Page 90 of Try Me

30

Chet

I’d lost my mind. That was the only possible explanation for what I was doing standing outside of Mark’s bedroom window at two in the morning.

For the rest of my shift, I couldn’t stop thinking about him in that stupid fucking tie, asking me if we’d made the smart decision while the expression on his face pleaded with me to say otherwise.

It was possible I’d imagined it. It was possible I just wanted to think he was as miserable as I was because it’d make me feel better.

His voice chased itself around in my head, rebounding off images of him on the ropes course a month ago, fingers laced with mine, gaze burning into me as his feet wobbled on the rope.

That’s what I felt like now. Unsteady, wobbly, hovering above an abyss of the unknown and desperately wishing I had the security of him across from me.

That was the scary thing about love. It was unpredictable and unfathomable, and when you were walking a tightrope in its throes, the only thing that mattered was how much you trusted the person walking it with you. In Mark’s absence, the realization of how much I’d come to rely on his counterbalance hit me full force.

After I dropped Carrie off at home, I went back to my apartment, dog tired, and then proceeded to lie in my bed wide-awake as I stared at the ceiling. I thought about fall semester and the months ahead. I thought about law school and the firm. Plans for the future were good. After my dad went to prison and we lost everything, plans were what got me out of bed and kept me going every morning. The now was ash. The future was a sunrise. Every forward step was toward a brighter horizon. As long as I kept moving forward, my past would keep receding behind me.

But now I’d stumbled into a murky twilight. What if I was giving up the wrong thing?

It seemed impossible. And it seemed impossibly stupid to risk my academic career and law school when I was so fucking close to achieving my goals.

Which was why standing outside of Mark’s bedroom had my stomach twisted in knots even as anticipation thrummed inside me.

This might turn out to be the most self-destructive thing I’d ever done.

And I didn’t care.

The lights were out, so I rapped softly on the window, in a similarly miserable state to the one that’d led me to his window years prior.

I’d had nothing left to lose last time. This time, I had everything.

But so did he.

The blinds slowly ascended, and Mark braced his hands against the sill, staring out at me groggily before giving me a slow shake of his head. “Don’t,” his voice came muffled through the windowpane. “Just go home.”

“Can’t.” I shrugged.

“You agreed earlier. It was the smart decision.”

“I was wrong.”

“No, you weren’t. Youweren’t. Law school is riding on this. And if I let you in…if we—” He broke off with another shake of his head. “Go home. I’m not good at being strong about this, and it’s almost impossible when you’re standing in front of me.”

I moved closer to the glass and mirrored his posture, my face inches from his. He met my gaze forlornly, his eyes deep and dark, wary and hurting.

“You said you’d always let me in. You said you wouldn’t be able not to. Was that fucking true, or wasn’t it?” I tried to quell the desperation in my voice, but it seeped through anyway.

Mark squeezed his eyes shut, jaw tightening, then pushed off the sill and whirled around, pacing toward the bed before stalking to the window again and flipping the lock as he spat out a curse.

He threw the window open and offered out his hand.

I grabbed it and started to haul myself in. “We can just talk. We can—”

His mouth on mine smothered the rest of whatever I’d been trying to say, and I wasn’t sure what that was anyway, because as soon as we’d touched, as soon as I was within inches of him, everything else evaporated.

My foot caught on the sill, and we tumbled onto the floor in a collision of tangled limbs and rapid-fire breaths.

Mark tasted good, so fucking good after weeks of holding back. His hands moved over my body, clutching and grabbing at me like he’d forgotten how I felt under them and was desperate to remember.