Confess(3)

“Tell me something about yourself that no one else knows.” His voice is laced with his own tears as he looks down at me. “Something I can keep for myself.”

He asks this of me every day and every day I tell him something I’ve never said out loud before. I think it comforts him, knowing things about me that no one else will ever know. I close my eyes and think while his hands continue to run across all the areas of my skin he can reach.

“I’ve never told anyone what goes through my head when I fall asleep at night.”

His hand pauses on my shoulder. “What goes through your head?”

I open my eyes and look back into his. “I think about all the people I wish could die instead of you.”

He doesn’t respond at first, but eventually his hand resumes its movements, tracing down my arm until he reaches my fingers. He slides his hand over mine. “I bet you don’t get very far.”

I force a soft smile and shake my head. “I do, though. I get really far. Sometimes I say every name I know, so I start saying names of people I’ve never met in person before. I even make up names sometimes.”

Adam knows I don’t mean what I’m saying, but it makes him feel good to hear it. His thumb swipes away tears from my cheek and it makes me angry that I couldn’t even wait a whole ten minutes before crying.

“I’m sorry, Adam. I tried really hard not to cry.”

His eyes grow soft with his response. “If you would have walked out of this room today without crying, it would have devastated me.”

I stop fighting it with those words. I fist his shirt in my hands and begin to sob against his chest while he holds me. Through my tears, I try to listen to his heart, wanting to curse his whole body for being so unheroic.

“I love you so much.” His voice is breathless and full of fear. “I’ll love you forever. Even when I can’t.”

My tears fall harder at his words. “And I’ll love you forever. Even when I shouldn’t.”

We cling to one another as we experience a sadness so excruciating, it makes it hard to want to live beyond it. I tell him I love him because I need him to know. I tell him I love him again. I keep saying it, more times than I’ve ever said it out loud. Every time I say it, he tells me right back. We say it so much that I’m not sure who’s repeating who now, but we keep saying it, over and over, until his brother, Trey, touches my arm and tells me it’s time to go.

We’re still saying it as we kiss for the last time.

We’re still saying it as we hold on to each other.

We’re still saying it as we kiss for the last time again.

I’m still saying it . . .





CHAPTER ONE



Auburn

I squirm in my chair as soon as he tells me his hourly rate. There’s no way I can afford this with my income.

“Do you work on a sliding-scale basis?” I ask him.

The wrinkles around his mouth become more prominent as he attempts to keep from frowning. He folds his arms over the mahogany desk and clasps his hands together, pressing the pads of his thumbs against one other.

“Auburn, what you’re asking me to do is going to cost money.”

No shit.

He leans back in his chair, pulling his hands to his chest and resting them on his stomach. “Lawyers are like weddings. You get what you pay for.”

I fail to tell him what a horrible analogy that is. Instead, I glance down at the business card in my hand. He came highly recommended and I knew it was going to be expensive, but I had no idea it would be this expensive. I’ll need a second job. Maybe even a third one. Actually, I’m going to have to rob a damn bank.

“And there’s no guarantee the judge will rule in my favor?”

“The only promise I can make is that I’ll do everything I can to ensure the judge does rule in your favor. According to the paperwork that was filed back in Portland, you’ve put yourself in a tough spot. This will take time.”

“All I have is time,” I mumble. “I’ll be back as soon as I get my first paycheck.”

He has me set up an appointment through his secretary and then sends me on my way, back out into the Texas heat.

I’ve been living here all of three weeks and so far it’s everything I thought it would be: hot, humid, and lonely.

I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and assumed I would spend the rest of my life there. I visited Texas once when I was fifteen and although that trip wasn’t a pleasant one, I wouldn’t take back a single second of it. Unlike now, when I’d do anything to get back to Portland.