Page 15 of Haunt

Because I wasn’t scared. But now I am not so sure.

Billy would never hurt me. Even as I think it, the cut in my thigh burning, I know it to be true.

I shake my head, a strand of hair sticking itself across my lips. He brings his hand up, the one laced with mine, he releases my fingers, my hand curling into his chest. His, cupping my jaw in the junction of his finger and thumb. My other arm is by my side, crushed in his hold, my head tilted back, he smooths his index finger up and down my cheek, thumb digging into my jawbone as my own gouges into his chest.

“Are you sure?” he breathes, the words siphoning their way from his tongue to mine.

“Yes, Billy,” I whisper back, feeling lightheaded with the way his light eyes study me, I swallow and he smiles, dropping his palm lower to feel the roll of my throat.

“I need you to always trust me,” he cants his head, lips brushing the corner of my mouth when it occurs to me, we have not kissed.

Not on the mouth.

Not tonight.

Since his reappearance into my life.

Is any of this real?

It feels like a fever dream, something I don’t want to wake from, let the sickness kill me if it means I get to stay like this.

The thoughts make me flush, thinking of less than an hour ago when his mouth was all over me in a different way. Perhaps something I have only conjured inside my brain, and I am sure, under the cover of darkness, redness is eerily visible in my pale skin. Different things tumble through my head, too many to really cling onto for more than a fleeting second. And I think I want to. Kiss him. But I am not someone who initiates. I’m not sure I would even know how to. I am unsure I have ever been kissed in the way I think I would like to kiss him.

I lick my parted lips, strands of hair latching themselves onto my tongue. His finger curls, the hand still in mine, hooking them free of my mouth, smoothing them back from my face.

“Even when you think I don’t care,” I frown instantly, confused by what that could mean, “I do.Youare all I have ever andwillever care about, and soon, you will see how much.” His light eyes flicker between my dark ones. “It won’t be easy being with me,” he whispers over my mouth, almost like a promise, dragging the tip of his nose over mine. “But I cannot live without you any longer,” a chill bumps over the discs of my spine, a chill that is strangely warming. “And I am not so sure thatyoucan,” he hushes into my cheek, my eyes wide open, staring up at the dark sky, full moon in the clear expanse but there are no stars. “Can you, my pretty Little Lamb?” I exhale hard, like something punches into my gut and I am automatically shaking my head.

I have known this since we were mere babes.

I am lovesick.

Infected with him.

Always have been.

Always will be.

He draws back enough to drop his forehead to mine, our breaths shared between parted lips, our joined hands between us, resting beneath my chin. I squeeze my eyes closed for just a second, thinking of my next words.

I don’t know what they mean. Even as I speak them. What I do know is that the extent of their truth is all I feel right down in my marrow.

“The only thing I will allow to part us again,” I whisper between us, his arm around my back crushing my ribs, “is death.”

And even then, I would not allow him to live without me. I would take him too. With me. The pair of us falling into the afterlife together or not at all.

His smile is slow to form, as though he heard my unspoken thoughts, a short huff of laughter expels through his nostrils. I feel it against my face, my neck. It is like a drug, being in his presence, I feel as though I have been waiting an eternity to be right here.

“Never let me go, Billy,” I say vulnerably.

It is a declaration. Ominous. Pleading in its way. I do not knowthisBilly. This grown man, a few years older than I. My soul begs to differ. My heart is but a broken, decaying thing since he left. He has returned no more than a few hours and it feels like the organ is already stitching itself back together.

I have an obsessive need to carve my way back inside of this man, plant myself inside of his bones. And if I need to do it literally,I will.

His smile transforms into a grin, wicked and devilish. Spinning us around, my spine crashing into the metal railing of the bridge. A loud splash sounds at my back, the bag, plunging into the water. Both of his hands find my face, his hips pinning me in place, the thick bulge of his cock pressing into my belly. He holds my head, angling it back so I have to look up at him. He is towering over me, his breaths harder than they were only seconds ago.

Excitement pulses between us like a shared heartbeat, my nerves at my previous words evaporating. The way he looks at me like I am his entire world puts me in a head spin.

In this moment, it feels as though we have never been separated at all.

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