Page 41 of Your Chorus
I told myself we could handle it. I told myself we could keep it in check, but something about that night at the pub made it extra hard to put walls up. It made it harder to tell lies. The truth was forcing its way out of us like a splinter being extracted from our skin.
When ‘Read My Mind’ started pumping through the sound system, our eyes locked, and I knew I had to choose. I could tell him how I felt and use it as the reason to leave him alone forever, or I could let myself finally cross the line we’d been toeing for years.
In that moment, it was now or never.
I chose now.
To everyone who passed by on the street, we would have looked like nothing more than two people sitting in the window seat of a pub, our barstools tilting dangerously as we kissed over half-empty pints. To a stranger, it could have looked like our hundredth kiss as easily as it could have been our first.
There’s so much that can hide in a kiss. There’s so much that slips its way into the simple pressure of one pair of lips on another, and from the start, Cole and I’s kisses were always equal parts pleasure and pain—both joy and a haunting sort of regret, longing and remorse rolled into one. We’re the sin and the salvation, the punishment and the reward.
Here in the shadow of the mountains, I let him kiss me until we’re both breathless, until the sounds of the night have faded and I swear I can hear his heartbeat pulsing alongside my own, but when he finally pulls back to look at me, I turn my face down and step away.
“Roxanne...”
He rarely sounds shaken, but his voice right now is close to it.
“We shouldn’t...” I trail off and raise my hand to my lips, tracing their swollen outline. “We shouldn’t have gone this far.”
Kissing him was the sin; the regret is the punishment. There’s always a punishment.
“I...I thought you wanted this,” he stammers. “I thought you were changing your mind.”
Of course I wanted this.
I almost shout the words at him.
We’re in this whole fucking mess because neither of us canstopwanting this.
Admitting it’s not going to help me stand my ground here, though.
“I...I just...I let it get too real.” I force the excuse out. “I’m sorry.”
I step past him and into the light. He doesn’t follow. My chest almost feels too tight to breathe as I leave him standing there, a shadow in the shadows.
My shadow.
Even as I walk away, I feel the part of him that’s tethered to me stretch and stretch but never break.
