Page 85 of Three for a Girl

His eyes darkened, and his pulse jutted in his neck. Horrified, or satisfied, Chad couldn’t tell. Fear and arousal often had the same physical reactions. The same surge of adrenaline, fast breathing, and thumping heart.

“Will you ever forgive me?” Romeo whispered.

Chad marred his brow as the question rattled around his head. He didn’t blame Romeo for what happened in the outhouse. If anyone was to blame for his outburst, it was Chad.

Chad had locked him away, given him no outlet to feed his addiction. He’d put the monster back in the cage and used himself as leverage to make it behave.

“There’s nothing to forgive.”

Romeo sighed, rocking forward on his knees, his hand came out to hold Chad’s, and he expected the hallucination to vanish, but Romeo’s fingers were solid and firm around his. He lifted Chad’s hand to his face and pressed it against his prickly cheek.

“What’s upset my clever magpie?”

Romeo’s lips found Chad’s wrist, the pulse point that gathered speed as the haze of hopelessness lifted. Romeo smiled against his wrist. Chad suspected he could feel the pace of his heart, it coming back to life at Romeo’s touch.

Chad surged forward and wrapped his arms around Romeo, tucking his nose into the side of his throat so he could take a deep breath of him. Romeo’s pulse throbbed against him, fast, and hard, horrified or satisfied, Chad didn’t care. He was there, and he was alive, and that was all that mattered.

“You’re real.”

“As real as you are.”

“You can’t do that.” Chad mumbled. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Romeo’s neck was wet. Chad realized they were his own tears he’d pressed into his skin. Romeo’s warmth fed into him, racing through his veins and back into his frozen heart.

Romeo’s arms tightened around Chad’s back, pulling him impossibly closer. “I’m sorry, I lost control—”

“I don’t mean that. I signed up for that. Never leave me, Romeo. You can’t just take off. I can’t do this without you.”

“I thought you’d feel safer without me here.”

“The opposite.”

“What happened?”

“I messed it up, of course I did. I was stupid to think this could work.”

He shook his head, not wanting to recall what happened at the hospital, the cold dread of believing for a minute Romeo was dead. There was nothing worse. And if he had have walked in to Romeo cold on the operating table, Chad would’ve spun on his heels, marched to the roof of the hospital, and jumped.

“Where did you go?” he asked.

Romeo swallowed. “I went to visit my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Her grave. She died before the monster came out to play, she and my father were the reasons it was locked away so long. I didn’t want to complicate their lives with my demons, and when she died, relief overcame any sadness.”

Chad thought of his own mother. “I know the feeling.”

“She worried that I’d never find someone to love, made me swear if I did, I’d never let them go, I’d embrace it, hold on to it with both hands. I don’t think she thought I’d wrap them around that someone’s throat, and almost kill them.”

“But you didn’t, you stopped.”

“Barely. I told her about you. How I finally know how it feels to care for someone. Tolove. I told her what I did, letting go of the chain for only a minute and how it almost cost me the world.” He snorted, brushing his face against Chad’s. His chin ended up on top of Chad’s head, and Chad pressed into him, feeling, and listening to his rumbly words. “If she could see me now, hear me, I bet she’d wish she pressed a pillow over my face when I was born.”

“Don’t say that. Where would I be without you?”

“Not here, sobbing on the floor. You’d be back in Dunston with friends, the respect of the community, a fiancée who buys you expensive gifts and takes you to exotic places. You’d be living this normal life you crave so badly.”

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