Page 17 of The Lies We Tell Ourselves

The guy cried out as he hit the floor, and my body froze midstep. Something about that voice wrapped around me and held me prisoner in my own body. My heart pounded against my ribs, more erratic than it did mid-game, and my ears buzzed as everything and everyone else faded away. My eyes were drawn to the guy on the ground as flickering memories bombarded my brain. What the fuck was happening here? No. No, no, no, no! This couldn’t be real.

“Little crow?” I rasped as the guy I’d just shoved to the ground picked himself up off the floor and turned around to face me. One moment. One look into those steel-ringed pale-blue eyes and my world imploded.

My hand came out automatically to touch his face, my body moved of its own volition as if the three feet that separated us were too much. My body ached to feel his, to feel his skin against mine. Electric. The magnetic force from our childhood had only grown stronger. It was like he was the air I needed to breathe. The world stopped turning. I stopped moving, and Jamie became the center of my universe.

The need to hold him in my arms burned through me. The desire to taste him saturated every cell of my being. I hungered to know everything about who he was now. A primal need consumed me. I needed to own him, possess him. Fucking consume him.

“D-Dil?” Jamie whispered, his wide eyes glistening as emotion pooled in his chalcedony orbs. He slowly got to his feet, drawn by the same force that was propelling me toward him. My heart thudded its way up my throat. I couldn’t breathe. “I-I’ve missed you so much.”

Jamie was standing right in front of me, his smaller lithe body within touching distance. Every wall I’d built around me shook. Every memory I’d kept locked down for the last five years bombarded my mind like artillery fire. Every hope and dream of us I’d kept locked down screamed at me to release them. This was everything I wanted. He was everything. Always had been. Always would be. He owned me, heart and soul, and had never known.

I took a step back, the anguish that bloomed on his gorgeous face was like a sucker punch to my solar plexus. Pain sluiced through me, altering me at a cellular level. I was lost to a dream, an unobtainable fantasy that would never become reality.

“Dill—”

“Who the fuck are you?” I growled and took a menacing step toward him. I hated seeing the flash of fear in his soulful eyes. They were like sunshine after a rainstorm. They were everything positive and warm in the world, and I was a hurricane full of wrath, hatred, and destruction. “No one gets to call me that.”

Jamie flinched and took a step back, raising his hands in surrender. “I-I,” his voice wavered. “I must have been mistaken.” The first tear broke through the barrier of his lash line and trickled down his cheek. It felt like it was carving a canyon in my heart as I watched it fall.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I bellowed. Jamie turned and ran down the stairs without looking back. The world flickered and faded before me. My lungs screamed for air. I couldn’t breathe. I clutched my throat and stormed down the stairs. Buchanan and McCormack shouted after me, but I couldn’t stay here a second longer. I couldn’t risk exposing the truth.

I was terrified I would be dropped if Coach found out I was gay. I was heartbroken for hurting the one person I’d ever loved. And I was fucking angry he left me behind without a second thought.

“Pull it together. You have to stay focused. Protect yourself above everything else. Once you’re drafted then…” I shook my head. There would never be a then. I could never admit my truth.

I wasn’t worthy of his love when I was fifteen, so how could I be worthy of his love now, after what I was going to do to him?

I was going to hurt him, because what he knew about me was far too dangerous to be discovered.

I let that raging inferno of love inside me freeze over and molded it into hate. I turned my heart into an arctic winter and bottled up the pain that threatened to bring me to my knees. I’d hold it close to me, ready to be unleashed any time I felt my resolve weaken.

He abandoned me, broke me. Forgot me. I was simply going to remind him why and make him hate me, because I hated everything he stood for. I hated everything he was.

I fucking hated that he had the power to destroy me.

CHAPTER

EIGHT

JAMIE

“Little crow?” the voice so similar to the one that haunted my dreams said, but this was the voice of a man, not the boy I remembered. It was deeper, its timbre thicker. It ghosted over my skin like velvet, making goosebumps erupt across my body.

I picked myself up and turned toward him. The vision I saw stole the air from my lungs. It felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. He was the same, yet so very different. Dillon now stood close to six-five, towering over my five-foot-nine. I felt small but safe in his presence, like I’d finally found my home. My true north. He’d aged like a fine whiskey, and heat flushed through me, every nerve ending in my body becoming electrified. He was handsome at fifteen, but now, he was beautiful beyond words. His dark-brown, almost black eyes captivated me; it was like staring into the vastness of space, its enormity unknown. I could get lost amongst the galaxies and secrets they held. I’d once been the gatekeeper to his secrets, but I had a feeling I’d lost that right.

His broad shoulders were barely contained by the dark gray Henley he wore, the sleeves rolled up to reveal thick forearms dusted with dark hair. His hands flexed, highlighting the prominent veins and a tapestry of tattoos I wanted to trace with my tongue. I wanted to lick every inch of him. I needed to know his body better than I knew mine. I wanted to taste his pleasure. His love. Him.

Dillon ran a trembling hand through his thick black hair, the sides cropped close to his head, but the strands on the top were long enough to wind around my fingers when I kissed him. I wonder if he tasted the same? I licked my lips at the thought, while my heart thundered in my chest like a herd of wild horses.

We moved forward as if magnetically drawn to each other, both unable to fight the pull that only grew stronger with each passing second. “D-Dil?” I whispered, too scared to speak in case I was dreaming, and my voice would make his mirage vanish. “I-I’ve missed you so much.”

Dillon took a step back, his face distorted in anguish. As if hearing my voice, even whispered, caused him physical pain. My eyes burned, and I blinked away the tears that wanted to fall. I felt like I was being stabbed repeatedly in the heart at his disgusted dismissal. I thought all my dreams were coming true, but what people often forget is that nightmares are dreams too.

“Dill—” I tried again, desperate to find the boy I loved in the man before me.

“Who the fuck are you?” He growled and took a menacing step toward me, a snarl slashing through his sinister lips. He was filled with hatred so vitriolic, it felt like a physical wound on my skin. Fear like I’d felt that fateful night flooded my body, and adrenaline poured into my veins and wrapped around my throat. “No one gets to call me that.”

His words landed like a punch to the face, forcing me backward. I raised my hands in surrender as my heart shattered into a million pieces. “I-I,” my voice wavered. “I must have been mistaken.” A maelstrom of emotion blew up inside me. I lost the battle, and the first burning tear of agony seared into my skin.

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