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What’s wrong with me?
Just as I think the question, I hear the floorboards creak behind me, toward the open door to the hall.
A shiver runs down my spine as my eyes open wider and then narrow. Swallowing thickly, I know it wasn’t just the chill in the air that made the old boards bend in the night. I can hear whoever it is walking closer.
It better be him, I think bitterly as I reach slowly into the nightstand. My uncle left everything to me, and that means his gun too.
“You don’t need it,” the deep voice calls out from the doorway just as my fingertips brush the cold metal. Slowly shutting the drawer, I let my eyes close and try to calm the adrenaline racing through my body.
“Why are you here?” I ask him without turning to face him. My chest aches with a pain I can’t describe. Sebastian used to come all the time at night when I first moved in here.
“It’s been a while,” I tell him and hate the nostalgia in my tone.
He’s quiet; he always is.
He kissed me, he followed me, and then he left me alone.
“I’m fine,” I tell him and then turn in bed, slowly bringing myself up to sit cross-legged under the covers. “As fine as I can be.” Years ago, when he’d come, he wouldn’t leave until he believed me when I said those words.
And I loved him for it. Truly and deeply, I loved him for it. If it had been anyone else, I’d have been terrified, angry and a mix of everything hateful, but it’s not just anyone. It’s Sebastian.
Tears cloud my vision of his dark shadowy frame in the doorway.
“You don’t look fine.”
“Well gee,” I say sarcastically, bitterly even as I wipe my eyes. “So kind of you to point out the obvious.” It’s been years since he’s visited me and I’m not the same person I was back then. I’ve stopped praying for him to come and wishing he’d slip into bed with me and hold me.
I don’t want to be held by anyone anymore.Even as I think it, I know it’s not true.
“Just go,” I tell him and then lie down, turning my back to him and pulling the covers up closer to my face so I can use the soft bedding to wipe at my eyes. “You’re good at leaving,” I add and hate myself for even bothering to speak with him when he merely chuckles. It’s a deep low rumble that fills the bedroom and sends a shiver of want across my skin, igniting something I thought was long forgotten. It seems the hate I have for him leaving me, ignoring me day in and day out isn’t enough to drown out the desire to be held by him after all.
“Someone told me you might be leaving.”
“Who said that?” I barely speak the question. My heart does a stupid pitter-patter at the thought of leaving him. My heart is stupid. I listen as he walks into the bedroom. He stops somewhere far from the bed, but I don’t know where and I don’t turn to look at him.
“Are you leaving?” he asks me.
“I hope not,” I answer him, and the truth of that answer makes me close my eyes tightly. I couldn’t wait to get out of here, but I need a place to stay. Everyone needs a home, somewhere they can run to.
“Is it money? Or are you moving somewhere else to be with other family?” he asks me.
“There is no other family,” I admit, feeling lonelier by the second.
“So, it’s money?”
Time ticks by slowly until I answer him, “Yeah.”
He’s quiet and doesn’t say anything for a long time. So long, I think maybe he’s left me until he says, “It’ll be okay. Go to sleep, Chloe Rose.”
I remember thinkinghow much I wish I didn’t want him to be here as I drifted to sleep, feeling his eyes on me. But I did. I had no one. And of everyone in this place, he was the only one I wanted. So, if that was the way I could have him, I’d take it.
I don’t know if he heard me later that night when I woke up and started to cry out of nowhere. I confessed how much I missed him and how lonely I was as I wiped the tears away, still huddled in my spot, gripping the pillow. Or maybe that part was a dream. It’s hard to know anymore.
SEBASTIAN
“Well, you only have one more year,” I tell Carter.
“I don’t have time for it,” he answers me as he bounces the old tennis ball against the worn brick of the building.
