Page 86 of Ghosts Don't Cry

I don’t tell her that I am. The cold burrows so deep sometimes that I forget what warm feels like. Instead, I bury my face into her hair, breathing in the scent of her shampoo. “Used to it.”

After a moment, she steps out of my arms and spreads out the blankets. We’ve done this enough times that she knows how to create our own private world. One blanket on top of the two I already have, making a barrier against the floor that steals heat. Two to wrap around us. Her backpack becomes a pillow.

When she pulls me down to her, the world narrows to just this. Her skin against mine, her hands on my body, her lips finding mine. She kisses me, pouring heat straight into my blood.

“Touch me.” Her voice is needy. “Please, Ronan.”

I slide my hands under her hoodie, finding bare skin. She shivers as my cold fingers move over her—the curve of her waist, the ridges of her spine, all the places that make her arch and whimper. My fingers are always cold these days, no matter how long I’m indoors. But she never flinches away from them.

“You’re thinking too hard again.” She cups my face, thumbs stroking over my cheeks. In the dim light, her eyes look black. “Stay with me. Here. Now.”

I catch her wrist, kissing the pulse point. It races beneath my tongue. “I’m here, Phare.”

“Are you?” She rolls her hips.

Instead of answering her, I kiss her. She opens for me, tongue sliding against mine as she tangles her fingers into my hair. The kiss turns desperate, messy. Heat and need colliding.

When she tugs at my hair, I growl against her mouth.

“Off.” She pulls at my shirt between kisses. “I need to feel you.”

I let her strip me, even though it’s freezing, because it means she’ll put her hands on me and I’ll forget about everything except how she feels.

“God, look at you.” Her fingers find the scar beneath my ribs—a souvenir from one of Rick’s rages. But she doesn’t see ugly marks of survival, she sees stories. Seesme. “You’re so beautiful.”

The word should make me flinch. Beautiful isn’t for boys like me. Yet she says it with absolute conviction, something she believes with her whole heart.

I capture her mouth again, swallowing whatever else she might say. My hands slide up until I cup her breasts, and she arches into my touch with a broken moan that echoes off the walls.

“Shhh.” I smile against her lips. “Someone might hear you.”

“I don’t care.” She rocks against me harder. “I need you. Please.”

I strip the hoodie off her, leaving her bare from the waist up. Moonlight through the window paints silver across her skin as she moves. Her nipples pebble in the cold, and goosebumpsrise on her arms, but she doesn’t complain. My mouth finds her throat, nipping gently at the pulse hammering there.

“Ronan,please.”

I know what she needs. I’ve learned every sound she makes, every way her body moves. I know how to touch her, taste her, and take her apart until she forgets everything except my name.

She comes with my name on her lips, shaking in my arms, nails leaving marks in my shoulders that will still be there tomorrow. I hold her through it, whispering poetry against her skin.

After, she curls against my chest, her breathing slowing. I wrap the blankets tighter around us, trying to keep her warm. Her fingers trace patterns on my skin.

“Tell me something true.” Her words ghost across my collarbone. It’s our game, started that first night when I couldn’t find words for what she’d given me.

“I dream about mornings.” The confession spills out before I can catch it. “Real ones. Not stolen moments before school. Waking up with you. Making coffee. Watching you steal the crossword before I can get to it.”

She props herself up on one elbow, the blanket slipping down, her eyes searching mine. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” My fingers trace a circle around her nipple. “I dream about having a real place. Somewhere with a porch, where we could sit in the rain and read. Rooms full of books. A bed that’s ours.”

She lowers herself against me, head on my chest, fingers walking up and down my ribs. Sometimes she adds her own dreams. A garden full of flowers and herbs, a cat that sleeps in patches of sunlight, photographs on the wall that tell the story of us.

“Tell me more.”

I curve my hand over her waist. “I kept your note. The first one. About the library copy of Steinbeck.”

“You did?”