“Shouldn’t you be happy about that?” he mutters, sounding perfectly sober.
I take another look at the bottles around him. Three whiskey bottles lie empty on the floor, and one stands untouched. How is he still sober?
“I want to kill you myself. I don’t need these things’ help.”
He laughs. The sound is as dark and void as the moonless night. He doesn’t say anything. He looks away from me and takes a long drag from his cigarette, then releases the smoke slowly.
“Your lungs will be charcoal black by morning,” I snap at him, then snatch the cigarette from his hand and throw it to the floor. “And the same will happen to me from passive smoking.”
His empty gaze returns to me, and before I can react, he takes my hand and pulls me down onto him. I fall against his hard thighs. He wraps a hand around my waist and pulls me closer onto his lap. I don’t want to, but I can’t ignore how his hardness grows beneath me.
I try to push myself away from him, but he holds me tight, not letting me move an inch. His breath carries the smell of alcohol and tobacco. He’s taken down so much of that poison that I feel like I’m going tipsy just breathing him in.
“Let me go, Hunter. Don’t forget what I said about you touching me,” I hiss.
He releases my wrist and lifts his hand to my face, brushing my cheek with his knuckles.
“I can never forget a single thing you’ve said to me, baby,” he murmurs. “You’re the best part of my memories.” His palmrests against my jaw, his thumb tracing my lower lip. “Even when you say you hate me… even when you say you’ll kill me… you’re still the best thing in my life. The only thing that makes me feel alive.”
I grab his hand and pull it away from my face.
“Will you cry if I die, baby?”
I try to get up from his lap and fail.
“What do you think?” I reply, icily.
He smiles, and it’s the ugliest curve of his lips I’ve ever seen. I hate it, and the way it clenches my heart.
“My brain says you won’t, but…” He takes my hand and places it on his chest. “It says you will. Maybe you’ll search for me everywhere, like you used to search for him, once you lose me.”
I pull my hand from his grip, away from his chest.
“Your brain is right,” I mutter, looking away.
We stay silent after that. He keeps staring at me while I keep looking away.
“How am I less than him? What does he have that I don’t?” His voice sounds gutted. The question comes out hollow, scraped clean of everything but exhaustion.
I finally look at him, and regret it instantly. I’m human, and humans feel bad when they see another human in such a shattered state, like there’s nothing left in him to hold him together.
“You’re not less, Hunter. You’re just not him. If you had loved someone the way I love Salvario, you would understand. Some things are irreplaceable.”
He lets out that haunted laugh again, pressing his head back against the couch. Then the laughter dies, just as unnaturally as it started. He keeps staring up.
“I don’t understand your love. The only person I’ve ever loved is someone who will never love me back. The love I know is pain. Endless pain.”
A tear slides from the corner of his red-rimmed eye, down his cheek to his throat. My eyes burn. I blink quickly.
He holds my gaze. “Still, I can’t stop loving her. Canyouunderstand my love?”
I force myself to speak past the knot in my throat. “We both don’t understand each other’s love.”
“Is there nothing I can do to make you love me the way you love him?” he breathes, the words so fragile they almost vanish into the silence.
“It doesn’t work like that, Hunter.” Now I feel bad for him, so bad that I want to get drunk with him and cry with him.
His eyes redden further. “Tell me how it works. I’ll do anything you say.” His voice breaks, and tears fall freely down his cheeks.
