“Can you tell me about it?” she asked, her small voice filling me with foreign emotion. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but everything about her felt sincere and humble. Like she actually cared about me and wanted to share my pain. Like maybe she felt for me what I couldn’t help feeling for her.
I took a moment to collect my thoughts, sifting through the memories in the forbidden Rolodex of my mind. I didn’t revisit my past if I could help it. It wasn’t a place anyone wanted to stay for long.
“My mom killed herself,” I finally said. There was no way around it. The best way was to tear off the band-aid as quickly as possible. “It was always just the two of us when I was growing up. She was always so happy, so free-spirited. So it came as a shock when I found her dead on the bathroom floor. She had overdosed.”
Kami moved closer to me, close enough for me to feel her warm breath on my arm as she gasped at my mournful account. “I’m so sorry,” she croaked, her voice thick with emotion.
“I later found out that my mother suffered from schizophrenia. I just thought she was eccentric. She’d get these hare-brained ideas, and we’d be off on an adventure. She’d pull me out of school for impromptu road trips. Let me eat ice cream for dinner. Throw me birthday parties when it wasn’t even my birthday. She was my best friend, and I didn’t even know she was sick.”
“Blaine…” Kami stroked my cheek, letting her fingers travel up into the locks of hair that had fallen over my forehead. “You know it’s not your fault, right? You know that it wasn’t your responsibility to save her?”
I turned on my side to face her, revealing the ugly scars I still bore after all these years. “Wasn’t it? I was all she had, and I didn’t even know my mom was dying inside. I could’ve helped her. I could have done something to stop her and get her help. But no. I thought I had the coolest mom in the world when all the while she was suffering. Don’t you see how fucking selfish that was of me? Don’t you get why I hate myself for letting her die?”
I turned away from Kami, utterly disgusted with my self-loathing. “How unhappy must she have been to take her own life? How unhappy must she have been with me? To not at least try to survive?”
Kami hands tugged my bicep, pulling me, until my back was once again flat on the bed. Then she was straddling me, her small body pressed into mine while she buried her face into my chest.
“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, kissing my chest. She rained light pecks along my upper torso, her sorrowful eyes leaking with sympathy. “I’m so sorry, Blaine. It’s not your fault. I swear it!”
I wrapped my arms around her and cradled her head against my chest, stilling her movements. It’s not that I didn’t want Kami to kiss me. Shit, that was all I wanted. But I wanted it to come from a place of desire. A place of affection. Not pity. I wanted Kami to kiss me because she wanted me, minus the bullshit of my past. I wanted her body to crave me like mine craved hers. Not because she felt sorry for me.
I held her soft body on top of mine until her sobs subsided and her breath grew heavy and deep. And just as the sun had begun to peek over the horizon, I let my eyes close to soak in the feel and smell of her.
Kami was in my arms, and in my bed. And for the first time since my mother’s suicide, I felt like I could begin to forgive myself.
“Oh my God, you dirty little slut! You did it, didn’t you? You totally did it!”
I kicked off my shoes and stowed them in my closet before lying back on my bed. “Did what?” I huffed.
Angel put a hand on her narrow hip and slid next to me. Then she bent over and sniffed me. She fucking sniffed me like a dog.
“Ewww, what the hell are you doing?” I yelped, scrambling away from her curious nose.
“You had sex! I can smell it on you! You fucked Blaine last night when you swore up and down that you wouldn’t!” With a goofy grin, she bounded from the bed and stuck her head out my bedroom door. “Dom! Wipe the coochie crumbs from your chin, and get in here! I won, fucker! You owe me fifty bucks!”
Won? What the hell?
“Angel, it’s not what you think,” I tried to explain. But before I could come up with a believable story, Dom swaggered in, wearing nothing but tight, black boxer briefs, his muscled, tan body looking as amazing as ever. But he wasn’t Blaine. No one had a body like Blaine. Or hands. Or a tongue…
Shit.
Dom settled beside me just as Angel hopped on my other side, wrapping her arm around my waist. “Kam, please tell me you didn’t do it. I thought we had an understanding, woman! I was gonna split my winnings!”