okay”—Peter swallows—“if you don’t feel the same way about me. If I’m not … the thing you need. If I’m not—”
“Stop,” I say. “Just stop.” I don’t know if it’s the darkness of the room, or the soft hum of the hotel air conditioner, or the way a slant of dimmed golden light is illuminating the side of his face, but I can’t let him finish that sentence.
I can’t even let him think it. “It’s not that I don’t want …
It’s …” My heart is slamming against my chest a million miles a minute and I’m shaking again, but Peter stays.
He always stays. “Jesus, Peter, if I fall for you I might never be able to get back up.”
“Sydney …”
And then my body is moving without my control.
I reach out and touch his cheek, his jaw flexing under my fingertips.
He stays so still, his breathing unsteady, like he’s afraid to move.
Afraid I might run away. And he just looks so pure and sweet and good.
Fuck it, I can’t help it anymore. I want him.
I tilt my head up to him. And then he’s there, his lips on mine, so lightly, so soft, and we’re barely touching but it’s like I can feel his entire soul in the space between our mouths.
And I put my arms around his neck and pull him closer and he kisses me until my cold lips turn warm, and I’m not shaking anymore.