Page 75 of Warmer, Colder

“I didn’t.” Another step forward and I take another step back.

“I should have known that someone like you was incapable of something real. All you are is a web of lies wrapped up in a pretty package, but on the inside, you’re empty and rotten.” The words are meant to burn her, but they blister my throat on the way up.

“That’s not fair. I shouldn’t have lied. I should have been honest with you the first opportunity I had, but things between us, they’re complicated. I wanted to tell you, before all of this. That’s why I was here in the first place, before—” Her eyes glaze with a death shroud, the memories of that night haunting her too. “Before Nate killed me, I’d intended on confessing everything to you. That night I’d come to tell you who I was; to tell you I’d come back for you; to make you see that webelongtogether.” The desperation in her voice is uncharacteristic and unsettling but I continue building up the walls around myself, making them sturdy and tall.

“No. No, we don’t. I’ve been in denial, so caught up in the honeymoon escape of it all, but things keep happening to push us apart.”

“Please, Becca. Give me a chance to explain.” She reaches out, but I swat her hand away despite the way every inch of me yearns for her.

Once again, my body and mind are at odds, but the roles have reversed.

“You don’t get to touch me.” Will her hands—her velvet-soft, tattoo-covered hands—become repulsive like theirs? Will the memory of her touch become invasive and nausea-inducing, too? “All this time. You had all this time to be honest with me. How could you pretend we didn’t know each other this whole time?”

“I wasn’t pretending. We don’t know each other,not anymore. I’m not that little girl who let you break her heart. We’re not those kids.”

“You know what I mean goddammit. We have a history and that history matters. Or it could have.” I attempt to contain the sob that rumbles like thunder in my chest. “So, what, you stalked me for how long and you didn’t learn a damn thing about me? Are you disappointed in what you’ve found? Did you think youwere going to find that perfect little doll you preserved in that twisted mind of yours? Sorry to break it to you, but I’m not your little plaything, Anastasia.” Her full name on my tongue, wrapped in all that venom awakens something deep within me—a grief I thought I’d said goodbye to a long time ago. But that chasm she left behind is deep and dark and full of regrets that I convinced myself were too far in the past to lose sleep over anymore.

But here she is, my deepest secret, my unrelenting conscience, mynightmare. She’s the skeleton in my closet, the thing that goes bump in the night, the woman I’ve been terrified of seeing when I look too long in the mirror.

“I know. I know you’re more than that. You’reeverythingto me.”

“We’re nothing!” I yell, because keeping her away is the only thing that makes sense.

“Don’t you dare do that. You can be angry with me. You can lash out at me. But you can’t lie to me. If that makes me a fucking hypocrite, then so be it. But I won’t have it.” Stasi’s body crowds mine, forcing me back against the wall. My traitorous hips arch against hers, twitching with the need to be wrapped around her. I already miss the comfort of being held by her, even if it was a false sense of security. Like a treehouse that couldn’t survive a rainstorm.

I lean closer to her, wrapping two strands of her platinum and pink hair around my fingers as I bring my lips to her ear. “Everything between us was a lie built on betrayal, manipulation, and death. It never could have been real. It’ll never be anything.”

“Why can’t things be like they used to be?” Stasi whispers against my hair.

“The world changed us. The Anastasia I knew never would have lied to get what she wanted. She never would have hurt me, even if she had reason to. You’re nothing like you once were.”

“You’re right. But I’m not the only one who’s undergone a personality transplant.” Her nails scrape against the wall on either side of my head. “But what if I’m in love with this version of you, despite how much you’ve changed.”

“If you loved me, then you wouldn’t have lied to me.” My voice cracks as I slap my hand against my chest.

Stasi rests her head against the crook of my shoulder. “I want to start over. I want to know all of you, the woman you are now, not the girl you used to be.”

“You’re not listening. You’re so caught up in this goddamned fantasy. You’re so obsessed, that you’ve convinced yourself that you can put the broken pieces of our friendship back together. Maybe there’s a reason those best friend necklaces—the ones like we had—are always broken in half.”

A sardonic laugh leaves her. “Or maybe they were meant to be reshaped, turned into something new over time,” Stasi says cryptically as she takes a few steps back.

“What the hell are you even talking about?”

“This piercing,” she says as her fingers slide over her bare cunt. “Was made from my half of the necklace.”

It takes me a few moments to piece together her meaning. Surely, she can’t mean that she kept it and turned it into the jewelry that adorns the most intimate part of her body. Surely, she’s not that obsessed with me. But when our eyes meet again, hers delirious, mine seeing more clearly, she’s closing the distance between us, and there’s something between her two fingers catching the light. “Stasi, stop.” It’s useless, my back is already against the wall.

“Open up,” she demands as she grabs my cheeks and slips two fingers into my mouth. “Broken or not, Becca, we’re engrainedin each other, we’repartof each other.” The sensual taste of her blossoms across my tongue before the sharpness of metal. By then, she’s closed my mouth—her hand caging my lips, her thumb pressing the center of my throat, triggering me to swallow against my will. “There’s no more fucking denying it.”

Whipping my head back and forth, I free myself from her grip, but the deed is already done. Some piece of her, ofus, lives inside me now.

“What is wrong with you?” I spit at her. “You’re out of your goddamn mind!” I wave my hand at her lower half. She made me eat a piercing.A piercing.

Stasi has the audacity to smile and shrug. “Maybe I am. Is that such a terrible thing? To be madly in love with you?”

“That’s not okay. That’s not love, that’s not even friendship. Stasi, I’m not good for you. And you certainly aren’t good for me.” I turn away from her, afraid I might break if I have to look at her while everything falls apart.

“That’s just not true.”

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