AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I nodded into his hair. "You remembered."
He sat up. His eyes were now clear, and much calmer. Traces of whatever frenzy had been gripping him still flickered, but now he seemed to have regained control.
"I remember everything that night," he said clearly. "It was the night you started to let me in."
I remembered everything too. I remembered the way he had shown up in New York unbidden, escorted me to my dad's jazz club and then walked me back to the house in Brooklyn. The way I'd fought his presence at first, but then how we'd talked and laughed all over the subway and the city streets. The way he's kissed me, slow and soft in the cold outside my family's house. It was the night everything really started between us.
I was just about to hug Brandon, to pronounce my apologies yet again, when he started to pull away.
"It's okay," he said as he slipped off my chest. His fingers lingered a moment on my stomach, but he pulled them back into his chest while he laid on his pillow. "I'm okay now."
"Are you sure?"
My hand crept out to the new space between us. I was dying to pull him close again. A week ago, I wouldn't have given it a second thought. Anyone could see that Brandon needed comfort, and it was killing me not to give it to him.
He shut his eyes as if in pain, but turned onto his back to look up at the ceiling.
"I'll be fine," he said. "They...it won't happen again tonight."
The last word hung off his sentence like a threat. They? Tonight? Just how long had this been going on? I'd just spent two weeks straight in France with the man, and countless other nights in the months before, but he'd never done anything but snore.
"Skylar."
My name broke through my thoughts.
"Yeah?" I whispered.
"Just go."
He turned again onto his side, so that he was facing the windows, his back resolutely to me. It was everything I could do not to scoot next to him and wrap my arms over his big shoulders.
But.
Slowly, quietly, I pulled back the comforter and got out of bed. Brandon didn't move a muscle, barely even breathed while I picked my crutch off the floor and slowly shuffled out of the room. I paused at the doorway to look back.
"I'll be here if you need anything," I said in a small voice. "I––good night."
Brandon said nothing. I closed the door behind me.
~
