Page 51 of Undone

This time, when she jabs her finger into my chest, I wrap my hand around her wrist and pull her stumbling closer where I’m leaned on the seat of my bike, thighs slightly spread. Her eyes go wide, and she sputters as I lift my visor up so I can really see her.

“Enlighten me, baby.”

It’s another taunt, but her pupils dilate, some of the tension in her body melting down.

I keep my fingers on the delicate skin of her wrist, feeling the softness, bringing it high enough to smell the cinnamon and lavender that lingers there, clings to her. Her entire body is flushed, warm, and I know I turn her on now just as much as I did when we were fumbling teenagers.

God, the way really tasting her again would heal me. Putting her neck in my teeth wasn’t enough, I need her body under mine—

Pushing her away, I cross my arms and gather my brain back together before it melts out of my ears at just thoughts of her.

“You told Holden about my hearing,” she says, not hiding the edge of deep hurt in her voice. “That’s not— I thought that we were friends.”

My chest pulls tight. Goddamn it. Holden couldn’t keep it together for one fucking class together. Why the hell had I told him that?

“Lily—”

“No! I don’t want to hear it.” She’s almost shouting and we’re starting to draw a distant crowd.

She points her finger up at me again—and under any other circumstances, this would be endearing. But I can feel her hurt like my own. It’s always been like that, a constant burning when she wasn’t okay. A need to fix it, desperately.

Even as I try to ignore it now, the feeling is the same.

It’s like I can’t escape her.

“If Holden is going to be my friend, you can’t talk about me to him behind my back. It’s mean. And wrong.”

Lily and I had found each other as children. She’s just as odd and strange as she was that first day. We’ve fought before, but it’s never been real or hurtful—always more to rile her up, to pull her from the numbness she so often sank into, even unknowingly. But we’ve always had that innate trust in the existence of each other.

You and me. Forever.

Then . . . things changed.

“Tor?” Lily asks, her body sitting up as I slink in the room. She’s not bloody anymore, but there’s a lot of swollen and angry red skin. The cut on her lip seems to be the only thing still bleeding, though they’ve patched it up.

She grins as I sit close to her, fingers raising to touch the scar that cuts through my lip. “We match.”

Lily shifts from the girl in my mind into her now—angry and proud, hair glittering in the sun, cream skin flushed, arms crossed over her quilted navy jacket, the Burberry check cuffs around her wrist riding up like she’s heated herself up with anger, or maybe arousal.

She’s the same, and yet not.

Things have changed. Both of us have been alone doing god only knows for almost a full four years. We aren’t children or teenagers in her bedroom promising things we had no real concept of.

That first year of college away from her, I used to picture it a lot. The green and brown walls. Her soft, deep purple sheets. The stars on the ceiling glowing in a swirling pattern. Some nights it was the only way I could soothe myself to sleep, to imagine I was there again, my head in her lap after a game. Her fingers sifting through my too-long hair.

To be nearly attached to someone and then never see them again? It felt like a limb had been sawed clean off, but there were no visible scars to prove it had ever been there. That she had ever been there.

I raise a hand to my chest, like rubbing there might ease the pain that never seems to fully leave me.

Her bedroom was my safe place. To be allowed to be so soft in the aftermath of the brutality her father required. No longer under his thumb, but under his roof and yet entirely different. Because with Lily it was safe, to be this way. To close my eyes and not worry about every noise in the dark.

And clearly, it’s different now. She is different—and as much as there is a pain in not knowing this side of her, there is something comforting in that.

It feels a lot like hope.

I smother it down before I can choke on it.

“Okay.” I nod. Because I don’t have ammunition where she’s concerned. I don’t want to either. I step closer, crowding her, but she doesn’t back away from me, even if she probably should. Just close enough to whisper. To get another hit of her expensive perfume. “Just to be clear, Lily? It’s not embarrassing, it never has been.”