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February 7 - February 14, 2024
This is the fourth anniversary of his death. Four years, and the pain is still as fresh as the day he left me.
After my brother’s death, Michael, my father, became the very villain my fairytale stories warned me about. A heart that was once large enough to harbor all the love in the world shriveled into a gray husk overnight. He doesn’t check in on me. He doesn’t talk to me. He acts like nothing ever happened. It’s like he wants to erase that entire part of his life, which includes me, too. He let the pain consume him, and he used it to estrange himself from me. Instead of our family being united by grief—supporting one another to strengthen our foundation—we were ripped apart by death’s merciless
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I didn’t get to say goodbye.
That was supposed to be an inside thought, Aeris. AN INSIDE ONE.
Willing my blush to fade, I force myself to make eye contact with him. “Maybe I just don’t like you.” “I know I should feel emasculated, but that’s the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Masochist much?” I joke. “No. But with you, absolutely.”
I stop in my tracks. I don’t know what it is about this girl, but she gets all my wires crossed.
“You’re adorable when you blush, you know that?” A flirtatious lilt skirts along his tone.
Dear Lord, give me strength. Make me think about anything else besides riding Hayes like it’s the Kentucky Derby.
“You’re really beautiful, you know that?”
I remember the first time I met him. It was my first day of third grade, and during snack time, he came up to me and stole one of my peanut butter crackers. With no warning or anything. Then just ate it in front of me with this look like, Yeah, bitch, and I’d do it again.
Rip the Band-Aid off, Hayes. “I slept with Talavera’s daughter.” “Excuse me?” Put the Band-Aid back on.
Lmaooo
“Someone as gorgeous as you agreeing to a date with me? You bet I’m clearing my schedule for the entire day to be with you.”
She’s been hurt in the past? Look, I have no idea what dickmuppet broke her heart, but if I find him, I have no problem giving him a one-way ticket to the ICU. She’s not even technically mine, but there’s this possessiveness inside me that’s never been there before. I feel the need to protect her, to take care of her.
The second Kit looks at me, a low rumble comes from Hayes’ chest. “Don’t even think about it,” he growls,
“Don’t move, or the guys are going to see the raging hard-on I have right now, and I’ll never hear the end of it.”
He’s right. I’ve never worked this hard for a girl before. I don’t know what kind of voodoo witch shit Aeris has used on me.
Her unspoken name burns on my tongue like rum. Her perfume is an addictive aroma that electrifies every hormone in my body, and the sensual set of her mouth makes me think the most lecherous thoughts. She’s poison in my veins, and I can feel it killing me slowly. So yes, to put it in simple terms, I like her.
She’s a work of moving art, and I’ll forever be in awe of her.
I don’t swoon, okay? No part of me has ever swooned. I brood. That’s it.
My favorite color is gold, like the little flecks in your eyes.
“I’m sorry that you’ve lived the majority of your life without knowing how extraordinary you are,” he says, pressing his forehead against mine, “but I’m glad that I got to be the first to tell you.”
“I, um, didn’t have a big speech prepared or anything, but I wanted to ask you to officially be my girlfriend.”
“I’m so fucking attracted to you that it drives me crazy. I love everything about your body, and you have no idea how many times I’ve wanted to feel it on top of me.
“Do you need me to prove it to you? How I’d give anything to be the last man to touch you?”
“What do you want me to say, Aeris? Do you want me to tell you how every time you flash me that better-than-sex smile of yours, I grow hard? How you’re the only thing on my mind when I have my hand wrapped around my cock in the shower? How I want those perfect breasts of yours in my mouth while you fuck my hand with your pussy?”
“Only for you, pretty girl.”
“If you don’t move your hands, I’ll pin them to the fucking ground. You’re not hiding from me. You’re not keeping any part of your body from me. Right now, you’re mine. You’re going to let me worship every inch of you, and you’re going to like it. Do you understand?”
“Look at you, soaking the blanket like such a greedy girl. How long have you been like this?”
“Good girl,”
“I don’t want to hear my name unless you’re screaming it.”
He has the audacity to demand that I listen to him? He thinks he has the right to just walk back into my life like he isn’t the worst father in the whole world?
“You don’t need to touch me, Aeris. I’m hard whenever I look at you.”
“Tell the entire world that Aeris Relera is mine? Fuck yeah, I wanna do it.”
“Never apologize for the way you feel.”
“I never want you to hide from me. I want every part of you, as you are. You’re beautiful, and I’ll remind you every day until you believe me.”
“You don’t need to wear makeup, Aeris. Your rawness is gorgeous. Your scars are natural, and I love them because they’re a part of you. Trying to cover them up is doing a disservice to your beauty.”
“If you ever touch her again, I’ll break your fucking arm. If you ever look at her again, I’ll dig my thumbs into your eyes. If you ever talk to her again, I’ll pull your tongue out through your teeth. I’ll end your goddamn hockey career. Do you understand?”
“I should’ve taken a kitchen knife and sliced his hand off in front of the whole fucking party. He had no right to touch you.”
I think I’ve come to the—frankly—long conclusion that I’m going to choose Hayes, no matter who else is in the picture. No matter where we are or what the reason is, it’s always going to be him. It’s going to be him whether my heart is full or not; it’s going to be him if I have to singlehandedly align our worlds together; it’s going to be him through thick and thin, because meeting someone like Hayes Hollings is a blessing that few people are afforded.
I never used to get nervous around women before Aeris, but to this day, I still get butterflies when I’m around her.”
“I love that you think I’m gentleman enough to deserve a ‘please,’ because I’m definitely not going to fuck you like one.”
I need to touch her. I need to feel her skin on mine, to remind myself that there’s a God in this world, and that he’s made every valley and curve of her body to be adored by me.
Trauma doesn’t make someone less lovable. Insecurities don’t make people’s bodies less beautiful.
She’s wrong. I haven’t been fighting. I haven’t been living. I’ve been letting myself drown, wave after excruciating wave. Everything I do, every relationship I have—it’s all dictated by the trauma from my past. It’s like I don’t know how to function without pain.
“Loving you was the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” he says.
