Page 98 of Shiver
Even as the words left my mouth, they sounded foreign to my ears. It was one thing to know you had committed such an atrocity, and another to be accused and sent away for it without facing any kind of public punishment. God forbid word get out that the prince of Pacific Timber was not only gay, but into more perverse delights of the flesh. All you were left to do then was wallow in your own guilt. Live with it every second of every day, as you carried around the burden of the most sinful crime man could commit against another, and know that the moment the one you loved lost his life, you reached the biggest high of yours.
Fate had a fucked-up sense of humor to put me and Lee in each other’s path, and yet here she was again, hand-delivering Jesse to me like a sacrificial lamb—one she knew I couldn’t resist.
Jesse blinked once, twice, and then a third time before he realized exactly what I’d said, and then he began to struggle. He twisted his upper body, trying to get his arms free of my grasp, but he was no match for my strength, and as my hands tightened, he kicked out at my legs.
“Let me go, Tor,” he shouted. “You’re fucking crazy.”
“I’m not,” I said, and shook him, trying to get him to focus. Trying to get him to stop resisting before this got out of hand. But when he continued to fight me, I took his wrists in mine, marched around him, and dragged him in front of the screens. “You need to listen—”
“I don’t want to listen,” he spat, trying to wrench his arms free. “I want you to let me go. When I think about your lies…when I think about what you’ve done? I can’t…I can’t even look at you.”
My nails dug into the tender skin of his wrists, and Jesse winced at the sting but didn’t take his eyes off mine. I would get through to him. He wouldn’t understand until I showed him. Until I told him everything. Then he would know why I’d done what I’d done. Then he’d stop fighting me.
“Look at him.” I tugged Jesse closer to the image of Lee, bare-chested and beautiful with his silver bar piercings. “Just look at him, Jesse. Isn’t he beautiful?” There was no response as I released one of Jesse’s wrists to reach out and stroke the image I was staring at. I traced my fingers down the exquisite face, so familiar to me that I knew every nuance, every blemish, and I was amazed yet again at how similar it was to Jesse’s. “This is all I had left of him until the day you walked into the den. He was a ghost who haunted me until you. But now I know why I couldn’t let him go. It wasn’t time. He wasn’t ready to go yet.”
I could feel Jesse’s pulse racing under my fingertips even as I stroked my fingers down Lee’s side, and when I reached his waist, I turned to Jesse to see him looking at me with eyes so round they almost swallowed his entire face.
My eyes blurred over as I raised one of Jesse’s hands to my lips and pressed a kiss to it. He was seeing it. Jesse was starting to understand. And I knew I couldn’t stop now.
“I read somewhere once that when one angel dies, another is born.” Jesse looked at the hand I held in front of my lips but said nothing. “You would’ve been born around the same time Lee left me…”
Jesse slowly turned to look up at the photo on the screen. “Left you?”
“Yes,” I whispered, and kissed his knuckles again. “He used to sneak out after dark to meet me. He said it was our time because that was when the wicked played, and I was wicked to the core. He liked that. Liked that I frightened him. Just like you do.”
When I looked back to the image on the screen, Jesse tried to lower his hand, but I tightened my fingers, needing his touch to get through this. Needing him to understand why he was so important to me—why I could never let him go. “He understood me in ways no one ever had before. With him, I could be myself. We were inseparable, and no one cared. No one thought anything of it. Two boys. Best friends. But we were more than that. We had secrets no one knew about. We did things we knew no one else would understand. How could they, when we didn’t even understand them ourselves?” As Jesse stared at me, I lowered his hand between us and felt a tear roll down the left side of my face. “Then, one night, he pushed too far and I took too much, and he left me. My angel left me until two months ago, when you walked into my life and I saw him again.”