“D-do you love her? Do you still love my sister?”
I think I screamed it. I think everyone heard it.
Everyone at St. Mary’s heard that I asked the guy I love if he’s still in love with my sister.
Or at least that’s what I feel for a few seconds, because my eardrums are ringing.
My chest is vibrating.
The only thing silent and frigid, frozen over by the snow, is him.
The guy I asked this question to.
If I thought he was tight before, I was wrong. If I thought he was furious and hot before, I was wrong again.
He’s burning up now, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he melts all the snow on ground.
Especially, when he glances down – for the first time – at my fists in his jacket and I feel my hands sting.
Keeping his chin dipped, he lifts his eyes. “Get out of my face.”
“What?”
“Just get the fuck out of my face before I lose it, okay?”
“But I –”
He jerks his arm then and my fists are shaken loose, making me stumble back a little.
But it’s enough.
It’s enough to give him the space he probably wanted because his foot goes to kickstart the motorcycle, and I know that as soon as he does that, he’ll leave.
He’ll leave me here, standing in the snow, with so many unanswered questions. With so many emotions and feelings that I will explode.
I won’t make it through the night.
So I do the only thing that I can. The only thing that I can think of.
I hurl my heart at his feet, my beating, pulpy heart at his kicking feet, and hope that it’s enough to make him stay.
“I love you.”
I screamed that too, I think.
Everyone heard it.
Everyone heard my secret.
Holy. Shit.
Holy fucking shit.
I press a hand on my stomach because I can’t breathe. Because all my organs are in disarray or at least it feels like it because I just told him.
I told him.
My secret of eight years.
My secret because of which I stole and lied and cried and lived in misery for eight long years. My secret because of which I was sent here, to St. Mary’s.
I just told it to him and turns out, it was enough for him to stop.
It was enough for that foot to stop, the one resting on that lever. It was enough for him to stare back at me. Not only with his eyes but also with his body. He twists his torso in my direction as if he’s completely attuned to me now.
Completely attuned to what I just said.
And maybe, maybe I would’ve taken that. I would’ve taken the way his body looks tight and coiled, turned toward me.
But then, he goes ahead and climbs off his Ducati.
He actually swings his thigh over and comes to a stand and I have to step back.
Because he’s standing in front of me, his feet wide apart, his hands on his sides curled into fists and his chest moving up and down, all hot and snowy.
“What’d you just say?” he asks in a low voice.
In the most dangerous voice I’ve ever heard. A voice that causes my hickey – the very first love bite that he gave me – to burn and throb.
I swallow, pressing my hand further into my stomach, feeling chilled. “I-I…”
“You love me.”
I swallow again. “I didn’t mean it.”
“So you don’t love me.”
“No, I do. I…”
His eyes narrow. “Well, which is it?”
Oh God.
Why does he have to look so intimidating right now? So tall and big and dark, his sun-struck hair all wet and brown.
I don’t know how to handle this.
But I have to handle it, right?
I just said it. I can’t take it back.
I won’t take it back.
Just because it’s scary doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it.
Just because it was only a half-formed idea in my head to tell him, doesn’t mean it’s not true.
So I take a deep breath and say, “Okay, let me just start at the beginning. I write you letters. Not the ones we’ve been exchanging these past few weeks but others. Like, really long ones where I tell you about my day and I tell you what I did and who I talked to and who I saw and you know, where I just make general conversation with you. And I’ve been doing that for the past eight years.”
I take a pause here to look him in the eyes; they’ve turned inscrutable now, his gaze along with his smooth, unruffled features as the snow falls around us.
“Since I was ten,” I continue. “Since the day I saw you in the kitchen and you told me not to tell your mom about the juice thing and you asked me if I was cold. I… I wanted to answer you. I wanted to tell you that I wasn’t. I mean, I was. But then you came in through the door, all sweaty and panting and the room was all yellow, you know? Because the sun was streaming through the windows and you appeared so… sun-struck. And as soon as I saw you, I felt this strange warmth flowing inside my body. And it made me feel so good and I wanted to tell you that. But then…”