Rory shifts onto his knees in front of me, as though to get a better look at me. “What are you saying?”
“I know you’re bad news,” I mumble, dismal, between slick, rain-soaked lips, the tight plastic hood straining around my face. “But I am so fed up with lying to myself, of minimizing and pretending that this…attractiondoesn’t exist between us.” I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore; my mouth seems to be running on automatic, my cold lips spilling out unfiltered words. “Because you aren’t stupid. You’re the opposite of stupid. You know it exists. You know fine well it carves me up and hollows me out and hurts me every time I’m near you, and that’s not even when you speak to me. My every waking thought is consumed by you. My dreams are consumed by you. My every yearning is for you and you alone, and I’m in your house because ofyou. So congratulations — you win. And I know your stupid privileged male ego is gonna explode to ten times the size from the admission alone, but I can’t keep it locked away any longer. I can’t. It’s too big. The whole idea of it is too vast and it’s eating me up inside and I don’t have the energy to fight it anymore. I’mtired.”
I pause to gather breath, daring to look Rory in the eye. There is no expression on his face. Maybe a kind of astonishment from the way his lips have parted, but it could just as easily be from the cold wind weaving around us. There are too many elements here. Raindrops slide from Rory’s cap and down his jawbone, creating a path I wish I could trace with my tongue.
His eyes are unreadable but fixed on my face, as though — maybe — hungry for what I might say next.
“And now you have the audacity to go storming through the moors, chasing eagles when I thought you were gone for the worst possible reasons, like you aren’t a complete monster, like you may actually be a boy with a heart beating inside, to be able to care about something other than yourself… I’m tired of this game. I’m tired of all the lies and concealing feelings and evenhavingfeelings, because you’re the only person in the world who makes me feel this way, like a complete idiot, like I might still actually be alive inside. So if you want me, if you flirt with me and toy with me for a reason other than to laugh behind my back and watch me self-destruct, if there isanytruth behind your interest in me, then either act on it or leave me alone.”
For a long while, there is nothing other than the rain around us pounding like distant war drums.
And then Rory reaches out, takes my chin between his curled fingers, and kisses me hard.