by LP Tvorik
“I don’t think he’d do that, Al,” Nate said, the words low and calming. They washed like a warm breeze over my frazzled nerves, and my body reacted on its own. My breath calmed, my heart slowed, and the tremor of panic that gripped my muscles eased. My mind, however, knew better than my stupid body.
“You don’t know that. You don’t even know him,” I moaned, rubbing my hands over my face. “He’s a big guy, Nate, and Freddy’s been tormenting him for years.”
“Tom wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Nate said, again so slow and easy even my soul went the way of my body, soothed by the gentle caress of his voice.
“You don’t know that,” I said, but my own voice was limpid and drained— not even an ounce of fight. I wanted to believe he was right. So badly.
“Sure I do.” He sat up straight, clasping his hands in his lap as he leaned forward, studying the creek. “Me and Tom go way back, Alex. We took shop together freshman year. We’re friends.”
I lowered my hands from my face. Tom had taken shop for half a year in a well-intentioned but ill-fated attempt to see if he would handle hands-on learning better than classroom skills. He’d never mentioned Nate to me, which didn’t surprise me. He didn’t tell me about all his friends. What surprised me was that Nate hadn’t told me. He knew Tom was my brother.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, sitting up so I could read him better in the darkness.
He shrugged one shoulder, glancing at me before looking back at the water. When he spoke, there was a tinge of guilt in his voice. “I knew if I told you, you’d ask me not to talk to him,” he said. “I know that’s fucked up, I just…” he trailed off, shaking his head. “I like Tom. He’s a good guy. He needs friends who can look out for him. I figured it’d be easier to keep it secret than to convince you it was okay.”
I opened my mouth to tell him that was stupid, but clapped it right back shut, because it wasn’t stupid. He was dead on. I would have pushed back on it. Hard.
“So you’re secret friends with my brother,” I stated flatly, trying not to be annoyed. “How many secret friends have you got?”
His lips quirked up in a smile I could barely make out in the darkness. “Just the two of you.”
Most of Nate’s secrets were packed down so deep you’d need a map and a shovel to excavate them. The core of him, back then, was a suppurating, burning mass of secrets and pain, buried so deep between bravado and responsibility and stubborn strength you’d never even know it was there.
Sometimes, though, a little snippet of truth found its way to the crust. I’d tap the surface and just enough honesty would slip out to convince me I’d unearthed it all. That I knew exactly who he was.
I chewed my lip, studying the side of his face as puzzle pieces slowly fell into place.
“Hey, Nate?”
“Yeah?”
“Did Tom beat up Freddy?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
He set his jaw and didn’t answer, but he also didn’t pull away when I reached out and tugged his hand into my lap. I brushed my thumb over the raw skin on his knuckles and leaned into him, resting my head on his shoulder.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I said. “Freddy will tell his dad, eventually.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I’ll tell the vice principal what happened, tomorrow. I just wanted a chance to talk to you, first. Once they find out they’ll suspend me, and once they suspend me, my… I won’t be coming around here for a few nights. I didn’t want you sitting out here all pissed off without being here to defend myself.”
My heart clenched in my chest. “Why the hell did you do it?” I asked.
“I told you, I like Tom,” he said, tipping his head so it rested on mine. It was a platonic gesture. We’d sat like this a thousand times. For some reason, though, it felt different that night. The warm, comfortable energy that always wove itself around us had come alive. Fueled by the little drop of truth, it sparked and danced in the air, prickling my skin wherever we touched.
“That’s it?” I asked, pulling away and looking up at him. Who needed the stars when I had his eyes glinting at me like that in the darkness? “You’re gonna get in so much trouble,” I said with a groan, thumping my forehead against his shoulder before pulling back and glaring at him.
“It’s not a big deal, Alex,” he said. “I get in fights all the time, you know that. Only difference is that this time I got to fight for you. Freddy and his little minions aren’t gonna fuck with Tom anymore, and I don’t have to worry about you getting your little ass handed to you in a quest for justice.”
God, he made me so mad.
I scowled up at him, watching the hard lines of his face ease into a cocky grin. He knew he was pissing me off and he loved it.
“I would have been fine,” I growled through gritted teeth, nevermind that I was still holding his hand, cradling it in my lap like it was mine to hold and protect and cherish. And why was that so crazy? I could love him and want to hit him at the same time, couldn’t I?
“You would’ve gotten yourself into trouble,” he said, and I saw the same fierce mixture of love and annoyance in his eyes that coursed through my veins.
“You’re a chauvinist,” I sneered up at him, leaning closer and injecting as much vitriol into the words as I could muster.
“I wouldn’t have to be if you weren’t such an idiot,” he hissed back, bending to meet my fury until we found ourselves nose to nose in the darkness.
That energy — so familiar and yet so foreign in its intensity — crackled in the scant centimeters of air between us. I felt more than saw Nate’s free hand shift, rising up to hover just beside my face. Each tiny hair on my body rose, as if pulled by a magnet toward his touch. His eyes were locked on mine, the whites glistening in the dim light, and his unspoken question roared with the rush of blood in my ears.
He gave me a choice, in that moment. In those long, tense seconds I stood before a fork in the road. Down one path lay a stable, happy life— contentment and a long to-do list full of check marks. College, check. Career, check. White wedding, check. Babies, check. PTA meetings, soccer practice, grandbabies, world travel, check check check check. Dappled sunshine played on the packed dirt of that path and birds chirped cheerfully in the trees that lined its long, straight length.
Then there was the second path— dark and narrow, winding its way through dense foliage that captured the moonlight, holding it hostage before it had a chance to hit the ground. Lightning and thunder cracked over the second path, and the ground was treacherous and muddy. It was beautiful and wild and dangerous. It sang to me— a sad and powerful song that skipped straight past my ears and braided itself with my spine, sending shocks of pure, electric passion straight to the core of me. I couldn’t see the future down that path, but as I stared at the darkness my list of goals and to-dos fluttered to the ground beside me, forgotten.
I had a choice. He gave me a choice. So I suppose everything that came after was, in a sense, my fault. I could have gone down that first path. I could have lived the rest of my life in the light, with the reins grasped tight in my hands and both feet planted firmly on solid ground. I could have been content.
Instead, I closed my eyes, pulled in a breath that smelled like soap, sweat, and comfort, and surrendered myself to the darkness. At the time I could not even have fathomed what that darkness contained. I could not have foreseen the agony I would encounter on that path, nor could I comprehend the sheer magnitude of the passion and devotion that would carry me to its end.
It was momentous. It was pivotal. My whole life came to a screeching halt in that split second when his hand came to rest against the side of my face and his lips brushed over mine.
My first kiss.
Even knowing what came next— even knowing what wrenching, treacherous existence that kiss begat— I would do it again. A th
ousand times over, I would go back to that moment and let him kiss me— let him drag me down the dark and winding path.
See, the first path might be sunny and simple. The first path might make sense. But the second path? That’s where he is and that’s where he’ll always be— strong and sure in the chaos, unflinching, matching every evil with ferocious good and every pain with steady comfort. I’d weather every storm, endure every agony, and live every moment of my life in darkness just for the warmth of his hand in mine and the feel of him standing beside me.
I guess that’s love.
Chapter seven
nate
Maybe it was just my imagination— bewildered delight leaking into my physical senses— but she tasted sweet.
She smelled the same as she always did. Sweat and dirt overlayed on the crisp remnants of the perfume she wore during the day. Her skin had the same perfect, silky texture that it always had when we touched, but it felt warmer. More electric.
I wanted to consume her. I wanted to gather up every ounce of what she was and claim it as my own until the end of time. I wanted to pull her so close there wasn’t a breath of air between us. I wanted to leave my mark on her so everyone would know— she’s mine.
But this was Alex. Strong Alex. Sweet Alex. Fierce Alex. Innocent Alex.
So, instead, I cupped the soft, warm curve of her cheek in my palm and hovered a hair’s breadth away. The last thing I wanted was for the moment to end before it began, but I had to give her the chance. I had to give her a choice. So I waited with baited breath, and when she surrendered I felt it down to my toes. She didn’t move a muscle, but the air between us shifted, from a tense, crackling energy to a magnetic pull.
Even so, I was slow. I was gentle. I was everything that, in truth and reality and every place but her arms, I am not. I brushed her lips with mine and she sucked in a breath. I felt her shock and I wondered if she shared my disbelief— not that it was happening but that it had taken this goddamn long. Because, now that we were here, I found it hard to imagine a world in which we’d ever been elsewhere.
Her brisk inhalation seemed to draw me in, and I deepened the kiss, letting my hand slip from her cheek up into her hair, pulling her closer. When her lips parted again, I let my tongue stray into her mouth. A polite intrusion, compared to what I truly wanted. An anxious, skittish part of me waited for the daytime version of my girl to show up. I was ready for her to push me away and say it went too far.
Instead, she met me halfway and explored right back. She was a little inept and a little awkward, and somehow so much better than every girl I’d ever kissed before. Because she tasted sweet. Because her fumbling foray into frenching made me smile in a way that seemed to come from the center of my chest. Her tongue didn’t know what the hell it was doing, but it was the same tongue that lashed at me when I was an idiot and rattled off the constellations in the perfect stillness of the night.
I should have stopped it when we both pulled back for air. It was her first kiss. I knew because if some other guy had kissed her she’d have told me and I’d have spent the rest of my life holding back the urge to beat him to a bloody pulp. No, this was her first. I was her first, and because of that I should have let it rest. I should have let it sit and simmer and soak in that I’d stolen that aspect of her innocence. I should have held her hand while I walked her home and hugged her goodbye and told her thank you.
I should have been a gentleman.
But I was neither gentle nor a man. I was a mean, ill-mannered kid. A boy, who finally had his hands and his mouth on the girl he had loved for as long as he could remember.
I was not a gentleman.
When we pulled away to breathe, I didn’t move off the rock and give her distance. I pulled my right hand from her hair, my left hand from her grip, and slipped both beneath her, twisting as I lifted, pulling her in my lap.
My ribs twinged from Tim’s fists, my hands hurt from Freddy’s stupid face, and my head ached from hunger, but I shut out the little annoyances. I was hungry and sore every day of my life. This was new. This was special. This deserved my undivided attention.
You know that phrase ‘like putty in my hands?’ I feel sorry for the guy who coined it because he was missing out. Alex wasn’t putty. She wasn’t some inanimate object for me to shape and mold. She was a living, breathing creature who conformed to me of her own free will. She fit against me so naturally it didn’t matter that she didn’t know what she was doing and I couldn’t think my way around my need for her. She just fit— against my body and into my life— perfectly.
Her arms went around my neck, her chest pressing against mine as she pulled herself to me, raising her face. She didn’t speak but she begged for more with those pink lips— swollen and parted in anticipation— and her sweet blue eyes which fluttered closed— entirely trusting.
I kissed her again, sealing my mouth over hers as if, through that contact alone, I could pull every ounce of good out of her body and into mine. I kept my left hand on the small of her back, holding her against me, but I let the right roam. I brushed my fingertips over her cheek once more, plowed my hand through the tangled mess of her hair, and followed the length of her spine through her shirt. Daytime Alex probably would have slapped me when I squeezed her ass, but this one just giggled against my mouth and shifted in my lap.
Her hands were busy, too, although they stayed safely away from the one part of me that most needed her attention. It felt like she was trying to touch every inch of me that she could reach. Her fingers combed through my hair, raked down my back, and clung to my waist with the same desperation I felt as I explored every inch of her mouth, drinking in the sweet, perfect taste of her.
Everything about that kiss was familiar. It doesn’t make much sense, because it was her first kiss and my first time kissing anyone I really cared about. It should’ve been earth shattering and novel, but it felt more like a release of tension. Like we were magnets, held apart for lifetimes, and in that moment we finally snapped back together like the universe intended.
Even when Alex stopped the kiss, we didn’t part. Neither of us wanted to. She sat there in my lap, her arms once more linked around my neck, her face scant inches from mine. I held her, my hands plastered against the small of her back. I don’t know when they found their way beneath the hem of her shirt, but there they were, skin on skin, and she didn’t seem to mind.
Our eyes locked in the darkness, and Alex cocked her head slightly and licked her lips.
“Thanks,” she whispered, like I’d done her some kind of favor.
I cleared my throat. “Anything for you,” I told her, hoping she’d think I was making some kind of joke. I wasn’t quite ready for her to know the truth— that I truly would do anything for her. Die, kill, lie, kiss, steal, fight… leave. Whatever she needed, I was hers. But we were kids, and the intensity of what I felt would probably freak her out, so I just smirked like everything was a joke. “It was a burden, though. Next time, try to ask a little less of me, okay?”
Alex scowled, smacking me in the back of the head and immediately erasing the effect by dropping a gentle kiss on my cheek. “You’re a jerk,” she murmured.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” I returned. “Now get off me before my legs fall asleep. I gotta walk you home so I can get back.”
“I’ve told you a billion times, you don’t have to walk me home,” Alex said, sliding off me and standing with her hands on her hips. I followed, thanking whatever gods might be listening that it was dark enough she couldn’t see how ready my body was to finish our little escapade. Walking was… let’s say difficult.
“And I’ve told you a billion times, I don’t give a shit,” I said, following her across the creek and onto the game trail we both knew by heart. We’d walked it so many times it was beaten down to the point that we could walk abreast. As I drew even with her, Alex reached out and took my hand. W
e’d held hands before, but that night it felt heavier. Like we were signing our names at the bottom of a contract we’d drawn up when we kissed. I clasped her hand in mine and swore to myself I’d never let go.
We walked in silence for a while, enjoying the still night air. You don’t know this if you haven’t spent much time in the woods, but it’s quieter on darker nights. It’s not that there isn’t movement. You still have crickets chirping and frogs croaking and owls rustling the branches overhead. It’s just a little more subdued. Like the dark is a blanket, resting over everything, smothering it.
“So,” Alex said, as we drew near to the edge of the treeline. I could see the lights of her neighborhood through the trees and, as it always did, my stomach began to churn at the thought of parting with her. I never really knew when I’d see her again. It could be less than a day. It could be a week. Everything depended on the place I lived, and that was chaos— by definition unpredictable.
“So…?” I implored. She’d trailed off, her footsteps slowing, drawing us to a halt at the woodline.
“So we should probably talk about what just happened,” she said, turning to face me but keeping hold of my hand.
“Should we?” I asked. “I thought you enjoyed it.”
“I did,” she said quickly.
“Me too. You wanna do it again sometime?”
“Well yeah.” She nodded, but still looked uneasy.
“So what’s the problem?” The anxiety on her face took a pin to my inflated heart, and I felt it begin to collapse.
“What about our deal?” she asked. She was facing me, but she turned her head and stared at her house, worry etching deep lines in her forehead.
“Hey,” I whispered, taking her chin in my free hand and turning her face toward me. There were tears in her eyes, and I hated that I’d caused them. “You worried about your dad?”