Page 131 of The Storm

I grab my keys, and I’m out the door.

FORTY-THREE

NICK

I jerk out of sleep.My eyes fly open, and I look around blearily. I’m on my couch, where I clearly dozed off at some point.

One could probably say I have too much on my plate. Three clients. Culinary school applications. Business plans. Endless paperwork.

Then again, not having all that won’t work. I need the distraction, even if it means I haven’t gotten a full night of sleep in years.

I sit up and rub my face.

It takes me a moment to realize that the pounding noise isn’t because my fucking neighbors have started redecorating. No, the increasingly unhinged pounding is coming from my front door.

I stomp to my hallway and yank it open.

And then I clamp my mouth shut when I see who it is.

Saying he’s pissed feels like a massive understatement. I’m pretty sure there’s a fifty-fifty chance of me getting murdered, and if that happens, I’ll be the first to tell you I deserve it.

Blue shoves his phone in my face.

“Did you do this?”

I glance at the email on the screen. “Yes.”

I can’t do this again. I can’t be near him. There’s temptation and then there’s whatever this irresistible pull Blue has always had on me is. I can already feel it. This instinctive shift inside me when he’s near. I can already map out how it will happen.

In relatively small, feels-innocent-at-first steps.

My attention going to him against my will. Eyes tracking him automatically. Being aware of where he is, what he’s doing, whether he’s upset, whether he’s smiling. Whether he’s looking at me.

And God help me when hedoeslook at me. It will feel like stepping too close to the edge of a high cliff.

Six years should have killed this.

It should have been buried.

Gone and forgotten.

Instead, it’s still alive somewhere. Alive and vicious and humiliatingly eager to ruin me.

Because it’s still Blue.

Still him.

Still the boy who used to sneak out of the house at dawn to go out on the bay with me. The boy I spent countless hours sitting on the roof with. Still the boy who used to laugh with his whole body. The boy who used to fall asleep in my arms, feet tangled with mine like it was the most natural thing in the world.

He’s still the boy I loved so deeply that when all was said and done, I was nothing but broken shards.

He’s not the boy I love anymore.

He’s the man I survived.

I can’t do this again. I don’t want this. Not after everything.

There’s a wall between us. I built it. Put it up brick by brick. It’s crucial that it stays intact.