Bad Wrong Things

by C.P. Harris

I never viewed Raven as something that needed fixing in order to work. I wanted the privilege of rolling around in it. Of being bold enough to be dented, too.

“You said you needed a name for your shop.” “Yeah,” he said, dragging the word. “How about Raven’s Wing?” “Hair the color of a Raven’s Wing, eyes the color of glaciers,” he whispered. “You remember,” I said, brows reaching for the sky. “I remember everything you say to me, Clint.”

“You being territorial over me feeds my need to be loved or some shit.” “Is that with everyone or just me?” I leaned my hip into the counter. “Just you. Fuck everyone else.”

“You’re young.” “Not the young card,” I gasped dramatically. “Is that all you’ve got in your arsenal?” Pushing off the door, I removed my shirt and shoes, working on unbuttoning my jeans next. “Come on, get it all out of your system.” “I might ruin you for other men,” he said, a growl hot on the heels of his statement. “Good thing no other man would do.”

“Don’t—!” I shouted, uselessly fighting as he manhandled me into a fireman’s hold. “I know. Don’t pick you up unless it’s to fuck you against a wall.” He maneuvered us past the damaged door and toward the stairs. “I’m about to rectify that right now.”

“I need to touch your bones,” he said, palming my sternum, getting comfy. “I can’t get deep enough inside you, or close enough to you. I want nothing in our way. Not even skin.”

“Bad things happen to me sometimes, and good things are taken away because of it. I just don’t know if you’re the good thing taken, or the bad-wrong-thing that’s happened to me.”

The need to spoon away the unnecessary bits of ourselves and fill up on what truly mattered. To carve into one another until we resembled bloodied ribbons without each other. And we didn’t care if it was right or wrong. It felt good. It felt like love.

“Our love was ours to do with as we saw fit. We didn’t need our jagged edges smoothed. We didn’t need to be unbent. I just needed to be brave enough to be broken,” he whispered, chipping away at my resolve. “Brave enough to love you through my brokenness.”

I’d made a few customizations to the Harley, the ice-blue trim slicing through the glossy black paint job. Hair the color of a raven’s wing, eyes the color of glaciers.

“It’s still beautiful here.” Raven fanned his gaze over the sun-kissed water. I wouldn’t know, I wanted to say, because I’d kept my eyes nailed to him since we’d arrived, and because it was tough to see the beauty in things without him.

“Do you love me?” “Yes,” I said easily. With all of me. “I need you to tell me often. And when it seems like it’s too much, just know it’s not. Never stop, Raven.” “I love you, Clint.” “Say it again, baby.” “I love you.”

“There’s my foul-mouthed lover-boy.” One palm kneaded my ass while the other slid north into the hair at the base of my skull. “I love you. I swear it, Raven. And I promise I always will. Now let me in, sweetheart. Make room for me.”

Clint was my map, my compass, my way out of the dark. I’d learned that I could live without him, but that I didn’t want to, and I no longer had to. I’d love this man forever, until the end and beyond.

My feelings for Clint were incoherent, and his for me a riot of hearts and flowers.

“This is what love should look like,” he whispered into my mouth. “This is what love should feel like,” I returned. “Home,” we said in unison.