Page 82 of Here's to Now

I chuckle at her response and run my hand through her hair, pushing back a stray strand that’s fallen into her face. She presses into my hand, urging me to continue my idle strokes. We fall silent and she stops drawing circles. I can only assume she’s fallen asleep. As soon as I close my eyes to join her in slumber, she speaks.

“Gaige?”

I swallow thickly, wishing I could somehow extract myself from this conversation I don’t want to have. But, we said we want real. This is real. Fuck, this is about as real as it gets.

“My parents died several years ago. Their death wasn’t the first I experienced.”

Her breath hitches, but she doesn’t move. The only noise in the room is coming from her shallow breathing. Nothing else happens. Then, I feel them—her tears. They steadily streak down her cheek and dampen my stomach where she’s lying. It tickles a bit when they roll down. My instant reaction is to laugh, but nothing is funny about this moment.

“What happened?” she asks timidly.

Squeezing my eyes shut and gritting my teeth together, I force my head back into the armrest of the couch hard enough for the sharp edges of wood under the cushion to dig into my head, causing a well-earned ache in my skull.

“I did.”

Without warning, she unsteadily pushes herself up my body and presses a soft kiss to my lips. Then she scoots back down until her head is resting directly over my heart. The action screamsI’m here.I so badly want to believe her, but I know if I continue with this story, she’ll end up hating me. Hell, I ended up hating me. But, I need her to know at least part of what happened that night.

“I was involved with bad people. They partied too hard, used too many drugs, and acted like they were invincible. We all did. Wewere. Those are the rules when you’re young, ya know? It’s how it goes. But me… I…wefucked up. Big time.”

I can feel her swallow against my beating heart. It’s thumping so loudly I’m surprised she can even stand to keep her ear to it.

“I was out…let’s say,on the prowl.” Haley snickers and I nudge her. “What’s so funny?”

“You. Prowling. I can totally see it.”

“Oh, Hales, you would have hated me back then. I hated me back then. I was a complete fucking tool. I didn’t court women, I didn’t call women, and I certainly didn’t stick around long. I was horrible.”

“You were young,” she counters calmly. I could pinch myself right now with how well she’s taking all this. It’s far from how I know many women would react. “I mean, you’re a right dick for what you did, but you didn’t understand…affection.” Pause. “Love, it was foreign to you.”

That four-letter word lights a fire in my chest. The ashes and embers of a once dead and lonely heart are stoked and prodded at with each letter. L sparks against a hot coal left to fade out on its own. O catches on to what L is doing and rubs against it, leaving V to begin the smallest flicks of flames. E builds upon the gases and friction, creating a steadily burning fire. Together, they form a mass of energy from the ruins, sparking life into what used to be hollow and lifeless.

“It’s not anymore,” I say quietly against the sudden emotions threatening to clog my throat. “Anyway, the party turned bad.”

“How bad?”

“Three people died.”

Lie.Four people died if I include myself.

“Wow.” She says it slowly, using all her effort to make her voice sound concrete and stable, not shaky.

“I caused two deaths.”

A hush settles over the room, the second hand on her antique-looking clock tick, tick, ticking away. It sounds like a thousand bricks being thrown against an impenetrable wall, each tick growing louder and angrier. I want to reach over and smash it, drown the room in silence because I’m afraid the ticking is going to grow so loud, I’ll miss her reaction to my confession.

Only, it never comes.

She doesn’t react. She simply…waits.

And holy shit do I want to kiss her for it.

“I came home that night after, ya know, being out, to find some guy dead in the bathroom. All I wanted to do was wash off how gross I felt and I found a dead body. Fucking traumatizing.”

“How…” A deep breath. “How did he die?”

“Overdose. The most screwed up part? He had been dead for over an hour when I found him and no one knew or bothered to go look for him. The coke he snorted was laced with something bad and, well, it killed him almost instantly.”

“I’m sorry.”

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