Page 132 of Go Luck Yourself
“No.”
“All your encouraging me to stand up to Malachy,” Loch says, “and you are na gonna send this?”
“It’s different.” I kick the carpet. “What Malachy’s doing to you is fixable. My mother is… not. But processing what she did?Thatis fixable. So that’s what the letter is.”
He hums, maybe a little unconvinced, and folds his legs under him in the chair to read.
It isn’t a long letter. I could barely stand to write even a few paragraphs. And I try not to watch him read—I open my phone, and there are about a dozen texts in the thread with Coal and Iris, complaining about her hangover.
No new texts or missed calls from my mother.
I pull up the thread with her. Messages fly by as I scroll, years of her abuse—that’s what it is, I know now.Abuse.It was never a prelude to her coming back or requests I could obey to get her to love me. It was never anything but onherand I’ve let it go so, so long because I didn’t want to admit how powerless I’ve been this whole time.
There is nothing I can do to fix my mother.
The paper crinkles in Loch’s hand.
My eyes tear as I delete her text thread, flip over to her profile screen in my contacts, and block her number.
The chair groans a few seconds later.
Loch kneels between my legs. “Jesus, Kris, that ripped my heart out. You should send it. She should know what she did to you.”
“She knows. She doesn’t care. And that’s why I wrote it—she’ll never care, not really. She’ll keep acting like nothing happened andwe can pretend it all away without acknowledging all the shit she’s dragged us through—”
“Us. We,” Loch cuts me off. “You’re allowed to feel this. Justyou.”
My eyes sting, filling too much now. A tear breaks free, tracks down my cheek. “She’ll keep acting like she didn’t do anything. To me. She’ll keep acting like what she did wasn’t cowardly even though sheknowsshe hurt me. And even if she’ll never care,Icare, and I’m not going to keep acting like it’s my responsibility to make up for what she did. This way”—I nod at the letter, on the desk now—“Iget to acknowledge what she did.Iget to deal with it. It’s forme.”
The sadness in Loch’s eyes is so potent that it detracts from the way my own are hot and my breathing is cramped and my chest is straining.
“I wrote about you, too,” I tell him. Talking to fill the void he leaves in his quiet sadness, something brewing in his expression that I don’t like. “Really sappy, poetic shit. I wanted to send it to the reporters. Have Christmas release it, so everyone could read the truth about who you are. But you don’t need something like that. You’re showing everyone who you are on your own now, and you’re doing this foryou,not for tabloids or rumors. You helped me realize how okay that is, sometimes, to do things for ourselves. There is selflessness in being selfish.”
Loch’s eyes shut.
Something hovers over him, a shadow on a wall with no source. And it feeds into my terror all over again, that sharp, stabbing pain that this happened too fast and I remember what it was like for him to pull away. But there shouldn’t be any more reasons for that, right? Everything’s in the open now.
“Loch.” I can’t help that his name comes out imploring. I’m fraying, sleeplessness inching up over me. I cup his face, but his eyes stay shut. “Don’t do this again.”
“Kris—”
“I don’t know what your problem is—maybe you don’t deserve me, which is insane; but I sure as hell don’t deserve you, either. So be unworthy with me, in this moment, right now. We’re here. We haveall day. I showed you part of my soul and we’re next to a bed. So kiss me, you idiot, and be with me.”
Now, his eyes do open, and god, that agony on his face is an arrow straight to my heart.
But he surges up and kisses me, and it’s… different. There’s no possession in it, none of that aggressive control. It’s soft and savoring, his lips and the abrasiveness of his facial hair and it does something to the building fear in my chest, guides it away with a gentle hand.
Loch stands and yanks me to my feet with him. Then he’s stripping off my clothes and his own in efficient silence, backing us into my ensuite and turning on the shower. The water heats while he kisses me, that slow drop of his lips over mine, and when the room is steamy he pulls me under the shower with him.
Clear marbles of water roll down his body, dragging streaks through the paint, pooling at our feet in rivers of gray. His silence in any other situation would feel off, but the way he looks at me as he works his hands in my hair, cleaning out the paint, is strung with such force that he doesn’t need to speak at all.
The air fills with the spicy scents of shampoo and body wash and my eyes roll shut under the massaging tips of his fingers on my scalp. I let my own hands run wild, following the trails of paint, scrubbing them off his skin, lingering on the bend of his hips, that spot that will forever drive me out of my mind.
Forever.Not forever. Word by word. This moment, only.
He presses me against the tiled shower wall. His hands and mouth are reverent, moving with an artist’s care, turning me into a dizzying masterpiece with lips sculpting the contours on my chest and stomach. He’s wary of my injuries, washing them even more tenderly, and I hope the thunder of the shower covers the whimpers I make, deep, resonating pleas to my root.
“Fuck me,” I tell him.
