Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
I rest more against the windowsill. “What’d I seem like? Like mentally?”
He stares off for a beat. “It seemed like you were searching for a feeling. I can’t say what it was, but maybe you figured doing drugs, having sex, drinking alcohol—anything, everything, that you felt like you couldn’t do before you turned eighteen—was gonna help you find it.”
I contemplate the past that I can recall. “I did feel trapped,” I whisper. “Like I couldn’t spread my arms high enough. Boxed in. Maybe I was searching for the feeling of being unraveled…it’d make sense why I’d be that careless with drugs.”
“I think you learned that unraveled feeling is better felt without the drugs.”
My lungs expand in a deeper breath, realizing I’ve already stretched my arms to the galaxy and come undone and felt so perfectly inside myself—like just being me is home. I haven’t felt the urge to embark on some intense drug-fueled exploration this time around. Because I’ve already discovered the feeling I’d been searching for.
It was with him.
I lean my temple on the window frame. “You know how I read a little bit of the diary? Before I stopped?” I stare into the gentle blue pools of his shimmering eyes. “There was one line I wrote about you, and it’s kinda stuck with me.”
“What was it?” he asks in a near-whisper.
“I wrote about how comfortable you make everything.” I try to remember the exact words. “You make it seem like ‘living is just as easy as breathing, and sometimes I do wonder how it can feel that easy. Because in my head it’s not easy at all.’”
Donnelly mulls over these words, his hand on his mouth, then jaw, then sliding along the back of his head.
“Do you just make it look that way?” I ask him.
“Nah, I’m not pretending.” He slips me a slanted smile. “Living is as easy as breathing, Luna. It doesn’t have to be hard, but I know it can be.” He pauses. “When I was eighteen, I thought about it a lot too. I’d started getting out of the bad situation with my family. I was up at Yale with Farrow. I met Oscar. I made more friends who wanted good things for me. And it became easier and easier and easier…until I didn’t notice it was hard at all.”
It floods me, this luminous hope beyond the darkness. It’s the effervescence of Donnelly. And he’s telling me it’s not just uniquely born to him. It’s something to discover.
I wonder how long he’s been guiding the way for me. How long I’ve understood his path is the brightest one to take.
“I know it hurts at times, what we’ve gone through together,” I say quietly. “But…” I dive into his gaze. “This is easy. Being with you. It’s not painful.”
His chest rises in a stronger breath. He snuffs the cigarette out on the sill, then discards the butt, and he bridges the distance between us, his large palms sliding against my rosy cheeks.
I hold on to those affectionate hands. My heart catapulting to the cosmos.
He’s staring into my entire being, his breath catching slightly in a near-groan. “I just want to be alone with you.”
It’s an ache. A shared yearning.
After he woke up sleepwalking last night, we squeezed together in the twin-sized lower bunk bed. Sexy, yeah, but we weren’t trying to arouse each other. I wanted him to sleep through the night. He did. Now it’s Christmas Eve, and all I can imagine is being pressed up against Donnelly again.
But the bunk bed has downsides. Mainly, we aren’t alone. And he’s dying to be alone with me. I’m craving to extend this alone-time past the bathroom and further into the night.
“I have an idea,” I tell him.
25
LUNA HALE
Most everyone is shut away in the privacy of their rooms, awarding us the perfect opportunity to rummage in the basement’s storage closet for camping gear. Sleeping bags, a survival glow stick, pillows, foam pads.
Donnelly turns off the front doorbell security cameras for a blip, and once we’re safely outside and out of sight of surveillance tech, he switches them back on. We’re smiling and sprinting as we brace the cold in our thin layers—my silk nightgown, his black drawstring pants. We rush to the gravel parking pad.
In a matter of minutes, we’ve made a comfy, cozy bed in the back of the Ford truck.
Sharing the oversized dark purple sleeping bag, Donnelly zips up the sides towards our necks. I nuzzle farther under the bag, greedy for our collective body heat. My nose stays hidden, my eyes peeking out into the cold.
Donnelly grins down at me. The windchill isn’t as hostile as last night, so I’m not shocked he’s able to keep an arm out of the sleeping bag. “You care if I light another one?” he asks, maybe because we’ve been discussing drugs, and cigarettes are classified as one. It’s just not a habit either of us are worried about, I guess.