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

by Emma Scott

“Sure, I’m fucked up. We’re all fucked up. Who isn’t fucked up? But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re going to be okay. You can be okay and completely fucked up at the same time. I’m living proof.”

No matter what the counselors and doctors and pills and therapy tried to do, the cold would always find me. Alaska had broken something inside me forever.

My last refuge was the shop, fixing something broken and making it work again. I wished there were something—or someone—who could do the same for me.

I needed relief. I needed a feeling that was all mine, even if it only lasted a few moments.

I’d been to the edge of the abyss and back. There was nothing left for me to learn but how to survive with the scars it gave me.

But goddamn, the second I laid eyes on River Whitmore, my pulse kicked up a notch and a little thrill zipped down my spine. Like a tiny reminder of what it meant to be alive.

“Alcohol keeps me warm because Alaska stole something from me,” I said finally. “It stole something and left me with nightmares—memories—to remind me I’ll never get it back.”

“Is that what they stole from you in Alaska?” “What…?” “You said nothing good could come of you being with that guy. Is that what they taught you? That you’re no good?”

“Aren’t you tired?” “Of what?” “Exchanging one costume for another,” he said with a nod at my tux.

A crazy desire washed over me to protect him from something that had already happened. “What the fuck did they do to you in Alaska?”

“Instead, they killed any love we had for ourselves. Shame. Guilt… They beat us with it as surely as they beat us with fists and clubs. They drowned us in it with every trip to the water’s edge.”

“Don’t do that. I’m not asking you for anything,” he said, defiant. “I never have, and I never will.”

I’d been born a wreck; the conversion therapy had finished the job. There was nothing more to know.

His eyes held mine intently, and there was no regret. Only a quiet exhilaration. Some part of him that had been lost was now restored. While I was breaking apart.

“Have you ever been in love, James?” “Yes, sir.” “What’s it like?” “The sweetest agony. A torture from which you never want to escape.” “Sounds terrible.”

Every kiss and touch was like reclaiming a piece of myself I’d broken off and given to my fake life.

“I’m coming,” I breathed, one hand planted on the bed, gripping the sheets, the other in his hair, holding myself in that perfect delirium that was Holden. “Come,” he breathed between deep, long sucks. “Come for me, baby…”

“It’s better this way,” I whispered, my eyes falling shut. “Then why does it feel like shit?” “That’s a catch-22. The solution to our dilemma is inherent in the problem itself.” “Which is?” “We both want something we can never have,” I said as sleep dragged me down on vodka fumes. “A normal life.”

“Because I fucking can’t stop thinking about you, okay? Every day, all day, every goddamn night. And I wanted to do something. Instead of just sitting around being miserable. But it was obviously a mistake. Our favorite word.”

“And yes, it’s reckless and stupid to try again, but what if we need each other? Maybe how different we are works. Maybe we fill in the missing parts for each other. Ever think of that?”

River infused me in every pore, his kiss leaving me stupid with happy euphoria. Leaving me with a piece of himself so that I wasn’t alone.

My own grief was a chasm that if I fell into it, I’d keep falling and never come back out. I had to be strong.

Mine… But Holden wasn’t mine. I wasn’t his. In a few short weeks, we’d both be gone.

“It’s real,” I said, our lips brushing with each word. “Finally, I know what’s real.” I inhaled sharply against the swell of emotion rising in me. “I love you, Holden. That’s real. It’s the most fucking real thing I’ll ever know.”

How was it possible to feel this broken and yet whole at the same time? To have my heart saturated in grief and love in equal parts. To have my body wracked by the greatest pleasure I’d ever known while pain gripped my soul. Wanting to hold on while saying goodbye.

“My wife, Nancy—River and Amelia’s mom—passed away three years ago,” Dad says. “Cancer.”

But it’s been 4 years? 1 year until Paris, then 2 years, and then 1 year to the epilogue?