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We. I'm being raised by everyone and no one. My dad's not with Toren. He's one million percent committed and in love with his wife. My mother—his teen sweetheart. But she's gone now, and my father is a thirty-two-year-old rock star with a seventeen-year-old daughter trying to act like he's not broken and lost and on the verge of losing the very definition of his shit. But I know better. He's afraid something's going to happen to me, too. That I'll be here one moment and gone the next. And I don't blame him for feeling that way at all because I feel it, too.
You don't know if you should hang on to that ray of hope that they might come back, or give in to your grief and accept that they're gone. So you teeter between both until you slowly go insane.
"I hate that people might be saying bad things about me. I don't bother anyone; I'm nice to everyone. I just stay in my own little bubble. And they always find something to start with me about. First Dad's band, then my mom, then having money, being too quiet, and now this. I can't wait to graduate and get away from all of them."
I've been sitting on my couch for over an hour, in complete darkness and silence, volleying between wanting to get drunk off my ass on some hardcore liquor, calling up Sydni or Lisa and screwing the shit out of them to make myself forget what I just did, or puking my guts out. But what I really want to do is call her and hear her voice. Or better yet, see her again. After what happened, I have an intense need to know if I've affected her. Will her voice sound shaky and nervous or will it have that new wistfulness I've caught glimpses of in the past few weeks? Is she hiding in her room like I
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"I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this..." my father is saying over and over again. "You can. You're okay." "I don't know how to live without her." "Ash, she's still here. Don't give up. I know it's hard, but you gotta have faith." "I just want her back. I miss her so fucking much." "I know you do. We all do."
Sydni isn't the one that got away; she's the one that won't go away.
After eighteen years, I seriously thought I knew everything about Tor. But cracks spidered through the wall between us tonight, and glimpses of him have seeped out through his words. He's sensual. He's lonely. He's possessive. He's playful. He's romantic. And he's afraid of getting hurt.
"I love you..." I murmur with my lips against her ear. "Forever and longer." Time stands still as we rock against each other, our bodies slippery with sweat, her lips pressed against my chest, kissing that spot over my heart that's forever marked with her words. And now, her kiss. Her touch. Her love. After today, I can never deny the truth again. She completely owns me.
"Ash, she may not come back like that," I say quietly. I hate to kill his buzz in any way, but Ember suffered a severe brain injury. The chances of her ever being able to talk and make full sense are slim. "I think you need to really think about this long and hard and grill the shit out of the doctors about the experimental drugs and any case studies they have." "I plan to. I'm just excited about any hope at this point. I know she hears me. I can feel it. She knows I'm there."
There is a safety in writing, in putting the words out there and giving the recipient time to absorb, ponder, and reply. He writes me poetry. We fall deeper in love.
There is no way I will ever move on from a love like ours. We belong to each other. I've always known it, and I am utterly exhausted from fighting it, denying it, keeping myself from it, and hiding it—as I'm sure he must be, too.
