Chapter 3

I could see my hands shake.

I held them out in front of me, watching my spindly fingers twitch as if the tremors of an earthquake had started beneath the surface, shaking until even my blood sloshed. I thought of all the cells and muscles and tissue that my body was made up of, all clung to my bones, holding on even when my bones were trying to say let go. When something brings you down you are supposed to let go.

Emma’s ribcage had never looked like mine. Beneath the surface maybe, but never above it, never like this. I could feel the bones with my hands, count them like I was in elementary school, one, two, three ... I counted and recounted them when I was nervous, and somehow knowing that they were always there was comforting to me. My bones were real, something tangible that I could count and know that yes, I’m still here.

The sleep made me feel groggy, my tongue like cotton in my mouth. My eyes felt too heavy to be mine, like they had been switched in my sleep for eyes that weighed twice as much. I rubbed them, yawning as I shifted in the car—his car. There are few times in a person’s life where one could say they woke into a dream, rather than from one, and this was one of those times.

The interior of the car was as dark as the exterior, like black licorice had been melted and molded to every seat and surface. I was the little girl in the candy shop, and for just this one instance I had it all, every last sweet right at my fingertips. My hands roamed over the steering wheel, my fingers closing around where I knew his would, those slender, musician’s hands. It was like holding the ghost of his hand.

It was five minutes to eleven in the morning. I’d slept almost two hours right there in his car, dozing off, pretending that the seat warmers were his body heat. I thought of how he had carried me, of how he’d confirmed that I really had become nothing but bones, picking me up with such ease that I wondered if a strong wind could just sweep me away if I didn’t have something to anchor me.

He’d done that. He’d anchored me.

I fumbled for my phone, finding it on the passenger seat where I’d left it before falling asleep. Knowing his phone number was in there made me feel like I was having an out of body experience. I had to open my texts just to be sure that they were real, that we’d actually talked like friends—that I actually had a friend at all.

There were two new texts from him.

[Gabe] Text me when you wake up.

[Gabe] Sweet dreams.

Despite my truck being parked in the lot, I doubted anyone but Miranda would even notice my absence. I’d been invisible for so long that I’d probably become like wallpaper to them, like I’d spent so much time in the background that they forgot I existed.

[Me] When’s break?

I struggled with the lever to bring the seat back up while I waited for his reply. I didn’t want to walk in right in the middle of class. I could just sneak in with all of them after break and no one would even notice that I hadn’t been there the whole time.

[Gabe] 11. Now

I got out of the car as fast as I could just in case anyone else came out to the parking lot for their break. I locked the car, pocketed his keys and made my walk to the dumpsters behind the school. My hands were still shaking from withdrawal. If I didn’t have a cigarette soon I would probably lose my goddamn mind.

Unlike my car keys, my cigarettes I always had on me. They were in the inner pocket of my insulated jacket, always pressing up against my ribcage as if they wanted to count how many bones I had too.

The first intake felt so good that it made me dizzy. Nicotine was such a heartless bitch, taking over my body and making me miss it, making me crave it until my hands shook, but we were using each other, nicotine and I. We each took something from the other, like it was some kind of fucked up 21st-century symbiotic relationship.

I leaned back against the brick wall of the school, closing my eyes as cold mists of air and warm wisps of smoke trailed out of my mouth, intertwined. I tried to give life to everything in my mind, making the inanimate animate, making things alive because I honestly didn’t have the courage to talk to people. I made friends with nicotine and my bones, knowing that right now they were the only things supporting me.

“I didn’t know you were a smoker.”

My eyes snapped open. It was Gabe, hands in his pockets, standing just a few feet away. I thought about the scars on his palms, healed but damaged, like they were something strangely beautiful that Frankenstein had put together.

I shrugged, my heart-rate spiking.

He walked over and leaned against the wall beside me. I had to crane my neck to look up into his eyes. I don’t know what I was searching for—disgust, maybe? But his expression was unreadable.

“Are you, um, disappointed?” I asked. I felt embarrassed even though I had no real reason to be. I was old enough to be making bad choices.

“Should I be?” His tone was even harder to read. His voice was still deep, velvety and low, but there was nothing that could tell me if he was disappointed or angry or even indifferent. It felt like a trick question.

“I don’t smoke for attention or to look edgy or cool. I’m just—I have anxiety. It helps.”

“Then no, I’m not disappointed,” he said, looking up into the sky. I followed his gaze. Dark clouds were traveling towards us, threatening a storm that could snow us all in at the school.

“I’m letting class out early,” he said. “That doesn’t look good, does it?”

I was still looking up at the sky, my heart beating fast. It rained a lot in Northern California, more than people would expect from such a sunny state, so I was used to clouds, but these were different. They had that unique angry, unforgiving look of clouds that promised more destruction than mere inconvenience.

When I tore my gaze from the sky I saw that Gabe was looking down at me, observing me in an innocent sort of way, like he wasn’t sure what to make of me. The wind swept a lock of hair into his eyes, and without thinking, without using my fucking brain, I reached up and brushed it away.

“I’m so sorry,” I gasped, reeling back. My elbows hit the brick wall, scraping and hitting the bones so hard that I stumbled in pain and lost my footing.

Gabe swore, catching me around the middle before I fell into the snow. He hoisted me up like I was a child, steadying me for what felt like the millionth time that day. Only this time, I didn’t feel warm and happy—this time I felt the burn of humiliation.

My back was pressed against his hard chest. I felt his breaths; heavy, like I’d knocked the wind out of him. He released me and I stepped away, putting some distance between us because I’d touched him when I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t even imagine how uncomfortable he must feel. What the fuck was wrong with me?

“You okay?” he asked.

“Mm, nope,” I said, wincing. My elbows hurt like a fucking bitch, but the shame and embarrassment—yeah, that was a hundred times worse.

He ran a hand through his hair, letting out a sigh like it had been stuck in his lungs.

I knew I was fucking this all up so I moved my arm to get his keys out of my pocket, biting back the pain because it hurt so fucking bad to bend my elbow.

“Here,” I said, handing him the car keys. My fingertips brushed the scars on his palms, and I lingered there for maybe a moment too long, mesmerized. I couldn’t believe that he was so self-conscious of them, that he was always hiding them away; they were beautiful, like intricate lines of linked constellations. I could look at them all day.

His hand closed around the keys—and my fingers.

“Don’t run,” he said, reading my shock. “Let me see your elbow. Are you hurt?”

Are you hurt?

The first words he’d ever said to me, echoing in my ears, taking me back to that night, to the darkness and his hands all over my body, making my toes curl, making me wet, making me fall apart in that earth-shattering orgasm. The image was so vivid that it felt real, like it had actually happened. My stomach dropped as a wave of pleasure hit me, starting right from the fingertips still trapped in his hand.

“Let me go,” I whispered shakily.

But he didn’t and it made me scared, made me confused. We were teacher and student, but somewhere along the last few hours, the lines had become blurred. We touched when we shouldn’t, and we held on when we should have let go.

“Are you hurt?” he repeated.

Fuck it.

I reached out and took a hold of his coat with my free hand and yanked him down, ignoring the pain in my elbow, ignoring everything because I was a fucked up teenager and I was looking for answers. I shouldn’t have had the strength to move him so easily, but for some reason he obliged; for some reason he let me pull him down, let me jerk my fingers out of his grasp to clutch the lapels of his coat with both hands and pull.

And then he let me kiss him.

“Fuck,” he hissed almost immediately, trying to pull back, but I didn’t let him because it was my turn to be stubborn. In seconds I was rising up on my toes and yanking him back down, pressing my mouth back against his, meeting that resistance again, but also meeting that thrilling realization that he was strong enough to evade this if he really wanted to.

But he didn’t move, just let me kiss him, let me move my mouth against his, doing nothing at all until I let out a moan before I could stop myself. His lips parted in shock, swallowing my moan into his mouth, drawing a ragged breath, tasting me completely by accident, groaning before he could stop himself, and then he wasn’t resisting anymore. He was reciprocating, kissing me back, his mouth opening for mine, letting me taste him, tasting me back, our tongues sliding, swapping silent secrets, saying nothing, saying everything.

Scarred palms were suddenly on my back, pulling me like I had pulled him, until my body was flush against his, until he was bending to kiss me—no, bending to pick me up. His hands slid down to cup my ass, hoisting me up, kissing me up against the brick wall as my legs instinctively wrapped around his trim waist, ankles locking. My fingers weaved into his dark hair, pulling by accident and then pulling on purpose because his breath hitched and I knew then that he liked it.

The kiss wasn’t graceful or romantic or tender, but none of that mattered because what it was, was even better—it was rough, heated, frantic and good, so damn good. It was the kind of kiss that got under the skin, the kind that filled the ribs, filled the mind, filled everything until all you felt was the one aching place that wasn’t filled.

I wasn’t thinking when I rolled my hips against him, practically creaming when I felt the bulge of his arousal, my jeans dragging the delicate fabric of my panties, sending jolts of pleasure from the friction, making me want to scream, making me want to—

“Fuck,” he said again, and this time when he pulled back I didn’t fight it. His pupils were blown wide, those beautiful hazel eyes darkened with lust. The look he gave me felt like an electric charge, frying every nerve in my body, rendering me speechless.

We were both breathing heavily, our eyes locked in an intense stare, neither of us ready to say anything. I kept waiting for him to drop me, to run like I had run that first day, but his hands were still splayed out over my ass, holding me up. His lips were swollen, his hair even messier than usual, sticking out where my hands still gripped the thick locks of dark brown hair. He had the look of someone who’d been kissed half to death. I wondered if I looked the same.

“This was not ... smart,” he finally said.

“No,” I agreed, because it wasn’t; it was positively suicidal.

“I—I have to go dismiss the class,” he said, looking up at the sky again. His darkened eyes followed the direction of the storm clouds, headed straight our way.

“Okay,” I said, uncrossing my ankles. I slid my legs back from his hips and reluctantly withdrew my fingers from his hair. He was gentle as he helped me down, a far cry from the man who had kissed me roughly against the wall just moments before.

“Uh, here,” he said, bending down to pick up his car keys from the snow. I hadn’t even realized he’d dropped them.

“What?” I asked as he put the keys in my hand.

“We have to talk about this.”

“Noooo,” I said, backing away. “We really don’t.”

“I don’t have time to argue with you right now, Grace,” he said, checking his watch. “Wait for me in the car.”

He didn’t give me the opportunity to argue anyways; he just ran a hand through his hair in some silly effort to fix it and walked away. I stared after him, my legs trembling as I walked back to his car, trying to figure out how the hell I’d lost control like that. I’d never been so reckless before, never done anything remotely out of line—hell, I’d never even gotten a parking ticket before. I doubt I would’ve picked up a pack of smokes if I wasn’t old enough to buy them myself, and I failed my classes with the understanding that it was my own future I was fucking up so I had the right.

But I had no right fucking up his.

I walked back to his car, climbed into the passenger seat, got the heater going and put my face in my hands. The more I thought about it the worse I felt. We’d crossed this line together, and now he was going to walk us back behind it and probably pretend that it had never happened. I wanted to feel grateful that it had happened at all, but it was hard because I wanted more and that made me feel like a fucking asshole. I hadn’t expected to force myself on him like that, making him take it until he couldn’t help matching me touch for touch, moan for moan. We’d both done this, but only one of us was truly going to regret it.