Bad Wrong Things

by C.P. Harris

Clint and I were like hot oil kissing water. Gasoline crooking its finger at an open flame. We came together like animals in heat, marking and pissing over our territory. And love had everything, yet nothing, to do with it.

I stood there confident in knowing that the worst mistake I’d ever taken part in was the best decision of my life.

“Let me love you goodbye, then.”

“You’re never leaving me again.”

This was the man I remembered most. The version I’d wanted before consciously knowing it. The version I’d gotten in the end but at too steep a cost.

“I love you, Raven,”

“I-I can’t do this without you. Life isn’t the same, sweetheart.”

never be another man for you. Tell me you’ve missed me as much as I’ve missed you. Promise me we’ll do whatever it takes to make us work. Promise that you won’t hold this night against me. Say you believe things can be different.” He sat up, crushing me to him as emotion ravaged his voice. “I’m not the same man,” he said for the second time that night, but it was hard to see that right then. “Promise me. And if you can’t promise me all those things, then please, lie to me.” Never breaking promises was a cardinal rule ingrained in me, and I didn’t want to lock myself into saying something I’d regret come escape time. “Yes, you fucking own me, Clint.” I gave him a different truth. It was the best I could do. “And no one fucks me like you do.” I scraped a nail along his jaw. “I’ve missed you so much I’ve gone blind. Feeling my way through life. My senses are fucked, Clint. Nothing looks the same since you, nothing smells or tastes the same. The world is bland.” But I can’t stay.

No never stopped us. Especially not after we’d decided that turning ourselves into monsters would be the only way to cope with the pain. To be more deserving of it.

I didn’t have a father, and I couldn’t think of one instance where my mother hugged me, or when I was as happy to see her as Joseph was to see his dad.

My sullen eyes connected with Officer Miller’s, and he waved me over, opening an arm when I hesitated.

Finally, I was his, and he was mine.

“You’re so fucking territorial, Raven. When are you going to grow out of that shit?”

Yeah, my territorial behavior stemmed from not wanting to lose Clint, but not in the way Joey thought. I was in love with him.

He was ours, but really, he was mine, and it would take an exorcism to rid me of my obsession with him.

I’d meet you anywhere.

I would ride for infinite days and nights to not lose the weight of his arms around me, choking my waist as his laugh rang into the air whizzing past us.

After reaching our destination and securing the canoe, we watched the sunset sitting side by side on a boulder in the sexiest moment of silence. The kind where you grew, both separately and together. The kind of silence that forced you to take a deep breath afterward and look to the person you were with for confirmation that they’d felt the connection to something greater, too. We’d shared a shy smile of gratitude for not having to experience the moment alone, knowing in that short span of time we’d both become something different, something more fearless. And without saying a word, we knew we’d return, that it had become our spot. The power of a sunset.

“I’m sure there’s room in your heart for your ambitions and romance. You have one of the biggest hearts I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing.”

“I want to be seen for who I really am and loved for it anyway.”

Clint didn’t love me in the way I loved him, and therefore, he’d never truly see me because there’d always be a part of me hidden from him.

“It’s always a yes, Clint. Always.”

“It makes you my person.

I didn’t want to imagine a world without Clint. I didn’t exist if he didn’t.

“Saving my mother was the most selfish thing I’d ever done. Not one part of it was for her. It served my fears, my trauma, my need to have something,”—no matter how bad it was—“than to have nothing.”

“Promise you won’t get tired of reminding me.”

“The easiest promise I’ve ever had to make.”

Even if I never got to have Clint in the way I wanted him, having him as a friend would be the best decision I ever forced on him.

I owe who I am to you, Clint.”

I’m addicted to him. To his companionship, his easy smiles, and his godforsaken filthy mouth.

I’d grown dependent on his nicotine infused breath pouring over me whenever he laughed. I’d grown accustomed to feeling alive, to allowing him to show me the way—a new way. He inspired me to be unthinking, the one thing more terrifying to me than a whistle in the dark.

We were inevitably connected when riding, though until now that connection hadn’t weighed heavily on my conscience.

“You being territorial over me feeds my need to be loved or some shit.”

I no longer trusted him.

“You’ve always been mine,”

“I’m in love with you,” I said. “I’ve been in love with you since I was seventeen—”

Operation get Clint to fuck me and fall in love was in full effect.

“I fucking love you, Clint. And if you’re brave enough to let me show you, I promise I’ll never stop.”

“How can you be so sure you’re in love with me?”

“Because it’s been six years. That’s seventy-two months, one-hundred and ninety-two hours, forty-three minutes, and twenty-eight seconds, and I still haven’t been able to talk myself out of it. I give up. Tell me you’ll throw in the towel, too.”

“The mouth and the heart are connected. That’s why words hurt. I’d never give either to anyone but you.”

He’d never been kissed, and I’d never kissed like this before. I’d never had someone make me feel like stopping would be robbing them of life.

Seeing him and loving him anyway would be the simplest thing I’d ever done.

Didn’t he get it? I would’ve sacrificed everything for him.

“When did you know?”

“When did your feelings change?”

When I realized home was wherever you were.”

“When the curve of your neck stopped being just the curve of your neck. When it became a place I wanted to bury my troubles away in. A place I hungered to breathe from. When the sun in my eyes stopped being a simple annoyance, but a plot of the universe to keep me from gazing at you. When seeing you do what you love stopped only being an inspiration of pride, but also an inspiration for my attraction.”

Clint made me want to learn how to be loved, not taken—but I wanted to be taken too, so much. And he made me want to give without worrying about receiving. We learned to speak without words, and we wouldn’t have gained—no, earned—that connection had we jumped right into sex.

I’d spent that week falling into his arms, put to sleep by his kisses, and waking in his arms, revived by his kisses, too. That week was all fireworks and sweet songs and goddamn magic.