He squints in the sudden bright light, his eyes flashing to Aimee and back. “We didn’t mean for it to go there. She was just sort of…fucked up, and we started talking during the movie and—”
“And you thought you’d fuck her better?” I cut in. “Is that your version of kissing her booboo?”
“It’s my fault,” Aimee interjects. “Erik is the only boy I’ve ever been with. I love him so much, and now he’s just…gone. I needed to…feel something I guess.”
I cut her a glare. “So you decided to feel my boyfriend.”
She drops to her bed and buries her face in her hands.
“You know what? You can have him,” I say, throwing a hand at Nate. “I’m done with him.”
With the words comes an unexpected but overwhelming sense of liberation. The rush is intense. My skin pebbles into goose bumps. My fingers, toes, and lips tingle as if they’ve been asleep for a very long time and are just coming back to life. Tears suddenly stream in a river down my face.
And the nagging ache that’s lived in my right hip for the last year flares into the searing pain I felt that night a year ago.
It takes a second for the reason for my body’s intense reaction to click in my head. Aimee just did me a huge favor. I’ve spent a year in a relationship with a boy who raped me, and it was slowly killing me. Dampening all my senses. Binding my spirit. Crushing my soul.
I go to Aimee and give her a hug. “If you want to finish fucking him, I’m going to leave for a few minutes.” I draw back and look at her. “A half hour or so? Does that sound okay?”
“Oh, God,” she sobs when she realizes I’m mocking her.
I turn to Nate and kiss him on the mouth. “And when I come back, I want you the fuck out of my life.”
I step through the door and take the stairs down to the first floor. I walk out into the cool night, find a bench along the footpath to the lecture halls. I lay on my back, staring up at the stars. They rush down on me in a shower of sparks and make me dizzy, so that even as tears stream into my ears, I’m laughing. The moon hangs low in the sky, a narrow crescent turned on its side like a smile.
I smile back as I soar with the cosmos. Because for the first time in a long time, I feel free.
Chapter 24
Caiden
Hannah is laying on the couch, her feet on the armrest and her head in my lap. She’s reading an advanced copy of a book she’s apparently not enjoying, based on the hint of a cringe that’s been brushing over her features off and on for the last half hour.
I channel surf instead of telling her not to waste her time, because it’s her job. Her mom hired her as a literary reviewer for one of the fashion magazines she edits after Hannah completed her PhD in December. She also contributes short stories under a pseudonym to several literary magazines. She gets paid peanuts for both, but she loves it. I know her parents send her money every month to cover our expenses. I also know they never come here because they hate that she’s shacking up with a child molester. But Hannah and I never talk about it.
I gave up my apartment in East Overton at the first of the year, partly because I couldn’t afford to keep it and partly because Hannah hated sleeping there. Only because Hannah begged, her mom has hooked me up with a few freelance editing gigs, but they’re sporadic and they don’t pay much. I felt like keeping my apartment was an indulgence. It just made sense to consolidate, since we’d basically been living together since August anyway.
“How long have we known each other, Caiden?” she asks absently, her eyes still sweeping left to right across the page of her book.
“I don’t know.” I stop on The Big Bang Theory. “Maybe three years.”
“And we’ve been sleeping together periodically for most of that.”
It’s not a question, but I nod.
She swings around and sits up next to me, setting her book on the coffee table. “And for the last five months, we’ve been living together…sharing expenses, chores, our bed.”
I set down the remote on the arm of the couch and look at her. “It feels like you’re going somewhere with this.”
She holds my gaze. “Where is this ultimately headed? Where do you see our relationship in a year?”
“I don’t know, Hannah. A lot of shit can happen in a year.” My head spins with all the shit that’s happened in the last year.
“Point conceded. But if you could choose your own path for the next five years, what would it be?”
This is new. Hannah’s never asked me to define what we’re doing. Which is what’s made it so easy to do. Because when I have to think too much about it, I realize how much this isn’t what I want. After whatever was happening between Blaire and I, this feels vapid.
But I’m not a good person. Maybe vapid is all I deserve.
“I haven’t thought that much about it.”
“Marriage? Children? What do you want, Caiden?”