Andrew Kelly

Painful, the way his heart beat at a clip when he heard her on the farmhouse stairs, the way his breaths went unsteady, his head electric. He’d blink up at her from the wide old willow outside her window and think she looked just like spring was meant to look, her hair the color of rusted orchids, pink peonies in her cheeks, her smile a bold dahlia red.

“You always wait up for me.”

The place where they’d grown, even if what they’d grown into were strangers.

And yet, for years, he’d clung to her as tightly as he could. And now, at the end of all things, he didn’t know how to let her go.

He’d been haunted by the thought of her for the last five years. He saw her when he slept. When he woke. In the black of night and the bitter day. And now she was back, and she was haunting him still.

He wanted to find out if her mouth still tasted the same after all these years. He wanted to undo every awful thing he’d done. He wanted to go back to last night—to the bullfrog quiet and her eyes dark with implication—and crawl into bed beside her.

But it was too late.

A marble boy, mired in his own personal mausoleum. Her starved god. Her secret saint. Her killer.

“I thought maybe I could take some of the weight for you. I thought that, in spite of everything, we could kick our way out of this together. But it’s too heavy, Peter. You’re too heavy. You’re drowning me.”

But he was already looking, transfixed by the way the world quivered at her fingertips. Her every move tugged at the seams of the sky, dragging the building thunderhead behind her like a mantle. She was a live wire, crackling with energy.

“I wanted you to love me,” she admitted. “But I don’t think you know what that is.”