Page 88 of ILY
Roman’s eyes widen, and Sex just blinks. Wait…ishis name Sex? Dex? God, I can’t remember.
‘No,’ Roman signs, but it’s just a fingerspelled word. My eyes cross. ‘Refuse.’
Suddenly, Robbie bumps into me, and he grins goofily at me. ‘Me go jail now.’
I giggle and nod. ‘Join.’
He bobs his head and links his arm through mine. ‘Surrender now.’
‘Agree. Illegal. Weed. Maybe?’
Words are hard. My eyes are closing. Robbie moves away from me, and my heavy eyelids blink, catching Thorne picking me up.
“We need to go home before you fall over,” he says into my ear.
‘I love your voice,’ I sign, hitting him in the face once more.
He just grins down at me.
‘‘I loveyou,” he says, but my brain can’t comprehend why that makes me feel so good, so I let it float away like everything else.
My eyes close, and I pass out, fading into the abyss. No Michael, no serial killer aunt, and no crumbling farm.
Just Thorne.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THORNE
I pourLeaf into his bed—almost literally. He’s smiling and happy, but completely boneless and mostly unconscious. He half passed out on the dance floor, and that was the moment I knew it was time for me to get him home.
Once upon a time, this would have pissed me off beyond all reason. When I was younger and had a more black-and-white view of right and wrong, I would always end up the DD and looking after a bunch of friends, barely over twenty-one, who were making asses of themselves in front of women at the bar.
None of that was my scene, and at the time, I thought it was watching over sloppy drunks that pissed me off. Now I realize that back then, I just wasn’t where I wanted to be, and I was hiding a huge piece of myself and what I wanted.
Tonight felt like I was reclaiming everything the younger me had always wanted. Leaf stayed close, touched me a lot, wasn’t ashamed to be with me. He pulled me into his little bubble of friends who communicated with me easily and without looking at me like I was shit on the bottom of a shoe for not being able to follow along.
And the way he smiled at me. The way he trusted me to take care of him when he let go?
The way he looked at me with his huge eyes after I cracked and said the three words I’d promised myself I wouldn’t blurt out until I was ready?
Taking a deep breath, I pull my hearing aids out and set them in the charging case before making sure Leaf’s at the edge of the bed with a trash can beside him in case he needs to heave everything up.
I press my hand to his chest to make sure his breathing is even and steady, and then I drop to my knees and push a few locks of sweaty hair from his forehead.
His eyelids twitch, then flutter open. His pupils are huge, and I’m not sure he’s really seeing me.
And then he smiles.
“Oh. Hi.”
I’m mostly reading his lips at this point. His voice is so soft, but it’s easy. Everything with him—even the weird, complicated parts—is so simple.
“Hi.”
He reaches up and traces a single finger down my nose, then over my lips. “Hi.”
I laugh, the sound rumbling against the back of my throat. “You said that already.”
