When You Come Back to Me (Lost Boys, #2)

by Emma Scott

“Where?” “My place,”

“I’m in the guesthouse. It’s private.”

You deserve more than my conflicted ass running hot and cold on you every other damn minute.” “Shut up.” I blinked. “What…?” “I said, shut up,” Holden snapped. “You’re worried about what I deserve? As if you have the monopoly on being fucked up. I have trust issues. I don’t set healthy boundaries. I close down emotionally before people get too close, and I sabotage relationships because I want to be the one who leaves first.”

“What I’m trying to say is that I don’t mind being your dirty little secret. Emphasis on dirty.” “You’d be okay with that?” “Spare me your pity party. I’ll survive if you don’t want to hold my hand in the hallway or make me your Prom Queen. We can keep it casual.” “Casual.”

“Friends with benefits,”

“Secret friends with benefits. Isn’t that what you want?”

“I want to make you come,” I said thickly. “And I want to watch.” Holden groaned. “And here I thought you’d be shy.”

“What about you?” he managed. I shook my head, my hand working faster. “Just you.”

“You need to come,” Holden whispered against my ear. “In my mouth.”

“Come,” he breathed between deep, long sucks. “Come for me, baby…”

“River Whitmore,” he murmured to the ceiling. “There was nothing fucking casual about that.”

“I’m going to miss this face.” “Holden…” “You said it yourself, but did we listen? Ohhhh, no. Not us. Not me.” “What did I say? When?” “At the pool. It’s a mistake. We’re a mistake.” His frown deepened and he held me tighter. “I was flipping out. I didn’t know what I was saying. I—” “Yes, you did,” I said softly. “And you were right.”

“Stay with me a little. Just a little

while…until I fall asleep. Won’t take long.”

“So let’s call the whole thing off.” He swallowed hard. “That’s what you want?” “That’s what I want. It’s best for both of us.” I poked him in the side. “And you know it.”

I shouldn’t have let you walk away.

That’s a hell of an opener, my friend.

It’s the truth. The first true thing I’ve said in a long time. I’m sorry it took so long to say it. That’s okay, I typed. I understand. I don’t want you to understand, River wrote back. I want you to punch me in the face until I stop being so ducking scared all the time.

we help carry each other’s shit, maybe it won’t all seem so damn heavy, you know? Maybe we won’t feel so…” “Alone.”

“Give it to me,”

He brought his fingers to my mouth and pushed

them inside. My eyes shut and I groaned at the salty taste of him on my tongue. My hips pounded against him, flesh slapping flesh. “That’s it,” Holden coaxed, tracing his fingers over my lips. “Come, River. Come hard in me. Now.”

“Are you…? Are you okay?”

To my shock, Holden was blinking away tears.

“Perfect,” he said thickly and sniffed. “It was perfe...

He closed his eyes, a pained expression drawing his brows in tight. As sure as I knew my own name, I knew no one had done this for him before. Anger burned hot. I tossed the washcloth aside and curled up behind Holden, wrapped my arms

around him, and drew him tight to me. His back to my chest, his hands locked in mine.

I lay awake for a long time, feeling the rise and fall of his chest in my arms, his heart beating under my hand. Mine… But Holden wasn’t mine. I wasn’t his. In a few short weeks, we’d both be gone.

“Wait, what does that mean, exactly?” “It means I’d go to college.” “Where?”

“Wherever I want.” I inhaled. “The University of Santa Cruz, maybe.”

“I’m not going to ruin your NFL fantasy life. I could go to the Sorbonne. Or Yale. Or Pig Fart Community College—”

“Wait, you’d stay in Santa Cruz?”

“I accepted Alabama. Officially.” He sounded as if he were passing on his own death sentence. “You can’t… I mean…”

“Come with you?”

“Who the fuck said I wanted to? I told you I’d never ask you for anything. Ever.”

“Holden…” River sounded agonized. “Don’t do that.” “Do what? I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

The vampire. I’d given him my heart and he’d sucked it dry and left the husk.

“To Holden—oh, pardonnez-moi, to Gordon Charles. The first writer to have stories published in the New Yorker and the Paris Review at the same time!”

I wrote to River, crying out for him, my pen crawling over the paper, falling down the page until it was just his name, over and over, blotted with my tears.

My heart in my throat, I opened the trunk to Holden’s journals.

Long after the bruises have faded, the poison lingers, circulating through every part of me and rotting everything I touch.

When River tells me he loves me, the poison whispers that he’s lying.

Holden was in constant pain and this trunk was filled with his cries for help. Page after page, thousands upon thousands of cries for help. And no one answered. He’s calling to me.

As much as I…care about him, I can’t magically fix him. It’s not possible. But I can let him know I’m still here.” “A year’s a long time, River,” Amelia said gently. “How long will you wait?” “However long it takes.”

“So when the person you love says he loves you too, the first inclination is to call him a liar. Your second is to run away. Your third is to fuck someone else. And your fourth is to drink and make it all go away.”

I came to tell you that even thousands of miles away, I’m still here for you. I can’t make you believe me when I say that I love you, but I do. I think you love me too, and when you come back to me, I’ll be waiting.

It lurked in the corners, especially on days in which Alaska seemed to be breathing down my neck more heavily. Or the days I ached for River. Which was all of them.

A book slid in front of me. The Post-It read Silas. I froze, then slowly lifted my gaze to Silas Marsh.

“Silas,” I managed. “Hey, Holden,” his own voice thick. “It’s been awhile.”

But then I read your book and—holy shit—I cried like a goddamn baby. Alaska was all there. Even in the scenes where it wasn’t.”