“I don’t. I don’t,” I say, over and over, unconvincingly. But I don’t let go of his arms. I can’t imagine anything feeling better than the way he bites me gently at the place where my ear meets my neck, like pure fire, but the best kind of fire.
“So, you’d be okay if I did this with someone else? It’s just pure lust, and it doesn’t matter if I give it to someone else as long as I give it to you?” He asks, his lips moving against me.
I imagine him doing it to someone else, like Ally, and my heart pounds painfully. “No!” I drop my voice to a normal level. “No, it’s not all right. I don’t want that.”
“Good,” he says, nipping my earlobe, taking it into his mouth and licking it before gently biting again and sending a shockwave through me. “Because I don’t want to do it to anyone else. Just you. I always want to be with just you. That’s love, Rain.”
“Just me,” I murmur against him. It’s so wonderful, but so painful at the same time.
“Just say you love me, say you love me and we’ll be free.” He pulls me to him.
“I can’t, it hurts!” I cry, digging my fingernails into his back as my grief and the pleasure he’s giving me collide in a confusing mix. “I can’t say it. I can’t feel it.”
He pulls me back, holds me tight by the shoulders, and looks into my eyes. “Newsflash, Rain, you’re saying it now.” He holds me to him and I put my arms around him and hold tighter.
“Like that Rain, you just said it again,” he murmurs, letting me hold him.
He’s right. I only like this because I love him. I only want this with him. I want to always be with him. But it’s too painful to accept.
“Just say it Rain. I need to hear it, I need to know it from your lips.”
“I can’t, it hurts!” I curl into his chest.
He lets out a heavy breath and sets me down in the water. I step back, both relieved and sad.
“Guess what, Rain? Love hurts sometimes.” He walks toward me and I walk back. “It hurts me like hell to think of loving you. To take a chance with another woman who doesn’t seem to want to help herself. It hurts me like hell to think of not being with you too, though. I mean, we’re going to hurt either way.”
“I know, but—”
“We’re both seriously effed up. We’ll probably be in pain no matter what we do. I got Camille and you’ve got William, and we can either stay on our own, fighting our ghosts alone, or we can come together. Come together and decide to live, if you just say you love me. I won’t ask you again. Please, just say it Rain.”
I take a deep breath. It feels like I’m breathing through a straw. My head is foggy, and it gets foggier as I think of doing what he wants me to do. I’m going to pass out. “I can’t,” I say.
His eyes shutter, like the front of an old fashioned camera, and when they open again, I can see hurt there. Hurt and anger. And disappointment. Then he turns away.
Sometimes life is just like that. Sometimes there is no happy ending, and sometimes things just don’t work out. Sometimes we can’t triumph over everything. Sometimes we have to see the person we love walk away, like Knight is walking away from me now, because we aren’t ready or good enough to love them. Sometimes that’s the hand we are dealt.
Then again, sometimes we can be stronger than we ever thought, if the right person needs us to be. I lunge towards Knight and catch him around the waist, pain blaring in my head like white light, convincing me I’m going to die if I say this, but I’m going to say it, because it’s true.
It’s true.
“I love you, Knight. I love you so much.” The pain in my head is blaring, everything in me hates me for saying what I’ve said, and I’m certain that my brain, or my heart, is going to explode. I’ve gone against all of my foolish promises. Pronounced them foolish by breaking them. I’ve gone against the oaths I made in an attempt to stay sane, and now the fire in my brain is rewarding me with what feels like death.
But I’m so glad I said it. Though my vision is blurry, I can see how much it means to Knight. He’s right, sometimes the thing that hurts is the right thing. I was able to fight this for him. He doesn’t have to go through another Camille.
I’m so proud of myself. I did something so stupid, so crazy. It’s the first I’ve felt this alive since William died, it’s too bad I’m going to die now. Like my head said I would.
“Princess, you okay?”
Knight’s voice is distorted, pulling me from the darkness into a blurry world that looks a lot like the water park.
“Did I die?”
“No.” He laughs softly.
“Felt like it.”
“Thank you, Rain.” He runs a hand through my hair.
I still feel like a terrible person. I’m shameless. I killed William, and despite that, I’m choosing to be in love. It doesn’t make any sense in my mind, but I feel somewhat freer.
Maybe because it’s the truth. I tried not to, but I fell anyway. Maybe never falling in love is not a smart promise to make, because you never know when someone like Knight will come along and need you to change your mind.
He brushes wet hair off my face. He’s kneeling on hard tile.
“You’re crazy, you know that? You actually passed out from telling me you loved me.”
I flush. It’s true, and I hide behind my hands, still not able to believe that I’ve done it.
“You know, we have a pretty good health plan.”
“Yeah,” I say, not knowing where he’s going with it. “Why?”
“Rain, I love you, but you really need some therapy.”
“Same to you.”
“I’ll go if you go,” he says, leaning down to place a soft, long kiss on my forehead. “I’ll go with you.”
“Have you ever been?”
“No. But Geoff has. We talked. He’s doing well, and I think that’s a big part of it.”
“Must have been hard to lose his sister,” I say, studying Knight’s face. I can seriously study that face forever, and it’s odd to me that it seems to look more beautiful to me every day.
“It’s hard to lose anyone we love,” he says, tracing my lips with a long finger. I love that his fingers are slightly rough at the edges from years of pulling himself out of the pool. I love that his shoulders are broad and strong. I love that because of him, I’m going to be able to start living again.
I love that I’m allowing myself this chance. I feel evil and right at the same time. Perhaps there are different types of sin. There’s the sin against true right and wrong, and then there’s sins against our own perceived rights and wrongs, which may not be true rights and wrongs.
“I just want you to have everything you deserve Rain. You deserve this.” He traces the lines on my palm with his finger and it tingles and reminds me of what he did with his mouth there the other day.
“Wow, I deserve you? In all your splendor and glory?”
“Yup, ain’t you the lucky one?”
“Do you really love me Knight?”
“I really do.” He entwines his fingers with mine. “I do Rain. I’m going to work through this with you.”
“What about Camille?”
He closes his eyes in pain and I’m sorry I said it. But it’s true, she’ll always be there for him. I’ll have to deal with William’s death, but he wasn’t truly in my heart like Camille was in Knight’s.
“I guess a part of me will always remember loving her. But there’s a difference between the memory of love and the reality of it.”
I’m his reality. I can see it as he strokes my shoulder and looks down at me with tender eyes.
I don’t know where my sin lies. Whether it’s in hurting William, or choosing to love Knight. I only know I can’t go back to not loving him so I’m just going to have to deal with it.
I’m gonna need some therapy.
Epilogue
Rain
The bonfire burns brightly, sending little embers swirling up into the air around us. Knight puts his arm
around my shoulders and I put mine around his waist.
Amy says something to Geoff, and they start to bicker. It makes me laugh. On the other side of them, Ally is trying to get Ryan out of his shell. It’s funny to see her badger him while he stares at her, shy and irritated, from behind his long hair.
No casualties this season, so when Knight hands me an open Mountain Dew, I feel I deserve it. I cup it in my hands and enjoy the cool smoothness that contrasts with the crackly warmth of the fire. I could stay here forever, but there’s somewhere I’d rather be even more. I turn to Knight, nudge him so that he looks down at me, and jerk my head towards the ocean.
“Now?”
I nod.
He grins and stands, holding a hand out to help me up. We move slowly away from the group huddled around the fire, so that no one notices us leaving. Then, as soon as it’s safe, Knight turns and runs towards the water, throwing off his shirt with one smooth move. He runs into the waves, and they break against his chest, giving me a great view in the moonlight. He dives under.
I throw my shirt to the side and run into the ocean. He appears in front of me and lifts me up in the waves and carries me out further as they crash against us. My skin is still warm from the fire so the waves are shocking in the cool night air. It’s August and soon it will be September and it won’t be swimmable. Some people wouldn’t ever find the Cali beaches swimmable, but lifeguards have their own code of what should and shouldn’t be done in the water.
Knight pulls me up in his arms and I push off against his shoulders as another waves hits along my back and crashes over us. Feels so good. He brings me back down once we get to the rolling part of the water and I rest on his chest and look out to the horizon.
The water is nearly black and the moon reflects far out on the waves. The sky is cloudless, dark, and full of stars.
I’ve been in therapy over a month, and while I can’t say things are getting easier, they are definitely getting clearer, and I wish I had gone sooner.
It still hurts sometimes with Knight, when I want to love him but I just can’t take the pain in my head long enough to say it.
He turns to me with a look that says he’s going to kiss me, and I smile and look up into his in a way that says I want him to.
He comes forward, closer, closer, till his lips are right next to mine but not touching them. The wait is unbearable, but I don’t close the gap. I just wait, with the slightest distance of night air between us, and feel his breath. He knows I love it when he teases.
He closes the gap, and warmth builds within me, the way it always does when the man I love touches me. My shrink assures me this is right, and though I’m not ready for sex yet, I know one day I will be. Honestly I wasn’t ready for sex before William, so it’s going to take time for me to square off with that. All I know is that when Knight touches me, like he is now, slowly, achingly, his hand gliding down my leg, over my knee, igniting my nerves and my heart at the same time, I hope I’m ready soon.
“Love you princess,” he murmurs against my lips.
“I love you too.”
“That’s never going to get old,” he says. “Don’t ever stop saying that.”
I nod and wrap my arms around him, just wanting to be close. I can feel his heart beating against mine, louder than the waves crashing in the distance. There’s really something to be said for being alive. Being wholly alive, and allowing yourself to be human and imperfect and lovable.
It’s what makes life worthwhile. That sacrifice we make when we love someone. That risk we take when we give our hearts to someone mortal, knowing in the end, we have to lose them.
But it’s worth it. When runs his hands down my back and looks at me with love in his eyes, I know it is.
So it’s a good thing that when the season ends we’ll be going to the same school. It’s a good thing I transferred, and my shrink will be able to see me through the school counseling center. For free.
I guess I got my happy ending after all. And Knight did too.
He locks his mouth to mine and circles me tightly with his arms. I know what’s coming and I lock my legs around him and take a deep breath. He jumps up a bit, then takes us down, down into the dark water.
Where kissing him is warm, intense, and risky. Where the sound and feel of his mouth against mine is magnified a hundred times, and I can feel my heart beating against the pressure of my bated breath. Where we move with the ocean as his hands brush along me smoothly, like he’s part of the water and I am too.
We come up for air, just long enough to feel the whip of the cold ocean breeze on our faces and in our lungs, and then he takes me under again, this time deeper.
It wouldn’t be great for some people. They could drown, or hate the coldness and wetness around them, and the solid silence of the ocean floor. But some of us were just meant to kiss underwater.
For some of us, it’s better there.
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