Page 70 of Sunrise

I’m up and on him in an instant.

If he doesn’t want to be touched, he can push me away. Fuck knows I’m used to it. “I couldn’t tell you,” I explain. “Once we went back to being normal friends, I was desperate to cling to what little I had left of you. Telling you what I did would have been a risk.”

He shakes his head.

“Yes, it would have, Alex.” I grab his shoulders. “You were a wreck for so long and you never wanted to talk about it after…” Holy hell, we’re really having this conversation. “…after you asked me to fuck you that last time and I couldn’t do it. There was no way I could just come up to you and be like, ‘hey, so I tortured your abuser and blew him up in the cabin he raped you in.’”

Heflinches.

I think I’ve fucked up telling him my secret.

“I’m sorry if you believed it was a quick death and that pained you. I didn’t know you’d been holding onto that part of it all this time. You never spoke about it with me again, and I thought you might have worked through that part of your trauma.”

He stares at the floor, his eyes wide and shining.

Is he going to bolt?

Did I just blow up what we finally got back?

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, desperate to make it better. “I’m so fucking sor—”

Alex lunges forward, grips the side of my head with both hands, and slams his mouth to mine.

I’m stumbling back from the force of it. My mind’s reeling.

“All this time…” His voice cracks as he presses his forehead to mine. “All thisfuckingtimeyou never said a word.”

“I’m good at keeping secrets.” Too many conflicting emotions zoom through me. “You know that.”

I never told a soul about what happened to Alex. No matter if I thought I should or not, it wasn’t my secret to tell. This one was myonlysecret, and I wasn’t spilling it unless it was absolutely necessary.

“I feel sick.” He pulls away from me and rushes over to my kitchen sink.

Yeah, I’ve messed up again. I should have taken this information to my grave and helped him work through his hang ups some other way.

Making my way to him, I might as well go all in. I can’t take it back, nor would I change my past actions if I could. “I hear you screaming in there.”

He gathers cold water in his hands and splashes his face over and over.

“You’ve always heard me screaming,” he calmly says, turning slowly to face me. “You just never understood everything I was screaming about.”

Guess he’s right. I only knew he was in pain, and I could make what was hurting him disappear. He refused to share much about that weekend, and I never pushed for details. What I knew was enough.

“If I’d known you were this mad about the way you thought he died, I probably would have told you sooner.”

“I almost ate that bullet.” His hands fall to his sides. “I… I almost killed myself because I didn’t think his death was good enough. It hadn’t helped me recover. It didn’t fix me.”

I never knew there was a precise reason he knocked on death’s door that day. I just thought it was the entire thing, not one piece. Too hellbent on making sure he never did it again, I kept my sights on the horizon and made sure he did too.

Look for the sunrise. Make it to fucking sunrise.Be the sunrise.

“You don’t need to be fixed,” I wipe some of the water dripping off his chin. “You’re not broken.”

“Iambroken, Knox.Jesus!” He fists his hair. “I can’t even be touched by another man.”

“You do alright being touched by me.” I step closer and poke his chest. “See?”

“You know what I fucking mean.”

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