Page 67 of Loverboy

The pain only made me love him harder.

“You didn’t come home with me, you wouldn’t let me feed you, your stupid face looked miserable in our—”

“Milo,” I hissed, intertwining our blood-soaked fingers. The smell of copper filled my nose as I leaned in and pressed my lips to our knuckles.

He stepped into me, his head sinking into my chest. I wrapped my arms around him, hands splaying out over his back. My heart broke with every shudder that wracked his body.

“Are you ashamed of me?” His voice was muffled by the way I held him.

I could only imagine how exhausted he must have been, jumping from one conclusion to the next, convincing himself that it was true.

“No,” I murmured. “Why would you think that?”

“You lied.” He sniffled.

“About?”

“My blood.”

Understanding clicked into place. Milo had been in my room, looking through my things, and had found the vial. It left me feeling exposed, like his seeing it meant he knew my darkest secret, that I was irrevocably in love with him and had always secretly wished he’d be as obsessed with me as I was with him. The very secret that made me do terrible things on purpose, driving off girlfriends, wedging myself between him and people I thought might steal him away for good—pretending to protect him, when all I wanted was to keep him.

“Yeah, I did,” I admitted with caution, pulling back a fraction to look at him.

“So you’re ashamed of me. You need to hide it,” he accused.

It wasn’t the vial I was hiding.

“I’m not,” I rasped. “I don’t.”

Silence sucked up all of the air in the room.

“It’s not like you kept yours,” I said painfully.

He looked away. “I did.”

But what did keeping it mean to him?

How did he need me? How did he want me? When would it be my fucking turn? All of my restraint had been to keep what we had from falling apart. If he wasn’t ready to acknowledge that everything he needed was right here, I couldn’t be honest with him. I wouldn’t be the one to ruin everything we’d built.

The quiet between us swelled, coming alive and pressing against my ribs. I could almost feel his breathing like it was my own, slow and uneven. Every beat of it dragged me closer to saying something that I wouldn’t be able to take back.

“You’re bleeding,” Milo observed tiredly.

“We both are.” I clenched my jaw, torn between tending to our wounds and forcing him to elaborate on what he said.

“I’m fine.” The shame was written all over his face.

“Sit,” I demanded.

“But you—”

I scowled. “I said sit.”

Milo moved on wobbly legs towards the couch, lowering himself onto it without another word, while I headed to the bathroom to retrieve the first aid kit from underneath the sink. I crouched down on the tiled floor, taking a look at my hand while I had the moment to myself.

The cut ran deep, crossing over the scar I already had—a reminder to keep my promise, that the blood we had shared was real. I wanted him deeper than my blood, buried inside my bone marrow, someplace where he’d always be safe—where he’d always be mine.

I set the kit on the bathroom counter and turned the tap to wash my hands, the water clouding pink before swirling away. With my nerves settling, the sting was sharper than the initial cut, but I stayed focused on the distant creaking of the couch cushions and little sniffles from the living room.