Page 204 of Toxic Kiss

“Then let me help you.”

Emotion constricts my throat, making it hard to breathe. There is so much love and understanding oozing out of her.

“You’d better go put some clothes on, or I won’t make it through breakfast without laying you out on the table.”

Haven rises on her toes and kisses my cheek.

“One day, you have to stop running and let me in. I don’t scare easily,” she whispers in my ear, before turning and walking away.

My body starts shaking as soon as she leaves, and I’m not sure if it’s from the pain in my joints or the ache in my chest.

I’m a man in the middle of a storm, choking on my grief and pain. Haven has always been the one to throw me a lifeline.

I don’t deserve her.

I never did.

But it matters not. Haven is mine.

chapter

fifty-two

“Letting the memory of you go didn’t shatter me—it set me free.” – Cyrus

CYRUS

I don’t know how to start.

We’ve eaten breakfast, smiled, laughed, and teased one another. But now, sitting on the deck in the late morning sun…I’m exposed.

That’s the sick joke of it. I’ve written a thousand songs about pain. I bleed it into notebooks, into microphones, onto stages lit so brightly they make me feel holy for five minutes at a time. I make strangers cry with words I can’t say when they matter. But sitting here with Haven beside me, close enough that I can hear her breathing, I don’t know how to say the one thing that has been rotting inside me for years.

A bird sings in the trees, while a soft breeze rustles the leaves but the normally sweet sounds feels dangerous. It’s the kind of peace and quiet you see in a movie before everything explodes.

I turn in the wooden chair and stare at Haven as she sips her coffee. She looks softer somehow. Not weak. She could never look weak. But the last few days have taken a knife to both of us and left us trying to pretend we aren’t bleeding.

“I blamed you,” I say finally, and my voice is rough. “For years, I blamed you.”

Haven doesn’t speak. She just looks at me, and my heart races.

Fuck, I wish I could take that back.

I turn away because telling her the whole truth risks everything we’ve pieced together so far. But it is nothing more than a house of cards, just waiting to collapse. I drag a hand over my mouth and laugh once, but there’s nothing funny.

“Christ, I don’t know why I thought this wasn’t going to be hard to say. It should be hard. I should choke on it.”

“Cy—”

“No.” I shake my head. “Don’t make this easier for me. I don’t deserve easy. You asked me to open up, to let you in, to show you the whole truth.”

My words hang there like a knife swinging between us and threatening to cut us both.

I force myself to look at her then, and God, that’s a mistake, because Haven’s eyes have always been too honest, too green, and too fucking clear. They make me want to tell the truth even when I’d rather peel my own skin off.

“It was the birthday party,” I say. “Patrick’s eighteenth. At the beach house. You remember?”

Her throat moves when she swallows.