An Optimist's Guide to Heartbreak (Heartsong #1)(74)

“Fuck,” he repeats at my silent consent, lifting his hand all the way up my thigh until his fingers are pushing my silk panties to the side. When he comes in contact with the hot pool of desire drenching the fabric, he physically reacts to it. His face twists with lust, his eyebrows pinching together, lips parting against mine as he groans, “Goddamn. You’re soaked for me.”

His fingertips tease me gently until one slips inside, causing me to gasp and nearly collapse.

“I got you,” he pants, “I got you.” Cal slides a finger in and out of me, holding me up by the waist with his other hand as I shamelessly writhe against him. “Does that feel good?”

When he rubs my clit with the underside of his palm, I feel like I might actually black out. Somehow, I manage to moan out a tapered, “Yes.”

“No one’s ever touched you like this before?”

“No.”

“Just me?”

All I can do is nod, stabbing my bottom lip with my teeth.

“Say it,” he orders, grit in his throat.

I moan again, falling apart. “Just you.”

“Jesus, Lucy…” He kisses me, deeply, messily, the slippery sound of him fingering me echoing through the quiet night. Pulling away to rasp against my lips, he says, “I’m a split-fucking-second away from taking you right here.”

Reality punctures me. My heart kicks up speed, knowing I need to clear my head long enough to tell him the truth. “Cal…before we do this, I – I have to tell you—”

“You don’t.”

“Please,” I practically cry. “I have to.”

“Unless you’re telling me no, there’s literally nothing you can say that will keep me from fucking you senseless tonight.”

He dives back into me, trailing wet kisses along my neck, pumping his finger in and out of me, and it’s then that I blurt out, “I’m dying.”

Just like that, he freezes.

His finger stills inside of me.

A ghastly, eerie quiet replaces the sound of our desire, and I squeeze my eyes shut, horrified by the words that just spilled out of me.

I can’t believe I said that.

I can’t believe I said it like that.

A few more beats of excruciating silence pass between us as Cal pulls his hand away and inches back, the loss of him pinging my eyelids back open.

We stare at each other.

We stare, chests heaving, gazes locked.

And then I watch him go pale before my eyes.

Completely ashen.

He makes a sound like he’s choking, and I swear he’s dying right along with me.

“I – I have a congenital heart defect,” I quickly explain off his shell-shock. “It’s called Tetralogy of Fallot—or TOF. I was born with it, and…there’s no cure. I’m okay, for now, but my heart has an expiration date, and it’s going to be a lot sooner than yours. I can’t…I don’t want to hurt you, Cal.” I start to cry, helplessly, suffocating on every word. Fat tears roll down my cheeks like sad, falling raindrops. “I’ve been trying to avoid this because you’ve already lost so much.”

His eyes are glazed over, unblinking. Cal just stares at me, shaking his head a little, like he’s trying to process everything I said—or, maybe he didn’t hear a word of it.

All he heard was:

I’m dying.

A sound like heartbreak is an avalanche to my ears.

It’s one of those ugly sounds. The kind that pours out of someone who just witnessed something horrible. It’s involuntary, like smiling or breathing—only, there’s no dignity in it.

When rivulets of tears pool along my upper lip, I lick them away with my tongue, tasting the salt.

That sound poured out of me.

His heartbreak is my heartbreak.

“Cal…please, say something,” I beg, my knees bouncing beneath me as I hug myself from the sting in the air.

He doesn’t. He says nothing.

All he does is look away and grip his hair with both hands, fisting it as he takes another step back. Then another. And another.

When he glances at me one last time, his expression is tortured, dazed.

Riddled with disbelief.

Then, before I can say another word, he storms away.

He leaves me halfway collapsed against the trellis until I actually collapse. I fall to my knees in the grit and dirt, landing in a melting patch of snow, rubble and ice digging into my kneecaps. My face falls into my palms as my body shakes with sobs.

I tried so hard to shelter my heart from love. I tried to hide it, protect it, keep it safe. I buried it out of reach, too scared to let anyone hold it.

But I forgot to fireproof it.

And as everything around me burns, it cowers inside my chest, begging to be spared.





Chapter 19





I wind through the blur of dancing bodies, my vision obscured by tears. Pink dresses, teal suits, a bride in snowy white. Red and ivory bouquets. Technicolor strobe lights.

Everything might as well be gray.

There’s a film of grief over my eyes.

I’m vaguely aware of a familiar face attached to a bob of blond hair beelining toward me as I push my way through the crowd, but I pretend not to see her.

“Lucy?” Alyssa jumps in front of me, blocking my attempt to make a hasty retreat off the dance floor. “Whoa, babe, what happened?”