I Should Die

each other. “I was so afraid, Kate. I thought I would never see you again. That I would be bound for eternity to Violette and never be able to come back to you. That we would always be separated by a distance I couldn’t cross.”
    My words were like a river, flowing through my lips before wholly forming in my mind. “I missed you. I needed you. I was afraid you were gone.” I shifted my hands from the small of his back to his head, lacing my fingers through his hair and drawing him toward me. Pressing my lips to his, I kissed him while tears tripped down my cheeks and onto our mouths. I tasted salt as our kiss deepened.
    It was the kiss I hadn’t dared to dream of the past few nights. The kiss of finding each other again. Starting soft and growing more passionate, flooding my senses with the body of my love. His soft lips and warm mouth searching, exploring, finding me once again. His hands in my hair and his chest pressed hard against mine. The sound of his staggered breathing as his need for me became tangible through every inch of our touching skin. It felt like we were on the verge of consuming each other, body and spirit. That if we kept pushing toward each other we would actually mesh. Melt into one person.
    Then I felt him flinch and I opened my eyes.
    And though it was still Vincent looking out at me through the soft brown eyes, Jules was there too. I pulled back against my will, fighting my urge to ignore the facts and drown myself in the fiction. Running my fingers through his hair one last time, I disentangled myself from him and watched as a tremor shook Jules’s body. Suddenly there was only one boy looking at me. And it wasn’t affection in his eyes. It was pain.
    I grabbed his hands and blurted, “I’m so sorry, Jules. I didn’t mean to . . . I forgot who you . . .”
    Jules pulled his hands from mine, and pressed his palms hard against his eyes. Breathing deeply, he leaned toward me, folding his arms across his chest. “Stop while you’re still ahead, Kate, and I can take it as a compliment.” He attempted to rearrange his face into a carefree smile.
    “No, really, Vince. You can use me as your sex puppet anytime, as long as it’s with Kate,” he joked. My cheeks burned red with shame. I felt like crying but was too horrified to do anything but sit and watch Jules rise from the couch. He thrust his hands into his pockets and turned away from me hiding his distress. “Seriously, man . . . stop apologizing,” he said to the air. Crossing the room, he leaned on the windowsill and stared out through the glass.
    I felt like I had parachuted out of a burning plane into an alien landscape: I had no points of reference—not even a clue which direction to walk in order to reach civilization.
    After a few silent moments, Jules turned, and his face looked normal again. He walked up to me and ran a finger along my jawline from my ear to my chin, making me shudder. “I need to go,” he said softly. “But I don’t want you to worry about this. As far as I’m concerned, it’s forgotten. I’m glad I was here to help you two reconnect. You both mean everything to me.”
    But as he left, his voice became gruff. “Where do you think I’m going?” he answered Vincent. “If it’s not Guiliana, it’ll be Francesca. Or Brooke. What do you care? You just stay here and make sure she’s okay.” And then the door shut and Jules was gone.

THIRTEEN
    “VINCENT?” I CALLED, UNSURE IF HE HAD FOLLOWED Jules down the stairs.
    I’m here, Kate , came his words.
    I put my head in my hands. “Okay, that was awful.”
    Was it?
    “I mean not awful in the oh-my-God-it-was-amazing-to-feel-like-I-was-touching-you way, but I . . . I couldn’t help taking it further. It seemed like it was you.”
    It was me. It was also unfortunately Jules.
    “I didn’t mean to kiss him.” I curled up into a ball on the couch, wrapping my arms around my knees. I wished I could rewind time by fifteen minutes and do a retake of the whole possessed kissing scene.
    You meant to kiss me.
    “Yes. You, not Jules. Oh my God, I practically mauled him.”
    He didn’t seem to mind much. And there is the fact that it stopped when it did.
    I held my fingers to my burning cheeks to cool them down.
    “I am not doing that again.”
    I think that’s probably a good decision.
    “But then how can we . . .”
    Don’t worry, mon ange . Even though that wasn’t a huge success . . .
    “‘Total fail’ is more