The Edge of Always(103)

He steps up closer to me and cups my elbows in his hands. Instantly, I feel the need to back away from him, but I’m frozen in the same spot, barely able to move anything other than my eyes.

“I mean it,” he says, lowering his voice to a desperate whisper. “I’ve wanted you since seventh grade.”

There’s that punch to the gut again.

Finally, I manage to back away from him. “No. No.” I shake my head back and forth, trying to make sense of this. “Are you drunk, Damon? Or strung out? Something’s wrong with you.” My arms come uncrossed and I put up my hands. “We need to go find Natalie. I won’t say anything to her about what you said because you won’t remember it in the morning, but we really do need to go. Now.”

I start to walk toward the now closed metal door, but feel Damon’s hand collapse around my bicep and he turns me around. My breath catches and that suspicious feeling I had about him earlier comes back full-force, completely reversing the years I’ve known him and have trusted him. He glares at me with eyes more feral than before, but manages to retain a sort of eerie softness in them, too.

“I’m not drunk and I haven’t done any coke since last week.”

The fact that he does coke at all is more than enough to make it impossible to ever be attracted to him, but he’s always been one of my closest friends and so I’ve always overlooked his drug use. But he’s telling the truth right now and being such a close friend for so long is what allows me to know this.

For the first time, I wish he was strung out because then we really could forget this ever happened.

I look down at his fingers clamped around my arm and finally notice how much pressure he’s applying and it scares me.

“Let go of my arm, Damon, please.”

Instead of loosening, I feel his fingers tighten and I try to pull away. He jerks me towards him and before I can react, he crushes his mouth over mine, his free hand wraps around the back of my neck forcing my head still. He tries to stick his tongue in my mouth, but I manage to rear my head back just enough to butt my forehead into his. It stuns him—and me—and instinctively he lets go of my body.

“Cam! Wait!” I hear him yelling out to me as I run away and throw open the metal door.

I hear his fierce footsteps moving after mine as he races down the loud metal stairs behind me, but I lose him once I make it back into the cage elevator, slam the fence gate closed and pound hard once on the Main button. The same ogre who let us in the club is standing at the door when I rush past him, having to partially shove him out of my way to get outside.

“Take it easy, babe!” he shouts as I run down the sidewalk and away from the warehouse.

I walk as far as the Shell station and call a cab to pick me up.





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Song of the Fireflies



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Chapter One


Elias


They say you never forget your first love, and I have to say that they were right. I met the girl of my dreams when we were both still fans of treehouses and dirt cakes—she made the best dirt cakes in Georgia—and today, seventeen years later, I still see her smile in everything good

We tried it once, being together, but it didn’t quite work out how I had hoped. Bray’s life has always been… complicated. Mine, well, I guess the same can be said for me, but as much as she and I are alike, there are just as many things that makes us so very different.

I never thought a relationship with her, other than being the best of friends—sometimes with benefits—could ever work. Neither did she. I guess in the beginning, we were both right. But by the end—and damn, the end sure as hell blindsided us—we were proven wrong. Our love for each other, and I admit a few dozen mistakes along the way are what led us here to this moment, holed up in the back of a convenience store with cops surrounding the building

But… wait let me start from the beginning





Fourth of July—Seventeen Years Ago…

The kind of crush a nine-year-old boy has on an eight-year-old girl is almost always innocent. And cruel. The first time I saw Brayelle Bates flitting toward me through the wide-open field by Mr. Paron’s pond, she was marked my victim. She wore a white sun dress and a pair of flip-flops with little purple flowers made of fabric sewn to the tops. Her long, dark hair had been pulled neatly into ponytails on each side of her head and tied with purple ribbons. I loved her. OK, so I didn’t really ‘love’ her, but she sure was pretty So, naturally I gave her a hard time.

“What’s that on your face?” I asked as she started to walk by.

She stopped and crossed her arms and looked down at me sitting on my blanket beside my mother, pursing her lips at me disapprovingly “There’s nothing on my face,” she said with a smirk

“Yes there is.” I pointed up at her. “Right there. It’s really gross.”

Instinctively, she reached up and began touching her face all over with her fingertips “Well, what is it? What does it look like?”

“It’s everywhere. And I told you it’s gross, that’s what it looks like.”

She propped both hands on her hips and chewed on the inside of her mouth “You’re lying.”