Page 163 of Because I Killed Him
“You wanna play pool?” she asks me, her eyes skimming the table as if searching for something.
“Sure,” I say.
“Great.” She nods, still distracted. “Think I left my lighter in my purse. I’ll grab it first.”
Edmund sits straighter, his hands flat against the table, unmoving, until Charlotte disappears into the foyer. The instant she’s gone, his chair scrapes back with a squeal of wood. He rounds the table in two strides, grips the arms of my chair, and pulls me toward him.
I press my fingers to his mouth and warn, “I drank wine.”
“I know.” His grin spreads beneath my fingertips. “But I like you more than I don’t like it.”
I let my hand fall, and he leans down to me, pinning me to the chair with his kiss until my toes curl against the floor. My hand runs along the warm muscles of his back, my neck arching as his thumb presses into it, holding me there. After a moment, he breaks away, his chest rising and falling fast, leaving my lips parted, and my fingers tangled helplessly in the thick, pomaded waves of his dark hair. He glances over his shoulder toward the doorway; Charlotte’s heels click closer, but still faintly. Edmund turns back and kisses me again, this time gentler, like a touch meant to soothe the wild beating of my heart. When he finally pulls away, his smile tilts wide, streaked with my lipstick.
“Edmund.” I gesture at my lips. “Your face.”
He grabs a napkin from the table, still smiling as he wipes it clean, then strides out through the opposite door. I watch him go, hurriedly rubbing the rest of the lipstick from my own mouth before Charlotte steps in with the emerald-studded lighter in her hand. She stops short, scanning me with a keenness that, for a brief, terrifying moment, makes me wonder if she suspects.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, my nerves taut.
“Nothing. You just… look different.”
“What do you mean?”
Charlotte’s mouth curves. “It means I’ll have what you’re having.” She reaches for the half-empty bottle of wine, takes a swig, and we head off toward the pool table.
I stop wearing lipstick after that.
What doesn’t stop is the daze: the deep, dizzying happiness that keeps me awake at night, sweating in a mist of dreams, my finger tracing the shape of my lips, still warm and bruised from Edmund’s kisses. I never knew it was possible to feel like this, or to want someone so completely. Every time he touches me, it’s with all of himself, restrained because he knows he’s my first, yet with the kind of passion that makes me wonder if he wants to be the last.
The days stretch on, golden like the skin of students tanning along the beach. April winds down, and the daylight lingers longer in the sky, glittering over blooming gardens and sun-drunk courtyards. With only four weeks left before summer break, Edmund and I turn our focus moreintently toward exams. Between attending lectures, studying, and the long nights we spend together, the lack of sleep begins to catch up with us.
One night, in the back seat of his hovercar on the ride home to the dormitories, Edmund falls asleep with his head in my lap.
My eyelids burn with the need for rest, but I keep them open, unable to look anywhere but at him. I comb my fingers through his hair, and he stirs faintly, enough for me to notice a fresh scratch at the base of his neck. The sight of it strikes like a knife to my heart. I trace the wound carefully with my fingertip, the gentlest touch I can manage, and the surge of protectiveness that follows is so fierce it makes my eyes sting. My hand drifts up, knuckles grazing his cheek, mapping the familiar lines of a face I know without effort or thought.
When I look at Edmund now, it’s no longer only with desire or even need. Blue or not, there will never be another. He’s the one I’ve been walking toward all my life without knowing it. Even if the law says there can be no future with him, I now understand there can be no future for me without him.
I rest my head against his, my eyes finally closing as I feel his heart beating beneath me and his warm breath brushing my face. Sleep circles in, but before I drift off, I tell myself it’s finally time.
Time to tell Dad I’m in Edmund Prew’s entourage.
There’s only one way to forgive. And when it’s done right, forgiveness is mercy, looking down on misery.
—BRUCE WALDSTEN
CHAPTER 38
Dad has called a few times, though he always carefully skirts the edges of his plans, never breaking the news that he’s planning to run for Governor of the Rainbow District. It makes me wonder if he’s holding off for a reason, if he’s worried about how I’ll take it, and if he thinks I can’t handle another shovel of shit after everything this year has already thrown at me.
So I let Dad stall. I wait until he’s ready. When he finally tells me about his plans, I’ll have something to tell him, too: that I’m part of Edmund Prew’s entourage, and that I’m happy here.
At last, nearly a month after Hillaire broke the news, Dad is ready to tell me himself. I’m in my suite, rushing to change for my Fraternity meeting, halfway into my uniform, when the text pings across my Bond screen:
“Need to talk to you about something important, honey. Can we have a call? Saturday, maybe?”
Saturday? It’s only Monday. For a moment, I’m tempted to ask why not sooner, especially with Hillaire checking in every few days and her messages steadily growing more impatient, but I stop myself. Dad isn’t going to take the news about Edmund well. The more time I have before dropping that bomb, the better.
“Saturday works,”I text back.
