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96

Summer

Connor

I might be on Rafe duty tonight.

C onnor sends a photo of himself, and my gaze goes straight to his swollen lip, which looks like it has only just stopped bleeding. Anger bubbles inside me at the sight, the need to protect him overwhelming.

Summer

You need me to fight him?

I ask it jokingly, but the offer is anything but a joke. I like Rafe, but he needs to get his fucking head in gear and stop punishing his brother. Connor would do anything for him.

Connor

I’d rather you kiss me better.

My lips twitch, and I look back at the photo of him.

Summer

Deal. And we fuck tomorrow?

Connor sends another photo. This time, it’s a photo of his hand, and he’s written what looks like a to-do list.

1 Beat up Rafe.

2 Fuck Summer.

Summer

Good boy.

I can practically hear Connor’s groan in his reply.

Connor

You know that gets me going…

I love you, succubus.

Summer

I love you too, big guy.

I sigh and put my phone away. I look up to find Alice watching me and lift my eyebrows questioningly.

“You told him yet?” Alice asks, leaning in. “The stranger?”

I shake my head. “I think I’m going to do it in person,” I reply. Can I really call it in person when I’m technically the only one who’s there? I shake my head to clear the thought. “He’s not messaged me since last night.”

Alice snorts, sitting back in her seat. “Yeah, because you bailed after telling him his voice is sexy.”

I look down at my notebook, where I have been doodling a rune. “Maybe he’s of a similar mind.”

“What do you mean?”

I sit back. “Maybe he’s also thinking we should take a step back.”

“I somehow doubt it.”

I shrug, continuing my doodle.

“Just message him, coward,” Alice says.

I sigh, put my pen down, and pick up my phone. She’s right. I need to stop putting this off, and there’s no time like the present.

His response is immediate, and I wonder if he was also considering messaging me.

I exhale and shove my phone away, anxiety surging through me. “Done,” I tell Alice, very aware of my knee bouncing beneath the desk.

“I’m so proud.” Alice snickers, and I flip her off. I turn my attention back to my classwork, trying to take my attention off this evening. I am wholly unsuccessful, my mind circling back every few minutes. What am I going to say to him? How am I going to say it? Will he accept it? Will he push back? What do I want him to do?

By the time I am to leave the dorm to meet him, I am a mess of anxiety. I walk through the campus and into the forest, my mind too busy playing out different scenarios with the stranger to be afraid.

I feel like I can’t catch my breath when I see him. He’s standing within the trees but is looking up at a small area of uncovered sky, the canopy allowing the briefest of glimpses into the heavens. He looked like this the night we fought.

“You’re planning to push me away,” he says, his voice brushing against my ear.

I nervously play with the bottom of my skirt. The words are there, right on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t say them.

“Sometimes I look up at the stars, looking for answers. But the answers don’t come from the twinkling lights. They come from the impenetrable darkness between them.”

I watch him, my eyes taking in the vague shape of him.

“Darkness calls to me. There are no answers for me in the light.”

I slowly move closer to him.

He flexes his hand. “I hate the stars. I hate they can do what I cannot.”

The stranger is so alone at that moment, standing in the dark and searching for answers in the cold. It is a pain that I am intimately familiar with, and it calls to me.

“Say what you have come to say,” he says.

Following his gaze, I search the abyss of the night sky. “I crossed a line.” My eyes burn, and I swallow hard. “I’m-I’m really sorry. I know I was…” His anger beats at me. I glance at him and find him facing me, but he doesn’t say anything. He turns away, looking back at the stars. I place my hand on his arm. “Stranger, I?—”

He recoils, yanking away from my touch. “Go back to your safety, where everything makes sense. You can pretend the side of you only I can see doesn’t exist.”

I flinch. Each word feels like a dagger, slicing me, carving me. My eyes sting as they fill with tears. “I?—”

“Go. Leave me in the dark,” he snarls. “Return to your lies.”

My vision blurs as the tears escape, burning paths down my cheeks. “Goodbye, Stranger.”

I turn and start running, his words circling my mind.

Go back to your safety. Return to your lies.

Return to your lies.

Your lies.

Lies.

I sob as I push into a sprint. I have always been a liar, and I’ve always been okay with it. It was about survival, but that is no longer the case. It’s a tool I’m using to chisel away my rough, sharp edges to force myself into a mold that I so desperately want to fit into. If I can manage it, then maybe I can have a normal life. A happy life. The life I want. Or at least the life I want to want.

I run home and go straight to my room, collapsing onto my bed and sobbing into my pillow. Alice knocks softly on the wall. It’s her gentle way of asking me if I’m good without intruding. I tap my fist on the wall twice, indicating that I’m all right, but I continue to sob until the oblivion of sleep swallows me.