Page 69 of Haunt Me

“You are a composer, you idiot. And a songwriter.”

I laugh—that’s preposterous. I am so not.I open my lips to tell her that, but I catch a glimpse of her face, and I freeze. Tears are shining in her eyes and I panic, wiping them to make them go away. Whatever upset her is tearing me apart.

“Hey, no, I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m sorry. Please call me an idiot all you like, I love it. I love it, Eden.”

“I’m not crying about that.” More water is streaming down her cheeks. I am frozen in terror. “I am crying about you. If everyone in your life, teachers, musicians, parents, brothers, friends, if everyone hasn’t told you every single day of your life that you are amazing, and that you can do anything in the world you want… Then they are all idiots. Because you are. Amazing.”

I take her head in my hands and bring her lips to mine hungrily, desperately, and my lips burn and tingle as she kisses me back with the same desperation. My brain explodes in a symphony. My hands find the hollow between her collarbones and run over the contour of her jaw, her shoulder, her waist. We lower our bodies to the grass, which smells of earth and melting snow, and she knits her long, slender fingers behind my neck, bringing my mouth down to hers, deepening the kiss. The wind swirls around us, singing just for us.

The way she is kissing me back, with complete surrender, the taste of her tears on both our tongues, makes me go hard and so weak I can barely draw breath. I clutch the back of her sweater and brace myself on my arms as I lean above her, turning my chin as far as it can go so I can taste her better. More. Just more.

My body is on top of hers, every part of her matched to mine. I can barely move, or I will end.

“This is out of control,” I gasp into her hair. “I’m not… I’m not in control, Eden.”

“Me neither,” she says. Her voice is nothing but a rasp and my bones turn to jelly just at the sound of what I’m doing to her right now. She pulls me down by my shirt, her fingers shaking.

I’m gone. I don’t exist anymore. I lose myself.

And that is the exact moment that I find myself.

…

I saved her life that day in the highway, it’s true.

But my entire life, I will remember the day she saved me from my professor not as the day she saved mine; but as the day she started it.

…

The next day, I’m late to our spot. I nearly got detention again because I got caught jumping the fence yesterday, but I think they were too scared of Eden to actually give it to me. They let me off with a warning.

Late or not, I’m not staying away. She’s here, waiting for me. Shivering. I take her to the shed, warm her up, but I can’t hide the fact that my eyes are red.

I have been crying since I woke up. I can’t seem to stop. The tears just pour out of me and slide down my cheeks, then fresh ones follow.

“You’ve been crying,” Eden notices at once, even though the light is dimming fast. “What’s wrong?”

I can’t hold it in any longer. It’s destroying me.

“I love you,” I tell her.

“What?”

“I love you.”

“You’ve been crying over that?”

“Yeah. It’s too powerful. I can’t… I can’t keep it in anymore, don’t ask me to. It’s too big for my chest.”

She sighs, exasperated. “We’ve been over this, Isaiah. Please don’t—”

“No,” I shake my head, “I’m not backing out. I’m not taking it back this time. It’s real for me, Eden. It’s love.”

“This is too dramatic, even for you.”

“I’m not kidding. I wish I was.”

“Don’t ruin everything, Isaiah, please, I… I told you that I....”

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