Page 131 of The Illicit Play

“Look…” His hand glides up my back, settling between my shoulder blades. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but… maybe we should just come clean.”

An alarming terror I was not expecting jolts through me, and my head pops back off his body again. “What?”

He opens his mouth to reply but then ends up giving me a helpless shrug.

So I arch my eyebrow at him, silently demanding an explanation.

“I don’t know what else to do. The whole ‘this thing being over as soon as we got back’ isn’t gonna work for us. We couldn’t even go two hours.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. “You know, it’s really your fault.”

“My fault?” His whispers increase just a little in volume, and I open my eyes in time to see him frowning at me.

“Yeah, well…” I draw a circle on his bare shoulder. “If you weren’t so divine, then it’d be easy just to let you go, but you had to be… be…”

“Be what?”

“Perfect.” I bulge my eyes at him. “Inside and out.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not perfect, Blake. Please don’t put that on me. I’m a shitty friend who went behind your brother’s back. That doesn’t make me perfect. Far from it.”

Brushing my thumb across his bottom lip, I give him a sad smile. “Compared to me, you’re perfect. I’m the shitty sister who’s been lying to her brother, the horrible daughter who’s been lying to her parents. I’m…” I shake my head as well.

Cupping my face, he holds me steady, his face becoming clearer by the second as I adjust to the darkness in his room. “Let’s end this charade. Let’s just come out with the truth and face the consequences.”

Consequences?

He makes it sound like this simple thing.

Consequences!

One word. Four syllables.

And it’s the most terrifying sound in all the world.

Fear clutches me, but worse than it’s ever clutched me before. It’s like there’s this vise around my throat, choking me, flattening my chest.

The air in my lungs is turning into toxic gas. I can’t inhale.

Why can’t I inhale?

I start scratching at my collarbone, whimpering as I claw at my pajama top.

This charade has been keeping me sane, and now he’s telling me to just shed it.

Shed it and face theconsequences.

“Hey. Hey, it’s okay.” Grady notices my sudden surge of panic, but his calm voice can’t cut through the haze clouding my vision.

I can’t breathe. Why can’t I breathe?

This tightness in my chest is unbearable. It’s like there’s a concrete cinder block squishing my lungs into pancakes.

“Blake, look at me.” Grady quickly shifts, freeing his arm from around my side and taking my face in both his hands. “Blake,” he whispers, his voice urgent as he tries to cut through whatever the hell I’m going battling.

What is this?

I’ve never had this before.