Age Seventeen
I tossed and turned. Kicked the covers from my body. Stared up into the darkened ceiling of my room.
Everything felt too close and too tight, my skin slick with sweat, my heart beating too goddamned hard.
A creeping dread sank into the pit of my stomach as my ear tuned to the quiet sobs that seeped through the wall from the room next door.
Fear and sorrow.
I felt it. Recognized it.
Even when the sound was muffled by her pillow.
By the walls and the distance.
I recognized it.
I slid from the confines of my bed. I gripped handfuls of hair as I paced and listened some more.
What the hell was I supposed to do?
This was the girl who’d been too shy to even look at me earlier when she’d stood in the front doorway, while her brother had grinned like a fool at her side, all too eager to announce his baby sister was staying for the summer while the band was on break.
God. Even with her head cast low, she had to have been the best thing I’d ever seen.
Girls came and went in this house.
All the damned time.
Sex and sin.
Fucking easy.
No one seemed to mind when I just reached out and took my share¸ like I was some kind of twisted, fucked-up partner to the band.
Those chicks were always game.
Good to get whatever taste they could.
Even if it was just me.
An outsider who wished he was good enough to step into the ring.
But this one? She’d all but ignored me when it felt like for the first time in my life, my eyes were open and I could finally see.
Because I’d felt them. Fuck. I’d felt them. The quick peeks. The stolen glimpses fueled by the strange curiosity that neither of us had seemed able to shake.
Sure. I’d met her a few times through the years when we’d been nothing more than little kids.
Then?
It’d seemed like nothing.
Now?
It felt like everything.
Now I knew something profound was prodding at me. Calling to me from that room.
A room that was clearly off-limits.
Another stifled sob that hit me like a dagger to the heart, and that was all I could take. I didn’t even take the time to think it through, the rash decision made somewhere in my subconscious when I dropped to my knees to dig into the back of my closet.
I rooted out what I kept hidden in a small chest and clutched it in my hand, welcoming its relief. For the flash of a second, I let my grandma’s voice caress me like a song, the same as it’d done when she’d given it to me when I was eight.
Pretended like I might possibly deserve it.
Keep it close, sweet boy. Whenever you’re scared or the dreams come, cling to it, and it will hold them for you. It will give you peace and safety. Whenever you need it, think of me and remember what I told you.
I knew with every part of me this girl needed it.
That she deserved it.
I edged out the door, slinking slowly with my back pressed against the hallway wall, hiding in the shadows.
Like some kind of sick, perverted fuck sneaking around.
Some part of me was screaming that I was doing something wrong.
Crossing a line that’d been invisibly drawn right in front of her door.
The rest of me just didn’t care, and I was slowly, quietly, turning the knob and stealing into the darkness of the guest room.
Moonlight filtered in, lighting up her white hair in a soft, milky glow, her skin an almost alabaster white.
Damn it all if my breath didn’t hitch. My stomach was twisted in a thousand knots.
I took a cautious step forward.
The floor creaked and my spirit thrashed.
Her little body froze, no doubt sensing my approach, her back to me where she quaked and clung tighter to the blanket covering her face.
So goddamned much fear trembled from her, it chipped out another fragment of my brittle, broken heart.
It seemed impossible.
That this virtual stranger could possibly make me care.
But I couldn’t stop the intrinsic need to soothe her pain. To take it away.
Everything else faded away and my sight narrowed on one singular goal.
I couldn’t get my fingers to stop shaking when I tentatively brushed them through her hair, couldn’t ignore the surge of energy that flashed through my veins. “Shh…I’ve got you.”
She gasped at my touch. And maybe we both were shocked by it, but there was no missing the way her tensed up body relaxed, the way she shuddered out a relieved breath.
Like maybe she got I was there to hold her.
Never to hurt her.
That was all it took for me to go crawling in behind her.
Pulling her into my arms.
At the contact, I sucked in a sharp gust of air. Like I was taking the first real breath I’d breathed since the day I’d stolen his.
Light.
It strobed against the blackness obliterating my heart.
God. Who was this girl?
Hesitantly, she turned in my arms.
Aqua eyes, wild and bewildered, stared at me through the subdued light.
Still, they glinted like the sharp cut of diamonds.
Everything trembled and shook.
My heart and my spirit and my mind.
Fear and awe.
It reflected between us, like two mirrors that went on forever.
Eternal.
My throat was tight, and I pulled her closer, my mouth pressing a bunch of kisses into all her wild hair, to the soft skin at her temple. I lifted the hoop with the tangled web over our heads. My words were a strained whisper. “See. You don’t have to be afraid. This…it will hold all your dreams. They have no power over you. They can’t hurt you. Keep it with you always, and it’ll give you peace and safety.”
I couldn’t help hoping she’d allow me to give her a little bit of it, too.