Page 21 of The Truth About Love

I try desperately not to show him how his close proximity is affecting me. He’s so close that it’d be easy for him to see how far gone I already am. It would be so easy for my heart to fall hopelessly into the palm of his hand.

Two weeks is a ridiculous amount of time to feel this way about someone. And I reason with myself that it’s probably just infatuation born out of being shown some attention from the hottest guy in school.

It’s not real.

It can’t be real.

“What,ever?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“Anywhere?”

“No.”

“Even here?” My breath turns ragged as the brush of his finger moves across my face to the seam of my lips.

But I can’t answer him because he’s dragging my bottom lip down with the tip of his thumb, staring at my mouth in a way no one ever has before. Like he’s hungry despite having just eaten.

“I’m not sure I’ll survive you, Summer-Raine.” His voice is so soft and quiet that I almost don’t hear it.

But I’m glad I do. Because the truth is, I feel the same way. Maybe more so.

But my untrained, untrusting heart isn’t built to withstand romantic trauma. And Auden Wells, with his poetry and dimples and lessons in love, is everything I’ve been hiding from in order to keep it safe.

Because living with the monsters in my head already causes me enough pain without the addition of heartbreak. I’m already too damaged, too corrupted by the evil of clinical depression to expose myself to the danger of falling in love.

I realised earlier as Auden told me about his mother’s illness that I’d have to tell him about my own. It was an epiphany that scared me to the core, because for the first time I’d be opening myself up to the very real possibility of rejection.

It wasn’t quite the same when I approached Marlowe last week. This isn’t me reaching out to someone because my sister called me a loner and told me to try and make friends.

This will make me vulnerable in a way I have never allowed myself to be before with anyone.

“Auden,” I choke out, his thumb falling away from lip.

“Mm?”

“I need to tell you something.” My hands claw at the sleeves of my jersey as I search wildly for the right words to say. “After what you told me about your Mama, I feel like it’d be wrong to keep this from you. I’m sick too.”

“Shhh,” he pulls me to his chest and runs a flat hand up and down my back in soothing strokes. “I know, I’ve seen your monsters Summer-Raine. They don’t scare me away.”

I pull back to look at him, but his arms stay locked around me. Even in the dim glimmer of the moonlight, his eyes are as blue as the midday sky.

“When?”

“The Friday before school started,” he admits. “You were standing in the rain by the gas station. I saw them then as I see them now.”

I remember little from that night, but I do remember the rain. I’d had a bad day, that much I know for sure. I imagine that I’d done what I usually do when the darkness takes over, and left the house in a trance with no sense of direction. Rain has always had a way of grounding me, of bringing me back from the brink when I’ve needed it to. And that night was no exception.

I remember standing somewhere, the gas station apparently, with my head tilted to the sky as I waited for the water to bring me back to life. Raindrops had fallen heavy on my skin, washing away the poison that flowed through my veins.

It was the early hours of the morning before I found my way back home.

“And you’re okay with that? With my depression?” I ask, the scepticism clear in my voice.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because you’re already dealing with your Mama’s illness.”

---