Faster We Burn

you doing?” Damn, he was onto me. Not that I was being very subtle.
    “Watching you lose a bet, best friend.” I sat back down and looked at him.
    “No, you’re trying to distract me, but you can’t do that forever. I have to deal with what I’ve done some time.” He clenched his mouth shut and looked away from me.
    “What do you mean, what you’ve done? How is this your fault?”
    He started laughing and got up from the couch, going to his bedroom. I followed him. What the hell?
    “What are you talking about?” I leaned in the doorway as he pulled out a cigarette and lighter. I guessed quitting was out of the question at the moment, not that I blamed him. He tried to light it, but his hands were too shaky.
    “Let me do it.” I hated myself for furthering his addiction to the cancer stick, but he was in such rough shape I figured one more smoke wasn’t going to do him in.
    I lit it and he inhaled, closing his eyes.
    “What have you done, Stryker?” I slipped the lighter into my pocket. If he couldn’t light them, he couldn’t smoke them.
    He shook his head and blew out a cloud of smoke over his shoulder so it didn’t go in my face.
    “I tried to tell you so many times, and then I couldn’t…and then you told me you loved me, and I still tried, because you deserved the truth, and then I didn’t want to, because I didn’t want to wreck everything. Fuck, I just wrecked everything.” He sat down on his bed and tore the hand not holding the cigarette through his hair.
    “Stryker, you’re scaring me,” I said, because it was true. “Just tell me what happened and I can help you.” I crossed the room and sat next to him, touching his shoulder.
    “No!” He said diving away from me and getting to his feet. “You can’t do that. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve your compassion. I never did and I never will.” I followed him as he stormed back into the living room.
    “Talk to me, Stryker. Just talk to me,” I said in my calmest voice. I refused to think anything, or make any conclusions until I heard them come from him.
    He sucked in another puff from the cigarette.
    “And tell you what? That I had sex with Ric? That she showed up drunk last night and I told her that I’d hurt her if she told you about us, and now today she’s dead?” I couldn’t move. He crossed the room and stood right in front of me. “Is that what you wanted to fucking hear?!” he yelled.
    The air was too thick to breathe; it wouldn’t go into my lungs.
    “Oh, God,” he said, putting his face in his hands and dropping the cigarette. I was able to snap out of my momentary shock to stomp it out before it set the apartment on fire.
    “Stryker,” I said, taking his hands and trying to pull them away from his face, and also trying not to freak out about what he’d just told me. He raised his head, his eyes tear-streaked and hopeless.
    “It. Doesn’t. Matter.”
    “How can you say that? She’s dead and it’s my fault. And I hurt you. How can you say that it doesn’t matter? It matters more than anything.”
    I held his hands and tried to find the right words.
    “Because I love you.”
    “How can you say that?”
    It was easy. Simple. As clear and beautiful as a cloudless summer sky.
    “Because it’s true. It’s true whether you slept with Ric, or whether you got drunk and said something you didn’t mean, or if you smoke too much, or never pick up your socks, or don’t have any money. Love doesn’t come and go. It’s for always.”
    He tried to shake his head, but I wouldn’t stop looking at him. I leaned and put my forehead to his.
    “You and me. No space. Always,” I whispered to his lips. He opened his eyes and finally saw me. Saw that I wasn’t going anywhere.
    “I love you so much, sweetheart. So much that sometimes I can’t breathe. I can’t think. You’re all I’ve ever wanted, even before I knew I wanted it. I don’t deserve you, Katherine.”
    No, it was really the other way around, but I decided that I’d kiss him instead of arguing. Kissing was always better than arguing.
    It was a slow kiss, a burning kiss. The kind of kiss that promised of forever. I wrapped my arms around him and kissed the first and last boy with a lip ring I was ever going to love.

 
     
    Chapter Twenty-eight
     
     
    Stryker
     
    I let her kiss me, and she let me kiss her back as I cried, bitter tears and regret tears and happy tears. There were so many emotions flooding my mind that I was