Page 20 of The Blood we Crave

I feel my heart try to leap from my chest, trembling and thrashing against my ribs to let it out, to let it go to him.

“Hi, hello, there you are! I’ve missed you. My love, my love, my love.”She screams bloody murder for him.

And my brain doesn’t have the guts to tell her he will never hear her wails. He will never accept the love she so freely gives him. His heart will never beat for us the way ours does for him.

Because he refuses to acknowledge he has one.

But that doesn’t mean I’ll give up. Not when I know the truth. That beneath the gloomy and macabre is a man who is capable of much more than even he believes.

He steers his body in front of the group I’ve absorbed myself into, giving me a direct line of sight to his naked back. My pulse thrums deep in my belly as I watch layers of taut muscles jerk with every footfall, sharp dips and carved hollows sculpted from marble.

The need to touch him, to run my fingers along the edges of those lean tendons, is so overwhelming I stumble. Not enough for anyone to notice, but enough for me to remind myself I’m in public.

This is what I wake up for every single morning.

Him.

He is the reason it took me an extra ten minutes to get to class in high school because I purposely went the long way so I could walk past him. The reason I stood out in the freezing rain and got a cold, all because I wanted to follow him home in middle school. Why, more recently, I was almost arrested for trespassing on his family property and nearly broke my ankle running away from one of the gardening staff members.

The man I would quite literally do anything for.

My darkest obsession that my addictive heart refuses to quit.

This thing was never supposed to go on this long. But that’s how every wicked habit starts, right? Some innocent idea that festers into an infatuation.It was my fault to believe my heart could give him up after giving her a taste of him.

As we all fall into a silent exercise, I admire not only his immaculate form but his dedication to routine. The strict timetable he follows is the same one he abides by every single day. And during the summer, when I’m not worried about studying or going to class, I follow it as well.

In theory, he is the easiest person in the world to stalk. He has been a creature of habit for as long as I have known him. Although his routine has adapted with his age, he still refuses to break form.

I, of course, allow time in my day for the other things I enjoy. I go to the library, bury my face in books, gather new insects, work on finishing the renovations to my cabin, binge-watch my favorite TV series.

I am a normal person who does ordinary things.

Which I think should be enough to balance out this one peculiar compulsion. But it doesn’t. Not in the eyes of my friends or society.

I know it’s wrong, that I’m doing something illegal and deranged. I’m self-aware of the fact something inside of me is so twisted up that my idea of love is stashing objects he leaves behind in a box in my closet. The internet has enough theories on why I do these things, but here is the thing.

I don’t care.

I don’t care about consequences or how it looks to those who can’t comprehend what he means to me. What we are to one another. My morals do not need to be evaluated because the world sees what I do as something hostile or some sick form of ownership.

My entire life, people have treated me like I was this creepy creature because I don’t fit the standard of Ponderosa Springs hierarchy women. So if I was already the town freak, I might as well embrace it.

What I feel for Thatcher Alexander Pierson isn’t bad. It’s lovely and unique, something invulnerable that regular people could never appreciate. The emotion he evokes inside of me is the only pure thing I have left.

The night his father, Henry, came into my home and shredded my entire world to pieces, he tainted all the good in me. He tore and tore every ounce of good from my soul with every stab into my mother’s body.

Henry Pierson gave me both my worst nightmare and the sweetest gift.

The impulse to kill and a deep admiration for his son.

My thighs are cramping, a brutal reminder that I still have to walk three miles back to my car when this is finished. But I’m blissfully ignoring the pain, keeping my eyes focused in front of me.

Everything is going exactly as it typically does. Him running with his back to me, unaware of my existence, while I stare at every inch of defined skin on his body. Until something happens, something that has never happened before.

My heart skips a beat.

The shirt I’m assuming he’d planned to wear after running is rolled up and tucked neatly into the back of his shorts where it normally is. But just as he turns a corner on the trail, the black T-shirt slips from the band and falls onto the path, fluttering down onto the asphalt like leaves in the fall.

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