Page 142 of Unbound

“People change.” My back is up, the words flying from my mouth before I can stop the bitter reply.

Silence stretches between us. Not the usual kind that makes me relaxed, that doesn’t need to be filled. But a strained, angry kind. One filled with fury and anxiety and fear.

“What time is it?” I ask, desperate for something to fill the space.

“Six in the morning,” he says, voice flat. “I’ll get you some clothes and when you’re done, I’ll drive you home. You still live in the dorms?”

The question hurts. “Yeah.” He nods and leaves the room.

I bathe and wash my hair quicker without his assessing gaze. I cry silently, yanking at the tangles in my hair with the brush, too terrified that he might offer to do it . . . even more terrified that he won’t. He leaves a pair of sweatpants and an old long sleeve that I’ve slept in before, given the chewed-up, frayed sleeve from my teeth; I dress in them quickly.

The car ride is silent, the approaching dawn making the blue and black sky slightly lighter. But when he parks and I grab for the door handle, he reaches over me and pulls it back shut.

Eyes still on the empty road before him, Bennett huffs out a slow breath and swallows hard.

“I won’t pretend to know what happened . . . why you didn’t want to be with me anymore. And if I did something to hurt you . . .”

“You didn’t,” I interject, desperate to stop his self-hatred but too petrified to give him another word beyond that.

He nods, but still has that aching, burning look to his face, eyes reddened more from pain than lack of sleep.

“I love you. That doesn’t just go away for me, okay? So . . . I can’t worry this much about you.”

“You don’t have to. You—I promise—”

His eyes dart toward me, scanning over me once before they’re back to glaring at the road. “I don’t believe you.”

My hands wrap around my middle, hugging myself, just barely resisting the urge to pull my knees up to my chin and sink into his seat. To tell him everything. To ask him to believe me, to take me home and hold me until I feel clean again.

“I need you to do something for me,” he says.

“Anything.” It’s a vow.

“I’m not asking for anything more. I’m not trying to get you to change your mind. But please, Paloma. If you need me—if you’re scared or worried or just need something, anything at all, please call me. Use me. That’s . . . that’s the only way this anxiety over you won’t eat me alive.”

I can’t speak, tongue-tied and words turning to ash over and over again in my mouth.

“Okay,” I say. My hand reaches back for the door handle; I’m suffocating in the warmth of his steadfast affection and care. Feeling continuously unworthy of it all.

He still looks hurt, eyes downcast and fingers gripping the steering wheel as I look back over at him.

I want to ask him: Do I haunt you?

Do you still think of your hands in my hair and the sleepy feeling that invades my every muscle in the safety of your presence?

Do you remember the night you told me it felt like poetry to be inside me? Before you kissed along my spine and took me again, hard and insistent, and dominating my soul in a way that I was sure would brand me as yours forever?

Instead, I stand in the cold fall air and stare at him, lingering at the open car door for a too-long moment.

The wind chafes my skin, but I barely feel that pain. It’s nothing compared to the way my heart begins to eat itself.

Chapter 62

THEN: Sophomore Year, May

Paloma

“Come home with me,” Bennett whispers.