“I do, too.”
He threw her a grin before feeding her more eggs. As she chewed, she watched him as he ate his own forkful. He was so beautiful. His hair was in disarray, half sticking up and half stuck to his head. His lips were puffy and full. His neck and chest were covered with little red marks, where she had bit him, playfully, teasingly. She knew hers matched his, and it made her quiver with the thought of him doing it to her again. She admired the tattoo on his chest and decided that she had never seen something so detailed and breathtaking. Looking up into his eyes, she smiled. She liked him. A lot more than she wanted to, but nothing would ever come out of it. She didn’t know how to love or even be loved.
Right?
Leaning over, she pressed her lips to his. He smiled as they parted. “Thank you.”
“Anytime. This is fun,” he said, cupping her chin before placing another sweet kiss on her lips.
“It is.”
He flashed her a grin before draining the contents of his cup. She couldn’t stop watching him. Maybe it was because she knew he was leaving, and she wanted to soak in every single detail about him. Yeah, that was it. He looked up and smiled. “What?”
“What does Memento Mori mean?” she asked, referring to the words underneath the hourglass on his chest.
He looked away. “It’s sort of morbid, but it means ‘remember that you will die’.”
She made a face. “That’s intense.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, after my mom and then my sister died, you know, things hit me bad. I went a little crazy, partied a little too hard, and then this happened. I am a firm believer that you only live once, and I want to live my life to the fullest.”
“I need to ask you something.”
She did? Why did she say that?
“Yeah?”
She paused, not knowing why she wanted to ask this, but she did. “At the time, I didn’t want to know but now, I want to know who the girl is that Claire keeps talking about. The one you left that Claire is convinced that you’ll leave everyone else because of?”
Phillip looked away as he shrugged. “You know, I don’t understand why she holds that thought in her mind. I didn’t leave Alana on purpose or because I wanted to. That’s her name by the way.”
“Okay, why did you leave?”
He expelled a breath as he leaned back on his hands, looking over at her. “I thought I was completely and utterly in love with her. I mean soul deep; I thought she was my forever-type love. I was young, stupid, and thought that that was it. She was it. I stayed with her family. Her dad is the one that took me under his wing, took me away from my mom, and trained me hardcore. He made me the man and hockey player I am now. Alana was a year younger than I was, and when I moved in, it was drilled into my head that she was off limits but man, I couldn’t ignore her. She suffocated me. I had to have her and she felt the same for me, or so I thought. We did everything together. She went to all my games, she went with me to see Claire, and I guess that was when Claire fell in love with her too. They were best friends. When I couldn’t take Claire to something, Alana did. It was great. My sister and mother hated her, but I didn’t care… she was it. Her parents never knew, thought we were only friends because we hid it so well.”
He paused, running his fingers through his hair before he sat up. “I got picked up by the Florida Rays and I was supposed to leave. I begged Alana to go with me. She was nineteen. She could go to college in Florida, and I knew we would be happy. She agreed. We were ready to go, but her dad, my mentor, freaked the fuck out. I told him I loved her, that I would take good care of her, but he wasn’t having it. He blacked my eye, threatened to do more, and told me I wasn’t good enough for his daughter and that I was dead to their family.”