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“But I’m not running anywhere.” His words sounded a lot like a promise. “Not without you.”
I turned my head then, our lips meeting as I tumbled deep into his web. With every stroke of his tongue, he bound me tighter until it felt like my heart was stitched to his.
Until there was no hope at all for me to untangle.
And so the truth I used to push him away only tugged me closer, only made it harder for my heart not to love him. Maybe that would have been okay if everything I’d told him had been a complete picture of what he was getting.
I wondered if he’d still be proud of me—if he would still want me—if he knew the stuff I told him just barely scratched the surface.
14
Arsen
How do you fall in love?
Slowly and then all at once.
I was slow to watch him from afar. Brief glances and curious glimpses across campus, puzzling over the AirPods but never even close to guessing the reason they were there.
What was fleeting curiosity, perhaps even just genial attraction, morphed into lingering glances beneath neon light while loud music drowned out any thought as to why I should look away. At first, when our stares would cross, he averted his gaze. The disinterest never bothered me… until it did.
Until he swayed his tight swimmer ass to the beat of the song I’d composed and his aloof attention turned interested. And then the slow progression of awareness snowballed into something that quite frankly took over.
Now the rest was details. Doing anything but loving this man was not an option. Doing anything but keeping him would be impossible.
God help anything that tried to get in the way because some love might be fickle. Some love might be fleeting.
But this love?
It defied time and logic to simply exist.
I meant it when I said we didn’t have to fit to belong because fitting denoted changing ourselves to conform to a predetermined shape. But belonging meant change wasn’t required. Belonging meant acceptance no matter the shape.
The second my G-Class rolled into the parking lot of the Westbrook police station, the glass doors opened and Niles stepped out. Despite his high-class, put-together look, he was perturbed. It clung to him like a bad odor that his thousand-dollar cologne couldn’t mask. He didn’t cross his arms or even tap his polished loafers. He did, however, spare a glance at the expensive watch around his wrist.
If he thought his clear disdain of my lateness would make me contrite, he clearly didn’t know me at all. I didn’t exactly plan to be late, but the princess riding shotgun got priority. I would literally stop the clock to listen to anything he wanted to say.
Misophonia. Tinnitus. I wondered more and more if he was on the spectrum, but he didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. The mention of his parents torpedoed him into an anxiety attack, and I didn’t want to make it worse. I’d learn about him slowly, something that bothered me a lot less than it did an hour ago.
Probably because I was already all at once in love with him.
After pulling into a spot in the back of the lot, I shot him a glance. “Stay there. I’ll come around.”
Exiting the SUV, I pocketed the keys and went around the back, lifting my hand to acknowledge Niles. I swear he huffed in annoyance. I don’t know what the fuck he was so pissed off about. He was getting paid by the hour. My delay was just more cash in his pocket.
Forgetting about my salty lawyer, I went around the passenger side where Matthew was already out of the seat and standing in the open door.
Glowering, I said, “I told you I’d come around.”
He scoffed. “I can get out of the car by myself.”
“That’s not the point.”
He turned, tugging the hem of the hoodie he’d brought with and slid on. The edge of his T-shirt stuck out beneath it, creating a little white band around his hips. Something about that little detail charmed me immeasurably.
“Then what’s the point?” he asked, having no idea the hold he had on me.
As I stepped into the open door with him, our bodies nearly bumped with how close we stood. His cheeks flushed when I adjusted the hood that was crooked against his back. When that was done, I gently tugged the strings lying against his chest. “The point is I want to help you.”
