He shook against me, his body tense, and then his hands slid around my shoulders and he crushed me to him, his nose against my neck.
“I need you,” he whispered. “So much. So damn much.”
He jerked his head up, and then his hands were in my hair, tugging me until I was forced to look into his eyes.
“I love you, Monroe. God, I’ve never felt this way about a girl but…I just…there’s so much shit and I don’t know how to deal with it, and Trevor…he…”
Nathan rested his forehead against mine, and for a few moments, we breathed into each other.
For the first time in forever, I felt settled—which was crazy. And yet, it felt as if all the pieces of my life that had been moving, shifting, trying to find their way back, had finally clicked into place.
I was where I was supposed to be, and sure I was battered and had been beaten down, but I had made it through and I was whole. I was whole and I was alive and I was in love with a boy who wasn’t quite there yet. A boy who had held my hand and gotten me to this place.
“I need you to not do this anymore, Nate. I need you to be strong, like you were for me, and I need you to forgive yourself.”
“He could die,” Nate whispered. “I knew it was a possibility, but I never thought…I thought he was going to wake up. I thought he was going to wake up and give me hell, you know? Hit me or yell at me or…something. I didn’t think he would just…end.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so pissed off and angry and I hate myself for what I did to him. I go over that night. Over and over. I relive it, you know? And it drives me crazy because I can’t remember the moment when it went wrong, and I don’t know how to get past that.”
“Let me help you, Nathan.”
His voice broke. “How?”
Carefully, I pulled his hand into mine and stepped back. “Do you trust me?” Did I trust myself? When had I become the expert on healing? Me, the girl who had gone to therapy for over a year because I’d been so broken. The girl who had cut her wrists because she didn’t want to deal.
And yet, as I looked into his eyes, I had
such a feeling of rightness inside me that I was able to push back all the negative thoughts. The ones that said there was no hope. Only pain.
The ones that said I could lose Nathan if I wasn’t careful.
I thought back to that day when I was eleven. To that hot afternoon on Gram’s porch when she’d told me that I could do anything as long as I put my mind to it. And suddenly I knew she was right. She’d been right all along.
“I need you to trust me.”
Nate said nothing.
“I need for you to let me catch you. Do you understand?” I touched his cheek again. Traced a line to his mouth and then stood on my toes so that I could kiss him. It was a gentle touch—a soft brush of the lips that cemented our connection.
“I won’t let you fall,” I whispered.
He nodded. It was enough.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
I swallowed my fear and tried to smile, though I wasn’t sure it worked all that well. I knew we stood on the edge of a cliff, but I also felt like we could survive the fall.
We had to survive, or what was the point of it all?
“Let’s go see Trevor.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Nathan