Page 16 of Under The Twilight Rainfall
And as soon as I’d aged out of the system and the courts lost their hold over me—I’d bolted.
“We always wanted you.” Valen breaks our mutually agreed upon silence. His head tips toward his chest and he watches the hall, but a wistful smile plays across his lips, the same as when we were younger and he tried to hide his disappointment in an embrace—one of the last few I allowed him to have.
“You would have changed your mind.”
His head snaps up. He looks me in the eyes with a fire that moves like torrent rain.
“I accepted your choice eight years ago. And do you know what I think about every night before I go to bed? The last thought before I fall asleep?”
I shake my head, silenced by the intensity in his voice and the storm raging in his eyes.
“I wish you would have stayed.”
WhenIliedownfor bed that night, stripped to my boxers in the hopes I won’t wake up in a puddle of my own sweat, I listen more closely than I should to Valen’s breathing on the floor. No matter how much I toss and turn, squeeze my eyes shut, or smother myself with the pillow, his presence won’t leave me alone.
One morning, a couple of months into living with the Olaños, I had wandered into the bathroom just as Valen stepped out of the shower. He’d had a towel around his hips and was brushing his teeth at the sink, but as a healthy and fully functioning fifteen-year-old boy, I’d instantly been lust-drunk on the miles of toned, tanned skin and dark eyes that always regarded me fondly.
I’d been holding back, closing myself off so I couldn’t get close, couldn’t lose anything else important to me.
“Shower’s open,” he had said, but I’d been too transfixed and tongue-tied by this seventeen-year-old god in front of me to get a single word out. He had smiled, rinsed and wiped his mouth, then hooked an arm around my neck and kissed my head. “Gonna catch flies, squirt.”
He’d walked away, but I had seen it. Faded butterfly marks on the inside of his wrist, much like the ones I hid under my hoodies. In that moment, I’d thought maybe I could crack the door open, let him see a little of me so he wouldn’t feel alone, and in return maybe he could carve out a little space in his own corner of hurt for me to huddle, to hide out until it was time for me to move on.
He had done more than that, and I had embraced and indulged until reality tore its way through and I set fire to that hideaway. It was to keep me safe.
So why does it feel—seven years later and left with the tattered remnants of that comfort—that I’m the one choking on the ashes?
“Can’t sleep?” I nearly roll straight off the couch at the soft voice in my ear, but Valen puts a calming hand on my chest, just over my rapidly beating heart.
“Jesus fuck! Next time speak before you invade my bubble.”
“Sorry.” He pulls his hand away, and I refuse to admit I miss the warmth. “Are you okay?”
I roll my eyes, even if he can’t see it in the dark, and turn on my side. Facing him, I can see his outline, but the curtains are pulled closed tighter than they were last night, so I can’t make out his expression.
How do I answer that? Sure, of course I am. I just keep thinking about you, thinking about a life I gave up and turned my back on and is now being shoved down my throat so hard I can barely breathe?
“No.”
He finds my hand in the darkness, and I let him take it. Maybe—here in the night where it’s just the two of us—I can take his comfort, can claim the offering of closeness and protection. Just until the morning.
This time when he pulls me down and arranges us on the mat, my arms are around him, and I can’t pretend that being pressed against him doesn’t send my body all kinds of mixed signals.
It feelsright. Comfortable. Safe.
But then it feels warm. Contact like a drizzle of rain in a drought, like finding land after months at sea, like a little piece of that hideaway that survived the wreckage.
I’m not horny, dammit, but I’ve spent so long mixing my need for touch with pleasure that my dick perks up where it’s pressed to Valen’s back.
Neither of us acknowledges it, but the longer I lie unable to sleep, the more apparent it becomes, and my need to getcloserintensifies.
I’m not hooking up with Valen.
But my mind and body aren’t on the same page.
It’s a slow start of my hips rocking against him, giving sweet gentle friction to my cock. I sigh in relief as I lay my head on Valen’s shoulder, but his quiet gasp in the otherwise silent room may as well be a gunshot through my waning awareness.
I still, cursing the way my body aches, the way it yearns for release as if that will give me the connection my mind is seeking. What the hell am I doing?
