If There's a Way (Lost Boys #2)

by Jessie Walker

I don’t see Will leave, but I feel it. I feel the hollowness left behind like it’s a living thing, creeping its way up my limbs, and settling where my heart once was.

Everything good that has happened, happened just ten miles up the road, in some small, middle-of-nowhere town. It’s where I met my best friends growing up. It’s where I found a family of my own—not one I was born into, but one I fell into. It’s where I met a boy with gold-spun hair and big blue eyes, and a sunny smile that made me feel a little less alone. A little less sad. A little less angry. It’s where I had my first kiss. Where I had all my kisses, but especially the ones with that boy with the eyes like the ocean. The one who believed in me…

I look up just as a gorgeously restored ’67 black Impala pulls into the lot, stopping right before me.

“He deserves better.” Jeremy scoffs, rolling his eyes. “You know that’s a total cop-out right? Maybe stop worrying about what he doesn’t and does deserve, and, I don’t know, maybe try to just be what you think he deserves.”

“Well too fucking bad,” I murmur. “You are loved. And I’m not better off without you.”

“You’re a ticking time bomb,” I hear myself say, my voice distant even to my own ears. “One that just keeps fucking rebuilding itself after every explosion, over and over and over again. But I don’t. I don’t rebuild. I don’t heal. I just keep taking it. But I can’t anymore. There’s not enough left of me to take any more shrapnel and walk out alive.”

“You’re so fucking gorgeous, City Boy. Sorry it took me so long to tell you.”

He then traces my slightly curved lips stretched wide around his cock. I didn’t realize I was smiling—well, as much of a smile as I can manage. “So good,” he whispers, mouth crooking up knowingly.

“Fuck, baby, you look so good like this,” he says thickly. Then, so quietly that I have to strain to hear him, he whispers to himself, “I knew you would.”

And all I can do is hold on for the ride as he starts fucking my mouth. Jesus Christ.

I whimper, hands reaching. “Will.” “Shh, I got you.”

I don’t care, because now I’m empty, so very terrifyingly empty, and I need him back. I need him to fill me like I’ve never needed anything in my fucking life.

“Just keep your heart beating for me, okay?”

I might not know love, but I do know my heart beats for him. That much is as clear as day to me.

I’ll do whatever it takes to prove I’m not going anywhere. Prove he’s not a whim or a fix or any-fucking-thing else in between. He’s the beat of my fucking heart. And that? That’s everything.

How do I tell him that now that I know what it’s like to wake up in his arms, I don’t know how I’ll ever sleep without him again?

How do I tell him that his throat is just sitting there, begging for my lips? Like I might die just looking at him right now, because I’m too far away?

“That’s my burden, okay?” Exhaustion weighs down every word. “My burden is loving you, but not letting myself have you, because I’m fucking petrified nothing will ever be enough to keep you. And I can’t live with that. I literally cannot live with the idea of losing you, Waylon. So there you fucking have it. I’m not just scared, I’m petrified. Happy?”

I want to clutch his shoulders and pull him against my chest. I want to cup his cheeks with strong, certain hands and brush his nose with mine. Relearn the texture of his lips. His taste. Cement it into my brain—every fiber of my being—so I never again forget how stupid I was for ever fighting this. Ever fighting him.

“You make me want to hang on and fight. You make me believe I stand a chance. You. No one else. You.”

“I love you.” He freezes. I choke out on a laugh. “Christ, man. That’s gotta be what this is, right? This feeling… like I’m being ripped apart from the inside out. Like I’m dying. Like I… like I literally can’t breathe from it.” My voice catches, breaking off like glass. “All there’s left in me is… is you, and I don’t even know if that makes sense. But it’s you. It’s always been you.”

“So long as I have the will to live…” I swallow hard, fingers digging into his skin, and I murmur against his lips. “There’ll always be a way.”

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” I rumble against his jaw, before nipping the skin there. “Gonna kill me when I get inside.”

“And fucking you into the mattress happens to be a favorite fantasy of mine.”

“My cock’s fucking aching to own this ass.”

“Fuck yourself all you want against the bed,” I tell him as I move my hand away so I can spread his cheeks. “But don’t you dare fucking come yet. I promise it’ll be worth the wait.”

“Are you always this fucking bossy?”

“You love it, don’t lie.”

“I’d love it more if your fingers were in my as...

There’s just something about a grumpy, sharp-tongued Waylon fighting tooth and nail against what his body is so clearly desperate for that just… pushes all the right fucking buttons for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d have bottomed for you in a heartbeat, but damn, baby, I love your ass. And I love that you love your ass being played with.”

I quietly urge him to breathe, relax, just like that, baby, just like that. Let me in.

“Look at you,” I murmur, watching as I stroke him in time with my thrusts. “So fucking perfect. So fucking needy for it.”

For it isn’t the sexual act that has my eyes burning hotly, but the utter miracle that is his surrender after so many years of pain and repression and control.

And there is no other person in the universe I’d rather watch unravel than this guy right here. No one who deserves to let go as much as this human. This human who’s always been mine, in some way or another. Mine. And I am his. At long fucking last, I am his.

While their timing is nothing short of awful, I can at least find comfort in the fact that it could’ve been so, so much worse. Say, like, for instance… three hours ago, when I was balls deep in Waylon’s ass. Or, ten minutes ago, when Waylon and I had our dicks shoved down each other’s throats.

“You’re a good kid. But that boy—wherever you’re hiding him right now—he’s my entire world.” His eyes glitter with something like amusement, but there’s also an edge there that tells me he’s also being dead serious. “You get me?” I chew on my lip, fighting a smile. He looks heavenward like he’s praying for patience. “This is supposed to be a threat, kid. Can you at least pretend you’re quakin’ in your boots?”

“You’re my boyfriend. Fuckin’ deal with it.”

I let that love fuel me now. Let it consume me, ’til I’m near-bursting with it. Soft, my ass, I think. There’s nothing weak about this. I’ve got the damn sun in my chest. What does he have?

Light can always prevail. And there is so, so much light to be found. We just need to hold out and wait for the sun to shine, because fuck, when it shines—it shines hard. Harder than any starless night.

“But it was… something.” Sobering, I say, “The first something, and that’s, well… everything.

After months—years, really—of relying on some kind of substance to take the edge off, I realize I have no idea how the hell other people do it. Just raw-dogging their way through life like it’s not this constant cheese grater on their sanity.

“I’d rather give every little piece of myself to you,” he goes on roughly, “than wonder what could have been because society says it’s wrong. Too much. Toxic.”

They’re my family. Blood might be thicker than water, but us? We’ve got thorns.

There is no pulling away without one of us bleeding out. It’s codependent. Toxic as fuck. Messy and raw in a way that most people will never understand or accept. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Pun absolutely intended.

Shit’s not perfect—far fucking from it. But if there’s anything I’ve learned these last few months, it’s that we don’t need perfect. We just need each other.

No, we’re not lost, I think, smiling against his cheek. Not anymore… But found.

Way and Will, Will and Way… Two halves of a fucking whole. Always.