Page 50 of Under The Twilight Rainfall
“I coulda told you that when you told me you wanted to stay for him.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to stay—“
“Dex!” There’s laughter in Zeke’s voice, the deep timbre vibrating through the line. “Why are you talking to me when you’ve got shit to work out with him?”
“Um, because you called.” I’m not walking anymore, the little wheel in my brain doing a ghost spin because the hamster running the show is AWOL. “I ran away.”
The sigh is loud in my ear, but I’m not sure I care. “Go back to him.”
Go back.
To Valen?
To the family that isn’t mine?
“You want to know if you’re in love, Dex? How does the thought of leaving him feel?”
Like my heart is being ripped out of my chest and shredded in front of my eyes. Like I’m losing something important.
“What if it’s just... infatuation? What if I’m just so hyper-focused on all of the attention he gives me that I think this is more than it is?”
Zeke doesn’t answer for a long time, so long that I worry the call dropped—but nope, still going.
“Zeke?”
“Dex,” he says slowly. “I can, will, and have given you copious amounts of attention. Never have you wanted more than the occasional lay. Are you sure this isn’t more?”
More. More.There’s that fucking word again.
“I hate you,” I say, because the reality is setting in and I can’t deny the truth.
I love Valen something fierce, and I’m fucking terrified.
My chest hurts, my palms are sweaty, and I need to do something with my hands—anything to ease the fog rolling over me.
“I gotta go,” I mutter, ending the call and stuffing the phone in my pocket.
I have to close my eyes and do the deep breathing exercises the therapist I sometimes see keeps badgering me about. It helps enough to get my feet moving. I don’t know where I am, so I turn back the way I came and just let my feet carry me.
They carry me until the sun is sitting low in the sky, hues of pink and orange swirling through the clouds, and I see the familiar slanted roof of the Olaño home.
Standing at the end of the walkway is Valen: arms crossed over his chest and bottom lip pulled so tightly between his teeth the skin around his mouth has turned white.
He sees me and reaches forward immediately, but the crackle of my ribs squeezing around my heart makes me plant my feet in the dirt. Valen is halfway to pulling me in before his hands drop to his sides.
He clenches his fists, and all I can hear is the echo in my head of how I’ve fucked up. That before I can even process the fact I’m falling in love for the first time in my life—or maybe I’ve been falling and fighting it for years— I’ve already messed it up.
I want to tell him to hold me. Tell him whatever bullshit is happening in his head isn’t the truth—I’m just beaten and broken and I need more care than what anyone can hope to give me—but I don’t want to push my luck. Maybe I can save this.
Or maybe it’s time I give up and give in—realize that letting myself have this with Valen is wrong.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Needed space,” I say through a heavy tongue.
Valen nods, but it feels like there’s a sheet of glass between us, and not the clear kind but the frosted one.
I hate it.
