AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It was a different kind of love then. Not necessarily romantic. But visceral. I was too young to really understand the grown-up kind of love. Instead, it was this yearning to be near someone who understood what loss felt like. To share a common denominator—death. And to do so without judgment.
I was the sad loser girl at school. But there, with him, I was someone else.
That love grew and continued to blossom with each passing day. That thread binding us tighter and tighter. He was my constant. My safe space. My best friend.
We had picnics in that cemetery, we played hide and seek, we made it ours. We talked about the past like it was a lifetime ago, when things weren’t always covered in darkness, and we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable. We shared things that we had never shared with anyone else. Not our remaining parent, not our so-called friends, not the school counselor that we were both forced to visit. Everyone else just wanted to fix us, to figure out how to put us back together.
We didn’t expect that of each other. Not then, not ever.
And when the time finally came for us to part, it was like I lost the glue that had been holding me steady for all those years we were friends. I didn’t just lose my best friend, my first kiss, my first love…I lost a piece of me. With the days that turned into weeks that morphed into months and months, I lost hope, too. I lost faith that I would everfeelagain. I was numb and hurt and I was so fucking mad. Angry that I allowed someone the power to wreck me after I gave them my heart. Furious that I was dumb enough to think he would eventually come back.
We were kids, but our connection was everything.
At one point, I almost convinced myself it was never real, that it never happened. That I had created it as some weird coping mechanism to deal with the loss of my mother. To distract me from my abusive, alcoholic father. But there was proof, reminding me that what Co and I had shared wasn’t a figment of my miserable imagination. Old polaroids of us at the beach, seashells we had collected, a tattered necklace he had made me out of string, a faded sweatshirt of his that he let me borrow one cold night that I never gave back.
And the biggest reminder of them all—the gaping hole in my chest.
Plus, massive trust issues.
Now, a decade later, that same beautifully broken boy, the one who helped me nurse a butterfly back to life we had found in the grill of his dad's old truck, stands in front of me, those ocean-blue eyes staring into mine.
“Don’t worry about me.” Co breaks off a piece of the muffin and pops it into his mouth.
That’s all I’ve done since the moment I laid eyes on him when we were just kids.
“You’re right, though.” He cups my cheek. “We haven’t gotten enough time together lately. What can I do?”
A throat clears from behind us. A bit of chatter following the interruption. I glance behind me to find Magnus and Dominic coming down the stairs and into our line of sight.
“Actually,” I say loud enough for all of them to hear.
“What are you doing up?” Dominic’s brows pinch together. “Did something happen?”
Magnus rushes around him to get to me first. He pulls my face between his hands and presses his lips onto mine. “God damn you’re gorgeous in the morning.”
I kiss him back. “But not in the afternoon?”
Dom reaches me, smoothing the hair that Magnus had tousled off my forehead. He plants his lips in the spot that he had cleared. “Really though, is everything okay?”
“Since I have you all here, and I have no idea for how long. We need to talk,” I tell them.
“Oh shit, this is serious.” Magnus hops onto the stool next to mine and holds his tattooed hands around one of mine. “Are you breaking up with us?”
The door to the garage area creaks open and Simon steps through.
“Am I interrupting something?” Simon stops with one foot still outside.
“Yes,” Co tells him.
“No,” I say louder. “You can come in.”
Magnus leans in closer and whispers, “Are you going to break up with usin frontof Beckett?”
I squeeze his hands. "No, goofball." I shift my gaze at Dom and Co. "But something does have to give. I hardly see any of you, and when I do, you're all evasive as hell. So, I propose, you carve some time out of your busy schedules for a date night. Actually, no, I insist. Non-negotiable."
Co and Dom exchange a look like they’re communicating telepathically or something.
“Okay, that’s way better than breaking up.” Magnus brings my hand to his mouth and kisses my knuckles. “And I absolutely agree.”
