Page 130 of Haunt Me

“Deeper,” she gasps.

“Let me make it good for you.” My voice is deep, hoarse, unrecognizable.

I lift her into my arms, a hand behind her legs, her face on level with mine. I have lost every kind of ability to think. I am nolonger myself, I am something that is made for her. I am her toy. She tangles her hands in my hair, bringing my face closer to hers, and I let her do whatever she wants to me. I support her weight effortlessly and groan into her neck, my breath coming fast and hard.

My hand goes down her sweater, but not inside. I don’t know how I stop myself from doing that, but I do. By some miracle, I do. I taste her hungrily, desperately, as if it’s the first time and the last time all in one, but I won’t go further.

I will die before I go further.

Actually, I might die right now. If I don’t let her gothis second, it’s going to be impossible to stop. I let her go, panting hard from the effort it took to unglue my lips from hers. She stumbles. I keep my arm firmly around her shoulders, but I don’t touch her otherwise. I need to give her some space to breathe. I am past breathing at this point.

I went too far. Too soon.

This can’t be allowed to get out of control. It just can’t.

“Are you ok?” I whisper into her hair, pressing my lips to her forehead. I can’t help myself; I am addicted to kissing her, touching her. I can’t stop.

“No, I am not ok,” she says and I freeze. “I have too much work to do, I… You know that, right?”

“I do, baby.”

“But knowing it and living it is different, isn’t it? I mean, even being in this house is too much sometimes, and today, seeing you with my family… My two lives colliding…” she can’t go on, but she doesn’t need to.

I completely understand what she means.‘My two lives colliding’. I have been thinking of that exact thing since before I stepped foot inside her house.

“I know,” I say slowly, “I can’t even wrap my mind around the memories it must evoke, just seeing me again.Icould barely handle seeingyou, and nothing has even happened to me.” Her eyes widen, like ‘how can you say that’, but it’s true. What’s happened to me is nothing compared to what she’s been through. “Baby, when I found out what was happening to you all the time we were together… I wanted to die. I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to earth to swallow me up.”

She gives me one of her sad smiles and it makes me feel completely murderous.

“I still don’t know how to drive,” she says.

“That’s not…” I meant to say that’s not a problem, but I realize how close I am to saying the wrong thing on accident and I shut my hole.

“As I said, I need to learn,” she adds and I nod. It takes a lot out of me not speak right now, but I do it. “There is so much more I need to do. There is so much I can’t control. Inside of me and outside of me, because I was so little when it happened… I lived my whole life in…”

No talking be damned. I’m wrapping her in my arms before she can finish her phrase. Her heart thuds against my chest like a terrified bird’s. It begins to slow down as I press her against me, so I don’t move. I just keep her wrapped up in me.

“I’ll do whatever you want,” I tell her. “Whatever you need.”

“I don’t think I’m ready,” she replies. “For you. For this.”

Anything but that.My heart slams against my ribcage.

No. No!

Eden, no!

Anything but that.

I think I knew this was coming, but I didn’t want to accept it. And there is a part of me that is still the sixteen-year-old Isaiah I used to be, a boy who wants to doggedly fight for this, for her, for us, even though she literally told me she doesn’t want it right now. Even though I know I will respect whatever she needs. But my heart won’t. It willnot.

“Let’s get you back inside,” I say. It’s a warm June day, but her hands are frozen. Mine too.

It’s not from the cold; it’s because of the fear.

The fear that this might be the end.

Eden’s Poetry

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