Page 61 of Ricochet

“I’m sorry, Callum.”

His voice trembles worse than before as his blade leaves my shoulder and is pressed against my throat instead. This time, it’s not the flat edge.

He pauses again, inhaling a shuddering breath.

The sharp edge of the knife glides across my neck. Slowly.

There’s a bite. A sting.

Stone blinks, and a tear tracks down his cheek.

“Wait.”

It’s entirely possible that time is a construct my brain can’t comprehend right now, but I swear the blade left my skin a split second before I got the word out. I don’t know if it was the pain or the sight of Stone’s single tear, but…

“Wait,” I say again. “Just…look in my bag.”

His brows draw even tighter together, a frown marring his beautiful face, his chest trembling worse than mine.

“Please, Stone.” My voice comes out soft, likeI’mtrying to comforthim. “Look in my bag.”

It takes him nearly a minute to move. He looks like he’s about to fall apart. His body trembles as violently as an earthquake, his eyes wide, red, and wet.

Finally, he lifts himself off of me and practically stumbles over to the couch where he crashes down onto the end of the chaise. He has to give himself another minute, as though nearly murdering me just exhausted his very soul.

I don’t know if it makes me even more fucked up than I already am that I feel bad for not speaking sooner.

He places the knife on the coffee table and reaches for my bag off the floor. Opening it, he digs inside and pulls out the only thing in there—my sketchbook. He holds it up and gives me a questioning look. I nod.

Flipping the cover over, he looks down at the first sketch. There are a lot of loose pages in that book, the first of which is the very first drawing I did of my stepdad. I have it memorizedby now. The charcoal is badly smudged, crease lines running all through it from how many times it’s been folded. But the image is still recognizable.

“What’s this?” Stone croaks as he eyes me incredulously.

“My stepdad,” I answer easily. The rest comes much easier than I expected too. “I didn’t call the cops right away after I found him like I told them I did. I sat at the bottom of the stairs and drew that.”

“Why?”

“Because it was beautiful.”

His expression shifts like he can’t fathom the words coming out of my mouth, looking at me as though I’ve grown two extra heads. It makes me grin.

“Something happened to me that night. Or maybe it was in me all along. I don’t know. It was the first time I ever felt truly…at peace.”

It’s my greatest secret, and telling Stone now isn’t as difficult as I thought it’d be. It’seasy. He’s the only one who’s ever seen parts of me I kept hidden. Now I’m stepping out of the shadows, letting him see even more. It’s not scary or daunting.

I don’t want to hide anymore.

Not from him.

Let him see.

“Turn the page.”

He does, flipping through several more drawings similar to the first, his hand shaking. I know the moment he gets to the one I was waiting for because his hand stills on the page, his body going stiff.

With his eyes still cast down, he says, “Is this…”

“You. On the dock in Massachusetts last weekend.”

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