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He was back atoff the rest ofto hurt yourself… we’ve got all night"

"…not enough ti offhis latex ars I gasped, both at his touch and at the slick proof of my own unmistakable excite his knees to prizeat my neck in what I had co foreplay "Tiht," he concluded, as he bit, taking hly at the same ti coy That night we had both world enough and time to roll around quite satisfactorily for many hours

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tell me what happened to you," Ryu said, his voice quiet in the dark "I want to hear it in your oords"

I stiffened in his ar of bo else

"TellAnd what happened to you after"

I groaned internally That was the last thing I wanted to talk about It wasthe person you’d just had sex with about your very first--and only--lover But it would be hell telling Ryu about Jason’s death and what carief was impossible And I doubted if Ryu--who had compared humans to fireworks, after all--could ever understand what I was trying to get across to him

I shifted, turning over to lie on et away that easy

"Tellforently nipped , secretly hoping that I couldinto the whole story I started with my parents, and how theyproto-hippy neighbors who had been like fahter The son was Stuart’s dad and the daughter had fallen off the rails and gotten into drugs pretty heavily She’d rather dramatically abandoned her little boy, Jason, in the train station in Chicago and his grandparents had taken him in Obviously Jason was sad about his mother But between my own parents and Nick and Nan, ere both as loved as two kids could be And we’d come to love each other just as passionately I don’t knohen it started; it was like we’d always been connected We were everything to each other, and our relationship evolved with us But as children ere like twins--so close you’d think we’d shared the same womb And then ere six my mother disappeared, as well At the tie where no one was divorced, or had a baby out of wedlock, or--gods forbid--abandoned their own flesh and blood If Jason and I had been close before, now our attachment was almost preternatural

"Jason and I understood each other, and we felt like it was us against the world," I concluded, turning around so Ryu and I were nose to nose He sly, but I took the opportunity to take his bottoive it a little nibble Then I kissed hiht mine Until he called my bluff and withdrew his lips with a determined shake of his head

"I want the whole story," he reinary fist at hi," I said, "except for one secret" Re myself to breathe, I continued "I never told hi is, in uarded a secret as incest, alcoholism, or infidelity are in others" My voice broke, despite my attempt at levity

The rest ca, I went to the beach for a swiht in But Jason one to the cove, too, or followedAnyway, he couldn’t have knoould be okay It inter, the water was freezing, and there was a stor" Fat tears rolled, scaldingto rescue me" My voice broke, and I couldn’t continue I shutawayout of the water after a refreshing swim to find another set of clothes next to mine on the beach I reate, and what it felt like the moment I realized that it was Jason’s Patriots sweatshirt with the distinctive maroon paint stains, Jason’s battered old North Face jacket, and Jason’s favorite pair of jeans I’d never forget the emotion I felt at that moment, not that there was a nae ether descriptive phrases until the required idea or elish, the word for what I felt while standing there clutching Jason’s battered hiking socks would be a word made up of some terrible combination of total devastation, unholy terror, and the overwhel need to find out that he was okay, that this was just a trick or a mistake

"You know the rest of that story," I said, h I kept my eyes shut "I searched for hours for him, and then I finally found hiht that meant he was still alive and had swu" I shuddered and Ryu’s arot us to the beach somehoas exhausted I just collapsed with hiency services bundling me into an ambulance and Jason into the coroner’s van He was dead and I was nearly so"

Ryu nodded, stroking a hand down y to pull him out of the Sow Nell said everyone felt it for miles, but they had no idea what could have happened or who it could have been They never figured it was you, since you were not supposed to have anywhere near that kind of capability Your panic just brought it all out When we lose control like that, it’s very dangerous--releasing that much power can drain us to the point of death You were lucky to have survived"

My lips went tight and ut clenched "Lucky?" I asked, oh so rhetorically "I don’t think I was lucky What I lived through after Jason’s death nearly broke me" Ryu frowned atand near-drowning of two local teenagers was big news We’d grown up around the ocean; we knee had no business being in it when it was like that Jason was dead and I was comatose for a few days, so everybody just went ahead and made up what happened People said Jason and I had a suicide pact, or that it was an attempted murder-suicide, or suicide attempt and botched attempted rescue Because Jason had been so perfect, and I ho I was, it was the last idea that people latched onto Jason was too alive to want to kill hiood to want to kill me and then off himself So, he must have stumbled across me mid-suicide attempt and tried to save reat news ratings and terrible made-for-TV movies, I lived and Jason drowned The media loved it," I concluded, bitterly

"Who would say such things?" Ryu marveled "Especially about children?"

I snorted derisively "Confronted with ca to be that little talking head on the news And nobody ever liked me anyway So the kids at school were more than happy to flesh out the motive for my attempted ‘suicide’ Jason was beautiful, a star athlete, and really popular despite our relationship No one had ever understood our connection So people, nairl named Linda Allen and Jason’s cousin, Stuart, told thewhatever hold I had over hi around with rown frosty with rage and Ryu’s eyes narrowed in syoing out and e As for why they did it, Linda’s motivation was obvious She’d always carried a torch for Jason and she is nearly as delusional as one of her romance-novel heroines As for Stuart, he and Jason had never been close when Jason was alive I think Stu used his cousin’s death as an opportunity to cause drairls who can’t beat hiet er under control, "I didn’t actually have to see any of the news coverage at the tis tied down so I couldn’t ‘self harm’ Not that people weren’t keen to fill me in on what I had missed upon my eventual release back into polite society"

Ryu shook his head, his face sad "What then?"