Page 27 of Possession

“You actually just missed my parents. My dad has some pharmaceutical dinner thing…” She winced as she took in my appearance. “They should be back in a few hours. I’ll have one of them take you home if you don’t mind hanging out that long. I feel bad that you walked so far… it’s freezing outside.”

I’d take as much time as she’d allow, but as I stepped inside and the faint smell of fresh powder hit me, I hoped my scent wouldn’t permeate these spotless walls. White. Everything was white. White marble floors. White walls, white furniture, and white throw rugs. I stopped and looked down at my dirty boots. Crusted mud along the soles flaked onto the shiny surface of the floor and I cringed. There was no way in hell Paige, or her parents, would ever see where I lived.

“I should take my shoes off.” It wasn’t a question and the panic in my voice was evident.

Filthy. You’re filthy.

Paige’s quiet giggle broke through the venom spewing in my brain. “This place is ridiculous, right? The only thing with color are the paintings on the walls, which are pretty great, but I mean, I don’t know, it’s like living in a—”

“Funeral home?”

She laughed again, her pink lips curled at the corners and her eyes crinkled around the edges in such an easy way my stomach flipped. “I was going to say museum.” She reached for my hand and laced her fingers with mine. “But funeral home works, too.”

I kicked off my boots and attempted to bend down and place them neatly along the wall but Paige stopped me. “Leave them. It’s fine.”

The dirt from my shoes screamed at me.

Filthy. Filthy.

“Come on, I talked my mom into getting me some art supplies, I’ve set them up in the den.” She squeezed my hand. “Thanks for coming today.” She flicked her eyes down, her long lashes shadowed on her pink cheeks. “I was nervous.”

Paige was all I’d wanted and we’d started hanging out all the time at school, and on our half-days we’d go to the diner down the street from campus. Sometimes with her friends, sometimes just us. I liked it better when it was just us. I’d been stuck between her and reality. I wanted to ask her out, I wanted her to be mine, but we came from such different realms and seeing her home, seeing her in this crisp wealth of light, it only made my fears more tangible.

You shouldn’t have come here.

You don’t belong.

“Why are you nervous?” I was the one who should be nervous.

“I guess, I… I mean… I don’t really know what this…” She stumbled her words as she met my gaze. “I mean are we friends?”

Friends.

I nodded. “I don’t generally walk three miles up a mountain to see people who aren’t my friends.” My smile was wide as she rolled her eyes.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Friends.

I wanted more. I wanted to kiss her, to touch her face, to feel her mouth on mine. I hadn’t ever kissed a girl before, and I wanted her to be my first. I wanted to do things I probably shouldn’t, but the longer she looked at me like that, with big, expectant blue eyes, the feelings I had stirred into something vicious, and the male in me craved to feel any part of her.

“What did you mean?” I stepped in, closer than I normally allowed, and linked our other hands.

I was so much taller than her and I liked that she had to look up at me. Her back would arch just enough that it would close the space between our bodies and the heat made everything I hated about myself disappear. It was just her. Just me.

Her cheeks were crimson as she licked her lips. “Am I more than a friend?”

She was more than she would ever know.

I nodded. “Do you want to be?”

She sucked on her bottom lip before she spoke and I almost groaned.

“Yes.”

I placed a strand of her hair behind her ear, leaned down, and brought my lips to her cheek. The connection made her shudder and I grinned as I said, “Good.” The confident tone of my voice surprised me, and as I pulled away and saw the smile on her face, the lush red color of her cheeks, for the first time in my forsaken, shit of a life, I felt normal.

The music in the studio couldn’t drown out the memory as I pulled my brush along the canvas. The spindly, bare branches of Aspens fit nicely in the background of the painting. Paige’s eyes were surrounded by the color of summer sunsets and the night of winter. I’d told her today that she was poison and I’d meant it. I’d meant to stab her with the word. I’d meant to make her feel how I’d felt for the past nine years. Unsure, unhappy, lost. Tasting the tears on her lips, feeling her breath mix with mine again… I would suffer her noxious death, her unspoiled oblivion, her tainted kisses because I was sick for them. I was no better in my addiction than my father and his whiskey, than Liam and his useless conquests, and Kieran is his indulgent love of Christ.

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