Page 93 of Bring You Back

My head finishes turning, my eyes trailing to her legs, to her scar. I can’t see it from this angle, or through the shadows, but I know its location. I want to touch it. I want to strip her down, explore her body. I don’t want to find more scars, but I want to run my hands over the ones already there, trace them with my finger, taste them with my tongue. I want all the pieces.

The urge is so strong I have to dig my nails into my palms to keep from reaching for her. It stings, a welcome ache to mask the weight that’s slowly been lifting from my chest.

I relax my head against the headrest, and think about my father’s car that’s planted behind the ass of mine. “What’s he still doing in there?”

“Waiting for you.”

I scoff a laugh. He’s going to be waiting a while. “Not tonight.” Tonight is fucked, and I’m ready for a new day.

“I asked him to leave,” Camille says, and I don’t doubt it. I’ve heard the proof of her having my back when she’s behind it. “And not to bethat guy, but … what if tonight was all you had?” I look at her, slow, my eyes catching everything in front of us before finding her face. Her head is also against the headrest. “Would you be able to live with the last thing you said to him?”

I hear what she’s not saying, her own personal experience behind the question. “Are you?”

She stares ahead a moment, fingers sliding through the strings on her jeans, then looks at me. “I asked you first.”

I look away, frustration building at the question, and at her for asking it. “It doesn’t matter. We can’t just monitor every single conversation and make sure it’s wrapped up in a pretty fucking bow,” I say. “People suck. We say shitty things, in the moment, and sometimes, we have a right to.” I look at her again, and having no clue of the last words Camille had said to Caleb before he left in that car, for her I add, “But that’s the thing. It’s just amoment. It’s not the full picture. He knows you loved him.”

She shakes her head at my soft assurance as she looks up at the roof, and I want her thoughts. “I’m not saying it’s easy. It’s just something to think about.” She takes a breath and straightens up, ready to escape. “By the way.” She reaches for the door handle and my hand inches toward her. “You have the power to hurt me, too,” she reminds me with the actual words as she opens the door. “That’s the point.”

My hand grabs for hers, and we freeze, her body halfway out of the car, my stare on the hand that took hers without any thought, on the fingers that have laced through mine without any thought. We’re still not looking at each other, but we’re holding on to each other like we can’t let go, palms pressing, fingers squeezing.

I tug her back in and she settles against the seat, her other hand sliding from the handle as the door falls back in place. She’s still so soft. I think that like I expect her to be hard. Tough on the inside, tough on the outside.

I loosen my hold, which loosens hers enough for me to play with her fingers. Those same fingers she loves to lick food off of when she knows I’m looking. It’s been really fucking difficult not to take her hand and lick off whatever’s on them myself. If she keeps it up, I will.

I realize what I’m doing when I feel her tense. My fingers slow to a stop against hers, and I settle back into just holding. Now that I have her hand in mine, I don’t want her to take it from me. Not yet. Not here, in the dark, where our need for each other overpowers our need to pull away.

Her hand relaxes, her fingers folding back through mine, but her tensing makes me think I’m touching her in a way I shouldn’t. That I’m not holding the hand I should be holding.

But no.Thisis the hand I should be holding. Right now, I’m doing something with the girl I should be doing it with.

That doesn’t stop the question that’s been stuck to my brain since the day she left from coming out of my mouth. “If Reyna hadn’t—” I stop, start again. “If I had kissed you last summer, would you have stayed?”

“No bullshit?” The smile in her voice brings out one in mine.

“No bullshit.”

Camille said that to me after I asked her a question with the same amount of weight back in the early days of our friendship. I don’t remember the exact question, but I remember thatNo bullshit, because it was the first time I truly felt like she was letting me in.

“I want to say yes,” she says now on a sigh. “For a couple reasons.”

If she says yes, that means she would be with me. If she says yes, that means her brother might still be alive.

Why the fuck didn’t I try again? Why didn’t I justkissher?

“I want you to say yes, too,” I tell her. “For the same reasons.”

She looks at me, squeezes my hand, then looks back to the roof.

“By the way,” I echo, switching topic, a tease in my voice. “The couch stain.” She meets my stare again as I recall catching her trying to scope it out the other day. “I hid it. Just flip the cushion.”

She laughs, and the memory flashes. I was teaching her to playMario Kartin the living room one afternoon, and she had a cup of soda propped between her legs, instead of on the table, or on the floor like I suggested. She threw mad at the game, and the next thing we knew, that soda splashed all over her jeans, half of my jeans, and the cushion. It’s safe to say we didn’t game together again.

“Good to know it’s still there.”

“It’s all still here, Camille.”

She takes my words the way I intend them, the breath she pulls coming out uneven through her parting lips. She snaps her stare to the roof, and I find myself leaning forward to try to get it back, but then I’m falling against the seat at the sound of her voice.

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