Page 72 of The Truth About Love

“You’re always here when I wake up. Do you just enjoy watching me sleep?” I say in a lame attempt at a joke.

She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“What happened?” she asks, taking the flannel from my head and dabbing it down my cheek. It’s cool and damp and feels phenomenal against my burning skin.

“Had a crazy hallucination and freaked out.” I shrug. “Must have fainted.”

She hums in response, looking everywhere but at me. Her fingers twitch in her lap, before tucking her hair behind her ear and repeating the action, something she does when she’s nervous.

“You’re being weird.” I narrow my eyes, slowly lifting myself up into a sitting position. “Why are you being weird?”

“Um,” she looks down at her hands, “it wasn’t a hallucination, Sum.”

“What?”

“You weren’t hallucinating. It was real. He was here.”

I laugh, becausewhat? There’s no way Auden was really here. He couldn’t have been. It’s not possible.

“No, he wasn’t.”

I scratch at my neck as shivers creep along my skin, running the length of my body.

She finally looks at me and I can see in her eyes that she believes what she’s saying. She doesn’t say anything, just nods as if to sayyeah, he was.

“Don’t be stupid.” My tone is biting. “Why would he be here? We haven’t spoken in half a decade. He doesn’t even know I live in the city, let alone my address.”

“Please don’t freak out, okay?” she says and instantly, my heart begins to thunder again. “I called him. Three days ago, when I went home from the hospital your first night. I called and asked if he could stay with you. I didn’t know what to do, Sum, or who else I could ask.”

“No.” She wouldn’t do this. She wouldn’t go behind my back and betray me like this. “No, you didn’t.”

She’s joking, she must be. She’s never been very good at pranks and this is just another one of her misfired attempts, because there is no way in hell that she’d call the last person in the world that I would want to see me like this.

But her eyes fill with tears as she nods to validate her story.

“Why would you do this to me?”

“Because you need the support and I know you’d refuse to let me hire anyone.”

“That doesn’t mean you could go behind my back and ask my ex-boyfriend. What the fuck, Winter? Are you trying to hurt me?”

“What?No.” A tear slips free down her cheek. “I did it because I love you. And I’d rather you hate me for this then throw yourself off a bridge again. I can live with you being angry with me, I can’t live with you being dead.”

Rage still burns hot inside me and I cling to it. If I focus on being angry at my sister’s betrayal, I won’t think about the fact that Auden was really here. On my doorstep. Talking to me.Touching me.

I remember the warmth of his hands on my arms as I collapsed on the floor. It was the first time since senior year that he’s touched me, thatanyman has touched me, and I was too far gone in the throes of my panic attack to take notice of the way it felt. I hadn’t even thought that it was real.

How long have I ached to feel the touch of his hands on my body again? It’s all I’ve dreamt of since I had him removed from my visitors list after the accident on the cliffs. I never thought I’d get the chance to touch him again.

“Where is he now?” I ask.

Winter eyes me cautiously, chewing on her lip as she thinks her answer over.

And then I realise.

If her lack of response doesn’t confirm my suspicions, then the way my body tingles in awareness does. I should have realised sooner. From the way I was burning up, the goosebumps on my skin, the way I kept shivering despite feeling so hot.

I may not have picked up on it, but my body certainly had. Just like it had always done back in high school whenever he was near.

---