Page 55 of Together We Rot

I kiss her and it’s a brutal, terrible thing.

I kiss her and I taste blood. The iron tang of her teeth digging into my lip, of her tongue running along mine. Desperate and starving and so spine-chillingly perfect.

I kiss her and I want more. So much more than she can offer me. I’ll take all that she can give.

CHAPTER TWENTY

WIL

Every second, he is changing. His body is a breaking cage. I’m a breath away from a monster; one wrong move and I could release it.

He looks at me and all I see are the blooming bruises beneath his eyes and the bloodshot veins closing in on his pupils. Beneath the tender flesh of his chest, I feel the scrape of what feels like a thorn. My lips move to his throat. I bite that smooth skin of his, covering it with years of unspent emotions. Consuming, crushing feelings I’ve hidden beneath the surface.

Flush against me, I feel the quiver of his arms, the sheen of sweat slick against his throat. I wonder what Cherry would think of his aura now. Swirling black, murky flashes of bright blue, rippling pulses of red.

It’s easy, kissing him.

“Do you like anyone?” I asked years ago, oblivious, leaning my head in his lap and staring up at the clouds. They were puffy and full, and one of them looked like Texas. “Any crushes I should know about?”

My hands were calloused, his soft. I liked holding them. Feeling them brush against my hairline. He lifted up a couple strands and busied himself with a little braid. He trembled, his nerves traveling a live-wire path from his fingers to my scalp. His emotions ran deeper in me than my own.

“Do you?”

“I asked you first,” I accused.

“Maybe...” He swallowed, and I could feel it. “Yeah, I think I do.”

There’s no talking now. He falls back and I lean forward, exploring more, claiming more. Mine. There’s that word again. I suspect it’s always been there ever since I first met him. Mine.

I lift up the corner of his shirt and his birthmark stares back at me, a perfect crescent sliced along his chest. I trace it without thinking, my finger running from one edge to the other.

The rest of him is scarred in other ways. So many slashes across his chest, his shoulders, his back. He shies away from my eyes as I take in every cut. His parents did this. They hoped to ruin him, but they didn’t succeed. I press a kiss to each one and he shudders, a soft noise breaking from his lips. He catches himself on the mattress with splayed hands.

This feels like a fever dream. I’ll wake up, dig a hole, and bury the memory away. Or maybe it’s a nightmare instead. Either way, I’ll follow it to the bitter end.

I stare at him—all the ways he’s changed and all the ways he hasn’t. There’s a sharpness, something feral buried deep into the heart of him.

“So.” He breathes, his voice lowered an edge. He makes the word far more tantalizing than it should be. The hiss of the S, drawn out like a serpent across a low branch, begging me to take a bite. He is the fruit I shouldn’t touch, yet I find my hand reaching out regardless, wanting to grab him, to have a taste.

“So?” I repeat.

“I need you to know something.” He breathes. Each word pulses against my bare skin. I draw back, and his eyes have dilated, full black.

“I told you, I don’t care if it’s da—”

He doesn’t let me finish. He shuts me up, his finger brushed to my lips. “When I first met you,” he starts, holding my thigh with his free hand, peppering kisses against my jaw. “I thought you were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.”

“We were second graders.” I snort, trying to mask how winded I’ve become. His confession grips my throat tight.

“I know,” he whispers, his laughter doing funny things to his pulse, “but remember Valentine’s Day? Where I only got you something and no one else?”

“How could I forget?” I try not to look him in the eyes. “You dropped a live beetle on my desk and asked me to marry you.”

“You said yes, if I remember.”

“To get you to shut up.”

“Seventh grade,” he continues, and somewhere along the line we’ve got his shirt off completely. His fingers trace an invisible path along the shell of my ear. His touch is featherlight. “When Riley Moorson asked you out, I wanted to die. I hated him and didn’t know why. The relief I felt when you turned him down. I felt like I could breathe again.”

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