Page 29 of Never Will I Ever

The words echo in my mind, bouncing off the inside of my skull in rapid succession, and soon enough, I’ll be buried by it. Lost beneath piles of self-loathing and regret.

I need to be far,faraway from Kaleb when it happens.

So I do the only logical thing.

I turn and flee, disappearing down the path to my cabin at a speed Usain Bolt would be jealous of. I don’t stop until I’m locked safely inside, my back slamming against the wooden door before sliding down it.

And then the shame spiral consumes me.

Nine

Kaleb

I’m left leaning against the tree I was just mauled against—alone and painfully hard—fixated on the moonlit path Avery just disappeared down.

The immediate urge to run after him and demand answers hits me, but I fight it tooth and nail. Knowing I’d probably come up empty handed anyway helps me garner enough self-control not to give in, and God only knows the state I’d find him in if I listened to my instincts. So instead, I rush inside my cabin, grab a change of clothes and my toiletries, and head off to the shower.

The hope is that some time alone to process this, rather than rashly following him, might give me some insight into why in the ever-loving fuck Avery—one of the biggest homophobes I’ve ever met—would pin me to a tree and kiss me like I was the air he breathes.

No matter how many times I work through it, any attempt to understand is in vain.

The cornerstone for all the theories I come up with can’t possibly be true.

Because that would mean…

I shove my thoughts to the side and do my best to focus on the task at hand. But every move I make as I shower is on autopilot, and my mind is pulled back to one single idea. The only one that makes sense.

He’s got the same secret I do.

Did.

The semantics of it all doesn’t change the mere idea from beingenough to drive me crazy.

Not more than twenty minutes later, I’m dressed in a pair of plaid cotton pants and a Foltyn baseball hoodie and heading back to my cabin for the night. My time in the shower didn’t do much to wash away the taste and feel of him. They’re both permanently embedded in the forefront of my brain now, and there’s no sign of forgetting anytime soon. These errant and frustrating thoughts continue racing long after I turn out the lights, and no amount of tossing and turning on my mattress has any effect on calming them down. The quiet only makes it worse, the frustrating thoughts from earlier creeping back in with a vengeance.

And I realize if I’ve got any hope of sleeping tonight, I need answers.

Unfortunately, there’s only one way I’m gonna be getting them.

Not bothering to talk myself out of it, I rip the covers off and slip into a pair of shoes before I barrel down the steps to set out deeper down the wooded path. It’s shrouded in quiet darkness, nothing more than the moonlight slicing through the thick conifers to light the way. When I reach Avery’s cabin, I find it in a similar state.

Dark.

There’s no soft glow of a lamp coming through the window. No sound coming from inside either. Neither fact is enough to stop me from storming up the steps and slamming my fist on the door.

“Avery. We need to talk,” I say through the door, still pounding on the wood.

There’s no answer for a minute, but then the door is ripped open hard enough to come right off the hinges.

I can’t see much more than Avery’s silhouette through the blackness, but it’s enough to know he’s there. No doubt glaring at me for waking him in the midst of his beauty sleep.

“What are you doing?” he hisses, though his voice is still riddled with gravel and shards of glass. “You’re gonna wake the kids, beating your damn fist on the door like you’re a deranged maniac.”

“Oh, now I’m the insane one?” I snap, stepping through the doorway and letting the door fall closed behind me. Because I don’t give a shit about anything other than answers right now. If any of the kids wake up—and I doubt they will—we’ll deal with it later.

The second I’m closed in the darkness with him, confined in such close proximity, I realize my mistake.

Because even after the short amount of time we’ve been here, this cabin smells like him. Overwhelmingly so. Ocean salt and citrus invade my nostrils, and when I attempt to focus on something else, I realize I can hear every little breath each of us takes.

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