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It’s times like these that their absence burns the most.
“I should go.” They give me matching looks tinged in sympathy. I don’t want to see it. Rubbing at the phantom pain in my chest, I come up with an excuse. “I want to be there when Blair gets back. So I don’t miss her call to know she made it home safely.”
“Okay, sweetie,” Aunt Lottie says. “But please promise you’ll come by soon. I worry about you, all alone in that big house. It’s not right. You know you can come over and stay here whenever you want.”
She drops a kiss on my head before I stand.
“Yeah. Thanks Aunt Lottie.”
I say goodnight to them and head home with the leftovers they loaded on me. It’s empty when I get there, the weight of loneliness crushing down on my shoulders.
Releasing a strained breath, I have nothing to do but wait for Blair to return. After I place a piece of the pie she was eyeing earlier on the counter, I sink to the couch in the lounge, staring at the spot where I fucked her, completely unrestrained, allowing the monster inside free rein.
And she took it.
Begged me.
She didn’t look at me with disgust when she faced my inner monster, she spread her legs wider and gave me her claws, too.
My heart gives an irritating, needy flutter in my chest. I grab at the front of my shirt.
It’s strange how one person can make you feel so much. Blair makes me feel hate, desire, anger, lust, and something even more dangerous—love. The kind of love that’s unknown, like a star collapsing on itself to form a black hole. You can’t help but get dragged in by the gravitational pull. A love that doesn’t need light because it blooms even in the darkest depths.
I don’t know how to tell her. Not when she’s been closing herself off. I won’t bare my need for her when hers doesn’t match it.
She’s slipping away. All I want to do is hold on tighter. But if I do that, I’ll only make demands I shouldn’t.
If she wants to go so bad, fine.
I lean my elbows on my thighs and put my face into my hands, massaging the dull ache in my temples.
When she leaves, she’s got her mom to go home to. I’ll have an empty, overpriced prison cell all to myself once more.
The pang of jealousy gives way to the longing I’ve smothered. It seeps between the fractures in my internal boxes, bubbling to the surface with enough force to make me gasp for air. My stomach knots and my chest hurts.
I dig my fingers into my scalp in an attempt to shove it back down. The longing refuses to be tamed back into its place, eating at me instead as I wait for Blair to come back to me.
The door opens and the light in the hall clicks on. My head snaps up.
“Are you sitting in the dark?” Blair appears from the hall, shrugging out of the charcoal peacoat she borrowed from me. “Emo stereotype, much?
I scrape my fingers through my hair. “I guess.”
Blair’s brow pinches. Her makeup is smudged, the mascara dried underneath her eyes like it ran. Was she crying?
“How’s your mom?” My voice is too hard.
The grip on my composure is slipping thanks to the fear that’s lingered in the back of my head for days.
But the look in her eyes is wary and distant.
“She’s…stable,” Blair says, exhaustion evident in her petite frame. “They’ve got the fever under control, but the inflammation in her heart hasn’t cleared up.”
“Are her doctors not doing everything they can to—”
“They are. Apparently there’s just not enough known about her illness, so it’s not clear to them what caused her heart condition. All they keep saying is that autoimmune myocarditis is rare.” Blair’s eyes flash. “I’m going up to bed. It’s been a long day.”
I don’t want her to leave like everyone else does. No one stays long enough to love me past my issues, but for a while I believed she might.
