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“Yep. Honeysuckle.” “Excuse me?” “You remind me of honeysuckle. Nectar sweet as honey, like the sound of your voice. But the berries are deceiving—poisonous if consumed.” He shrugs playfully. “Beautiful and deadly.”
“That boy is a heathen. If you’re smart, you’d stay far away from him.”
A bouquet made entirely of honeysuckles.
Plus, if I drown, the only person I’m really hurting is myself, and—” “And all the people who love you,” I say. He smiles at me. “That’s where you’re wrong, Honeysuckle. Nobody loves me. I can only hurt myself.” “If you drown out here tonight, you’ll hurt me.”
The more I get to know her, the more I realize what kindred spirits we are. Our upbringings couldn’t be more different, but somehow, we’ve ended up with similar struggles. She calls hers wolves, and she calls mine ghosts.
“I want to bring you with me because you scare my ghosts away, Darby.”
I squeeze her hand four times. I’ll. Keep. You. Safe. We jump together, free-falling into the abyss.
“You came,”
“You needed me.”
I’ve split my lifetime in two: before Darby and after Darby. I haven’t allowed myself to savor the blip of time that was Darby.
“You need to understand that the only person with authority over your body is you, you and whomever else you allow. No one is entitled to your body, nor are they entitled to what you do with it. That includes your parents.”
“Stop looking at me like that, Honeysuckle.” His voice is rough. “Like what?” I ask, suddenly breathless. His full lips part on an inhale as his tongue snakes out to rake across them. Maybe it’s whatever I’ve been drinking, but I realize I very much want to know what that lip feels like between my teeth. “Like you’re wondering what a piece of my soul feels like.”
“Don’t ever hide your smiles from me, Honeysuckle. I need to see every single one, especially the ones I put there.”
“I wish I had that kind of confidence.” “I’m not confident, Darby. I’m just in love with a person who doesn’t see my value.”
“You’re the easiest person to talk to. You make me want to tell you everything, every thought running through my head. I feel lighter each time I open up to you.”
It’s all so strange, being back in her proximity. It still feels like I’m staring directly into the sun, but where her light once gave me warmth, it’s now only a reminder of how badly I was once burned.
“Leo,” she breathes. “Stop looking at me like that.” “Looking at you like what, Honeysuckle?” “Like you know exactly what my soul feels like, and you’ve been incomplete without it all this time.”
“For what it’s worth, I really did love you,” I whisper. “My word is worthless…but I loved you too.”
“You taste like honey,” he rasps. I hum against his mouth. “You taste like corruption.”
“You’re the best kind of bad boy because you’ve got a good soul.”
“You’d wait a whole year just for me to come back?” “I think I might wait my whole life for you to come back, Darby. Something tells me there would be no point in trying to move on from this, because I’d end up searching for you in every place I go, in every person I meet, aimlessly wandering until I find you again.”
“Darby,” he rasps. I look at his eyes again. “Do you ever think of me?” I feel my face go red, but not with embarrassment. With need. With desperation. “Yes,” I whisper. “When?” “Every time I close my eyes.”
“All we are is lost time.”
“I think there is a difference between love and infatuation. Infatuation is dangerous. Obsessive. Toxic, like holding matches when you’re covered in gasoline. You know you’re going to destroy yourself—destroy each other—but you do it anyway, just because you wonder what the burn feels like.”
“You don’t need a piece of my soul, Honeysuckle. You already own the whole goddamn thing.”
“Stop looking at me like that,” he whispers. “Like what?” “Like I own all the pieces of your soul. Like you’ve been incomplete all this time without them.”
“Did you look for me in the dark? Did you try to hear my voice?” “I tried.” She nods. “But I think your voice got drowned out by the howls of wolves.”
“I didn’t realize people could just do that with their parents, choose not to have a relationship with them.” I turn and grab her face between my hands. “Of course you can, Darby. You’re your own person. You choose who you want to be part of your life. If someone isn’t loving you the way you deserve, if they’re not giving you the respect you deserve, if they’re not putting into the relationship what you are, then you owe them nothing. It doesn’t matter if you share blood.”
“You’re my ‘it for me’ person. You were my first love. Then, the one who got away. Now, you’re my ‘it was always you.’ And it doesn’t matter what happened in between, because you’re gonna be my forever person too.” He cups my face, bringing his mouth to mine. “You’re my once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, Darby.”
“I’ll write you a love letter every day for the rest of my life if you just come home, Honeysuckle. Stay with me.”
