Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
I float through the rest of the week, feeling lighter than I have in a while and hopeful that maybe this thing between Wes and me is real.
Maybe it is possible. I’ll still cradle it with the utmost caution and care, but for once, my hands are stable, and I’m not as worried about breaking it as I was before.
I’m not as terrified of my own demons as I usually am.
Could that mean I’m stronger than I think?
I wouldn’t get ahead of yourself, warns my subconscious.
But today, I ignore it completely.
“Are you sure you have to leave me tomorrow?” Wes pouts, closing the laptop on his chest as credits start to roll. We just finished watching a movie in his bedroom, and I push up to a seated position, resting my back against his headboard.
“Unfortunately, I do,” I say, unable to help my responding frown. “My mom will kill me if I don’t help with the basement.”
Wes sets his laptop on the nightstand and sits up beside me, turning his body so that we’re facing each other on the bed.
“My offer still stands, you know. Take me home with you, and I’ll sort through everything myself.
You can just stand in the corner and order me around.
‘Move this. Trash that. Now drop and give me twenty.’” He pauses.
“Actually, that sounds kinda hot now that I think about it.”
I shoot him a funny look. “Being forced to do push-ups?”
“No, taking orders from you. I love it when you get all feisty.”
My face warms, and I playfully nudge his knee. “Wes.”
He cracks a smile. “What? You don’t want the chance to treat me like your own personal lackey? This is a once-in-a-lifetime offer, Ives.”
“As much as I’d love to boss you around for the day, bringing you home would be…” I trail off, trying to find the right words to describe the shit show that would ensue if I sprang Wes on my family.
“A wonderful surprise?” he jokes.
I almost laugh at that. “I wish. It would be a bad idea,” I tell him seriously. He nods like he understands, though I’m not sure he really does considering his family is nothing like mine. I see the disappointment in his eyes before he masks it, and my heart pangs. “I’m sorry, Wes.”
He gives me an easy smile that only makes me feel worse. “Hey, nothing to be sorry about, okay? I was pushing my luck. I get greedy if someone doesn’t put me in my place.”
“Okay,” I mutter, but I’m still afraid that I’ve hurt his feelings. He picks up on the false note in my voice and leans forward, his hand reaching up to cradle my cheek.
“Hey,” he murmurs, his dark eyes searching mine. “Everything’s fine, okay?”
“I wish I could take you,” I say softly.
His thumb grazes my cheekbone, his face only inches away from my own. “I know you do.”
I lean closer, pulled in by his magnetic force, and his eyes drop to my mouth. My breath stutters out as my mind flashes back to our kiss in his car, and judging by the way his eyes darken, he’s picturing it, too.
Slowly, sweetly, he closes the distance between us and brushes his lips against mine. It’s a feather touch, one that jumpstarts my heart, and my eyes drift closed.
One brush of our lips. Two brushes. Three. My eyes flutter open as he pulls away, and when his thumb traces along my jawline, I lean into his touch. His hand weaves through my hair, fingers closing around the back of my head, and he pulls me back in for another kiss.
This time, I part my lips, tentatively testing my tongue against the seam of his. He parts with a soft groan that sends a jolt through my body and tingles straight down my spine, and I can’t help the responding whimper in my throat.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I should probably stop, but I don’t want to.
Careful…
His tongue strokes mine, and my insides shake and shudder.
Our kisses deepen, turning almost desperate now, and I press my body closer to his, molding myself along his muscle.
This is nothing like it was in the car, I realize.
In his bed, we’re not confined by the seats or the straps or the hour.
In this room, in this bubble, I can feel all of him if I want to.
Do I want to?
Careful…
I lie back on the bed, pulling him with me.
Here, I can feel the heat of his breath, the strength of his hands, the warmth of his lips on my skin.
He lowers his body over mine, careful not to crush me with his weight, and my thighs tighten around his hips.
He kisses me eagerly as our bodies press together, and my eyelids flutter at the friction, my breath coming short.
Even with our clothes on, I love the feel of him this way, love the pressure of his hips rocking into mine as we kiss, and I wonder why we haven’t been doing this from the moment we met.
What have I been so afraid of all this time?
“God, I can’t get enough of you,” Wes murmurs before he trails a series of kisses along my jaw and down my neck.
I tilt my head back, arching slightly to give him better access as he lightly sucks the sensitive spot just below my earlobe.
My stomach dips, and I tug him closer, desperate and breathless and needy.
And then his lips are back on mine, and I’m weaving my fingers through his hair like I’ve imagined doing a million times, and he’s kissing me like he’s been imagining it for a million and one.
My hips roll against his, chasing the growing ache inside me, and his fingertips trail up the sensitive skin of my inner arm. His hand closes around my wrist—
—and presses me into the bed. His hands tighten. His grip is too firm, and I’m too drunk, and I want to go home I want to go home I want to go home.
“Stop saying that,” he says. “You wanted this.”
I want to go home.
I SHOVE him back, yanking my arm out of his grip as I push up to a seated position, and my entire world comes crashing down around us. “I can’t—don’t—I need—”
“Ivy,” he says, bewildered. He reaches out to touch me, but I throw up my hands, scrambling off the bed and away from him.
“Don’t,” I snap. I never snap. It feels horrible coming out, like some ugly, dark creature lashing out from inside me, and I want to scold it, tame it, kill it.
I want to take back the violent word that just came out of me, but I can’t because Wes’s eyes are way too wide, and he’s raising his hands up in front of him.
He’s staring at me like he doesn’t recognize me, and I know I can’t take it back.
I want to, though. I want to take it back because he’s safe.
He’s supposed to be safe. “I’m sorry—I—”
I don’t feel right. I feel wrong. Really wrong.
The memory’s dislodged itself. It’s done souring my gut and fisting my heart and now it’s knock, knock, knocking at the door to my mind, and I can’t stop it.
I’m terrified, because once it muscles its way inside and detonates like a bomb all over my brain, I know the next stop is my mouth, where it will eject like bile over anyone and everyone around me.
Normal words won’t come out when I want them to, sure, but these will.
I know they will, and I worry I will contaminate everyone with this memory.
I will contaminate Wes.
I will contaminate the girl I am with Wes. Someone almost normal.
But most of all…most of all, I worry I’ll contaminate us. I’ll ruin this perfect, delicate thing between us, if I haven’t already.
“Ivy, what’s going on?” he asks quietly. “Did I do something? Talk to me. Please.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t find the words. I can’t breathe.
I try to inhale, desperate for oxygen, but my airways seal up, and I’m incapable of drawing in a full breath.
I squeeze my eyes shut tight and try to concentrate on the numbers, conscious of the fact that I’m full-on hyperventilating now, but my body’s all wrong, and I don’t want to be here anymore.
There’s a whooshing in my ears as panic explodes in my chest, the aftershock sweeping through my limbs, leaving them shaky and weak. My lungs forget how to work, the air around me thin and sharp, and my breathing becomes ragged. Shallow. Painful.
“It’s going to be okay,” says Wes, his voice urgent beside me. My vision starts to spin. My chest cinches tighter, tighter, tighter. “Inhale for four, hold it for four, release for four. Ivy, inhale for four and hold it. Come on. You can do this, baby.”
The soothing tenor of his voice winds around me, and somehow, I listen. Somehow, I do what he says, and the tension inside me begins to uncoil, leaving room for me to breath.
“Good, keep doing that. Just keep doing that. Over and over.”
Inhale for four. Hold for four. Exhale for four.
“You’re doing so good.”
Finally, I regain control. My heart rate slows, and the world stands still. The pressure unwinds, and my lungs inflate. When I look down at my hands, I don’t recognize them. Nails bitten to the quick. Freckle on the left thumb. Fingers so pale they belong on a corpse.
Wes keeps his distance but crouches a foot away, concern etched so deep into the lines of his face I fear it’ll leave permanent creases.
I see the gears turning behind his eyes.
I see him try to make sense of what just occurred.
He’s collecting broken shards, one by one, and trying to piece me back together, but they’re sharp, and it’s not so easy.
I don’t blame him for attempting to solve me like a riddle, but he won’t make it there without a couple more clues, and I can’t give them to him.
I just can’t. “What just happened?” he murmurs. “Talk to me, Ivy.”
What just happened?
I don’t have words. Not ones I’m capable of sharing. I can’t taint him.
“I have to go,” I mutter, scanning the room for my things. I don’t even recognize my own voice. It’s monotone. Lifeless. It belongs to a stranger. Shame courses through me, and I don’t look at him. Can’t look at him.
I want to go home.
“Maybe you should stay here for a little while.”
I shake my head, already tugging on my coat. “I can’t.”
I can’t stand to be here anymore, taking up too much real estate in his mind as it reruns the last five minutes.
I don’t want to occupy his thoughts, and I have a sudden violent urge to carve myself out somehow.
The violence doesn’t last long. Despair takes its place as the memory hovers just beneath the surface of my mind, too close, too close, too clo—
I want to go home.
I don’t want to occupy my own head right now, either.
“Well, let me at least drive you,” he pleads, stepping toward me.
I turn to fully face him and hold up my hands again, making him halt in his steps. I can’t meet his eyes, so I focus on the spot beside his ear like the coward I am. “I-I can’t do this, Wes. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for wasting your time. Don’t follow me. I need…space.”
His face crumples. In real time I see it, the pain I caused, engraved into his expression. And instead of trying to make it right, instead of trying to fix the damage I did to the man who single-handedly breathed life back into my soul, I turn my back on him and hurry out of the room.
He doesn’t call after me. He doesn’t stop me. He doesn’t follow me.
Because I took a perfect thing and turned it rotten.
And I hate myself for it.
It’s not smart to be walking home alone this time of night, but I do it anyway.
The cold slaps my face, but I deserve its brutality. The tears won’t stop. They spill down my cheeks and into my mouth, but I don’t wipe them away.
Maybe they’ll drown me.
When I make it to the apartment, I have a sore throat and a raging headache. I need to stop crying, but the harder I try, the faster the tears fall.
I tear off my shirt and chuck it across the room with as much force as I can muster, and then I stare at my chest in the mirror for too long.
I half expect to find bruising on the skin over my heart.
It feels black and blue inside. Battered.
But there’s nothing on the surface I can see. It’s all an illusion.
I strip off everything else and crawl into bed, where I just…
collapse. My head sinks like a weight into the pillow.
My limbs turn to lead. My eyes droop shut.
It’s taking too much energy not to dissect what just happened.
Too much energy to keep my head above water, so I don’t drown from the shame and embarrassment of it all.
You knew this would happen.
I hoped it wouldn’t. I’m heartbroken it did.
Wes’s broken face pops into my head, and I can’t stop the tears from drenching my pillow.
Did I do something?
You were too nice. Too sweet. Too perfect.
You deserve someone whole.
My phone buzzes beneath the blanket. I rifle around until I find it and squint at the bright screen.
Wes: I know you said you need space but at least let me know you made it home okay.
I don’t want to respond, but that would be too mean, and apparently, I’m drawing a line somewhere.
Me: I’m home.
The dots appear, and then he sends another text.
Wes: Goodnight, Ivy.
I debate responses in my head.
I’m sorry.
You did nothing wrong.
Don’t hate me.
You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.
I don’t deserve you.
You deserve someone whole.
In the end, I send nothing. I heart the message and turn off my phone, tucking it under my pillow. Then, I lie there until my mind’s too exhausted to torture me anymore.