Page 69 of Promise Me Not

“Fuck.” I look at my hand, but there’s too many fingers there. “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

I jerk, stumbling into the house, and manage to find my way to the bathroom.

I struggle to reach the faucet of the sink, finally figuring out how to get the damn thing on and shove my hand under the stream. “Shit!” I yank it back, the water too hot.

I reach up again, but soft fingers gently curl around my shoulder, sliding down my spine, and my head falls to my chest, the sensation shutting off everything else. All I feel is her.

God, I want more.

“Let me help you,” she murmurs.

“You can do whatever you want to me, Pretty Little. Anything. Always.”

Payton grabs my other hand, leading me who knows where, but I follow like an eager pup, and then I’m sitting on something soft. My eyes close, only opening again when a cooling sensation meets my knuckles.

Strawberry-blond hair and puffy pink lips hover above me, like my own little angel.

“Where’s my little man?”

“Sleeping. I laid him in the playpen before I came back outside to get you.”

I nod, my head turning when the bed shifts. Payton sits on her knees, gently setting the bag of ice over my knuckles.

Several quiet minutes go by before she speaks again, and when she does, it’s a low, torn whisper that claws at my insides. “I know things are…” She shakes her head, unsure what the right word is or unwilling to say it.

It doesn’t matter though. None of it does.

This girl could stick a knife in me, marry my best friend, and disappear for a decade, and so long as she came back for me in the end, it would. Not. Matter.

Only one thing does.

My fingers stretch under the Ziploc covering them, the tips brushing against her bare knee.

Slowly, her eyes come to mine.

I blink through the fog in my vision, trying to control the alcohol bobbing in my brain so I can hold her gaze. I reach out, tucking the loose strands of her hair behind her ear, my palm lingering in the spot.

Subconsciously, Payton turns into my touch, her eyes closing. “Mase.”

“I fucking miss you.”

Her whole body quakes.

“Can I hold you?”

She sucks in a choppy breath, those blue eyes on me.

“Please, Pretty Little…” My eyes start to close, my words more slurred than the last ones. “I need to hold you.”

“And I need to take care of you,” she murmurs.

My mouth curves at that, and I fall into my memories of the first time she spoke those words to me, desperately holding on to what happened afterward.

My life changed the last time she took care of me.

Everythingchanged that day.

But what will I wake up to tomorrow?

---