Page 5 of The Other Side of Apart

He groans. “I wanna kiss you so bad right now.”

“I need you to kiss me so bad right now.”

His lips crash against mine, salty and cold, but opening to the heat steaming from him, wrapping me in it.

I clutch his back, urging him closer so this day doesn’t have another chance to take him from me.

“I missed you,” he breathes when we surface, but he dives back in before I can respond. Heat flares inside me as the kiss mimics the intensity of the storm just outside the slats—fierce, rolling, electric, surging. “I never wanna spend another second away from you. Like…” He kisses me deep and lingering, like he’s gathering all the pieces of me. “I wanna be…” His mouth moves to my eyes, my forehead. “So close to you…” His lips urge mine until I’m practically climbing him. “No space between us ever again.,” he whispers before turning me and pressing me against the door. But his weight squeezes out a memory of Nick I hurled into the back of my mind, hoping it would evaporate. I mentally kick it down as it rises, but it pounds at me like a jackhammer, sending chunks of memory flying through my head: Nick’s weight on me, darkness, my frantic pulse roaring in my ears, rough hands. My fists clench to squeeze the images out but my body jolts, then stiffens, and Marcus jerks back, his hands flying up at his sides.

“I’m sorry. Mei, I didn’t—” Thunder cracks, and the room flashes white. He curses, taking another step away from me. “I didn’t think. I’m so sorry.”

A chill rolls over me, drifting from the distance between us.

“I’m so sorry, Mei,” he repeats, raking his hand through his wet hair, talking to the ceiling. “I shouldn’t have…this whole thing. It’s all wrong—timing, weather, this place.” His words and body are distant, even inside this tiny hut, and my tears drip, mixing with the rain sliding down my face. “Besides, we’re soaked, you’re freezing. Everything’s salty and covered in tetanus.” His attempt to lift the moment gets whipped away bythe wind howling through the cracks. “And you’re hurt. And I didn’t think about that. In the moment.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, angry at myself for letting Nick slip between us. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just…yes—cold. My teeth are chattering. We’re soaked.” None of it is a lie, but I need a minute to gather myself. I need to figure out what just happened in my head and body. I don’t want to relive any of it, especially not with Marcus watching. If he knows the whole story, he’ll keep his distance. He’ll be afraid of me forever.

He’s pulling on a dry shirt, shaking out his wet hair, talking to everything in the room but me. “Doesn’t look like the storm’s letting up anytime soon. Since you’ve soaked my favorite hoodie, here’s my second favorite.” He holds it out and I take it from him. “I’m gonna step out to change out of these shorts so you can change too. Then…I guess we’ll just…get some sleep, yeah?” He grabs a pair of sweats from the pile of his clothes on the raft and heads toward the door, avoiding my eyes. “I mean, we’ve got a perfectly good raft and at least if it floods while we sleep, we’ll float.”

He steps outside and I quickly change into the dry hoodie and drape the wet one over a stool. A few seconds later, Marcus cracks the door to ask if it’s safe to come in, then steps back inside, tossing his wet shorts on the counter before easing onto the raft, stretching out on his back. His feet hang over the edge and I crawl onto the raft and settle in beside him, staring at the ceiling through the haze of discomfort and gloom, wondering how to rewind time and erase my panicked reaction to his closeness. He’s not Nick. He would never hurt me.

“You okay?” he asks softly, his hands splayed on his chest. “Your bruises look painful.”

“I’m okay. Really.”

He nods, and itchy silence settles in the space between us before he talks again. “I wish I could wipe them off. Erase all your bad memories.”

Frustration burns through me. I hate that I let Nick in when we were so close to being back to normal.

“Do you wanna talk about it? About what happened? With Nick?” His voice eases toward me in the gray light.

I want to tell him. He deserves to know that my reaction had nothing to do with him. I wish I could open my head and show him everything, so I don’t have to say the words out loud. I want to open my chest so he can see how big my feelings for him are. But then he might see the leftover darkness lurking there. It could change the way he looks at me, and if I’m being honest, I’m not sure how he’ll react. We’re both better if everything stays locked inside me until it eventually goes away.

I shake my head, staring at the ceiling. “Can we just push pause on this conversation? For now?”

“Yeah. Yeah—definitely.” He clears his throat. Wind rattles the hut and rain slashes at the windows, sending ripples through the tension until Marcus slides his left hand toward me, his fingers gathering mine and weaving through them.

I close my eyes, focusing on the heat between our palms, the relief easing through me from this one touch. My mind unwinds, but the wind shoving through the cracks in the hut gets in my head, flinging the events of the last twenty-four hours against my skull until I roll into Marcus, burying my face into his arm like I can hide there.

He shifts and winds his arm around me, pulling me against him until we sink into the middle of the raft. I breathe in fabric softener on his shirt as I battle the thoughts, trying to pull me far from Marcus. But when his voice rumbles through them, I cling to his words:

“I love you, Mei.”

CHAPTER 3

Ten minutes until whatever comes next.

Mei yells over my shoulder for me to take the next exit, so I change lanes and exit the highway toward Guo’s brother’s house. Seattle’s lights shimmer on the water, bouncing the light into the sky where it gets stuck in the fog and hangs there. Kind of like my hope that Guo’s brother will actually answer the door at 1 AM. We’ve been driving in rain, fog, and wind since we left the hut ten hours ago. Like nature is doing Dad’s dirty work.

Mei gives me more of the directions Guo wrote on the Post-it after I burst through the shop door and announced I was going to Seattle with Mei. Guo had somehow already known I’d go with her, but Mei was surprised. Not sure why; there was no other choice for me. Even if things are a little different now. A little more frantic, more uncertain. Soaking and cold and tense, like a pebble in the road could easily roll us. I lost control at the hut—emotionally and physically. Told her things I shouldn’t have. Did things I shouldn’t have. The bruises all over her neck reminded me that I’d promised I wouldn’t touch her and that she has wounds I can’t see. I have to be completely opposite of Nick in every way. I almost messed that up, and it’s not gonna happenagain. It’s gonna kill me having her this close, all to myself, but I want her to know she’s safe from me and my hormones as well as Nick and deportation. We’re gonna start over. Make this our thing, our way. And I hope she’ll talk about what happened so we can leave that behind, too. I want to make sure she’s really okay. But I don’t know how to bring it up without bringing up the hard stuff that comes with it. Dad told me about how wrecked people are after stuff like this—how many years of therapy they go through. But I’m not a therapist, so I’ll just protect her from anything bad from now on.

I weave the bike through neighborhoods strung along the edge of the city, the houses settling down for the night. Warm light spills onto the glossy streets, slipping beneath our tires. I just wanna get to Guo’s brother’s house and shut the door against anything and everything that might have followed us from home. But I also don’t because I don’t know what to expect. Nothing has turned out the way it should have so far, and I’m too tired to hope it’ll be any different when we get there. And when we do, how long are we going to stay? A week? Two? A month? Forever? Will Stanford respond to the email I sent before we tossed our phones in a dumpster on our way out of San Francisco? Will they forgive me for turning down a full-ride scholarship and offer it again? I gotta get a new phone so I can check my email.

Mei rests her chin on my shoulder, calling out more directions. “Turn right at the next stop sign. Third house on the right.”

I want her to keep the contact between us, so I nod and accelerate, gripping the handlebars as I swerve around a speed bump. My hands are cramping after ten hours of driving. For the first few hours, I was on edge, but I’m pretty comfortable with the getaway vehicle now.

Mei points to a house on our right. “I think that’s it,” she yells.

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