Page 129 of Haunt Me

“Ok, I need to stop you right there,” the words come out of me with such force I almost stumble. “I have not seen anyone more alive than you, back then and now. So you need to stop thinking like that, and realize just how much you are loved, no, not loved… Admired. Eden.Adored. No one expects of you to vacuum, or get stamps, or do all those other things. You are perfect as you are, and the fact that you can’t see it is literally—” I am out of air, but I keep going, even without breathing.I will not cry before getting this out.“It’s literally breaking my heart. That is the one thing that needs to change.”

A second passes by. And then she says:

“I don’t know any swear words.” I lean down, not sure I heard her correctly.

“What?”

“I don’t know any swear words, bad words,” she repeats. “I don’t know what people mean when they use them, I don’t know what they are talking about. I feel like an alien, and it keeps getting worse and worse as the years go by, instead of better. There is so much I have missed, and this is one of the most important ones.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s one of the most important—”

“It is,” she insists, “it is the way people talk, the way the express themselves. There is only so much one can learn from books, after all.”

“Look, baby,” I lower my head so my face is on the same level as hers, “you have seen me drive and do everything else, well, except buy stamps, and you know that I am crap at most things other people excel in.” I look into her eyes intensely, hoping that my voice can drown out all the other thoughts in her head. That she can focus on me. “But one thing I know how to do is swear.ThatI am confident I can help you with.”

She laughs.

I just close my eyes and breathe, relieved. The tears are still wet on her cheeks and I keep wiping them away, but no fresh ones are coming. My whole body is buzzing with intensity—I have gone into full battle mode.

I’ll do anything, anything to keep those cheeks dry. For the rest of my life.

“There’s one more thing,” she says, her voice dropping. Instantly, chills cover my whole body.

“Yeah?” My lips are grazing her forehead. I can feel her body trembling.

“I mean, not one thing, there are a million things I have missed, there are so many more…”

I step closer until my hipbone is brushing her waist. My arm is around her, my fingers trailing the line of her jaw.

“But you were thinking of one specific thing,” I murmur.

Her eyes lift up to mine. There is naked emotion in them. Want. Hope. It steals my breath. Her own comes chopped, short.

“Yes,” she says. “One specific thing.”

It’s hard to breathe with her so close. It’s hard to breathe and not kiss her until none of us can stand upright. “Let’s hear it.”

“Kissing,” she says, and I nearly die right there.

“You know how to kiss,” I say.

“It’s been so long. Remind me,” she whispers, her eyes drifting shut. I lose all control. I bring my face down to hers.

“You know,” I have to bite my lip so that I won’t devour hers. “You know well enough how to do it, Eden. You nearly killed me the last time you did it.”

“Remind me.” She lifts herself on her tiptoes, and that’s the end of me.

I bend even lower until I can cover her lips with mine, bending my knees not so much out of want but need—my legs have melted. The kiss starts out hard, desperate, full-force, but it quickly turns into something deeper. A simmering, burning fire that is about to consume us both from the inside out.

I kiss her and she kisses me and everything else falls away. The tears, the panic attack, the regret, the loss.

She trembles and melts against me and I pull her up to my chest, feeling the warmth of her every delicious breath. Every time she so much as moves, it gets the blood thrumming through my veins. Every time she so much as breathes into my mouth, I lose a bit more of my grip on my body’s reaction. She sighs against me and completely ruins what’s left of my self-control.

I tug on her hair lightly, pulling her head back so I can taste her better. I used to do that with her braid, I remember, and my whole body shivers as if run through by an electric shock. The move is so familiar, I missed it like a drowning man misses breathing.

My eyes literally sting with tears as I kiss her, thinking of how many times I have done this exact same thing in the past. It used to be so easy, so effortless, like waking up in the morning, and yet now it’s like a tidal wave washing over us both. I never thought I would get to kiss her again like this, with my hands in her hair, cupping her chin, her trusting me fully. And then she moans softly into my lips, her body going soft against me, and I quickly move to grab her by the hips and steady her against my thigh.

“Eden,” I whisper into her mouth. Her name. My first song.

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