Chapter 4

Ash

S itting by my desk, I decided to search for Soren on Facebook. It wasn't hard, and he was the first account to pop up after I typed his name into the search bar. Just as I expected, he was popular. Very popular . His profile picture, a photo of him leaning back against a Bentley wearing a tux, had gotten hundreds of likes and comments. Going deeper and digging up more info about him, I saw that he attended some boarding school in Switzerland instead of a regular high school and that he was currently a third-year law school student.

Well, he did mention that.

I also confirmed my earlier suspicion about his age. He turned twenty-five last May, meaning that he was seven years older than me. Well, I'd be eighteen in less than a month, so I guessed that was fine.

After drooling over his tennis photo album, I removed my eyes from my computer and bit on my nails. Will he actually call me? Soren did ask me for my number, but maybe he was just being polite after stumbling upon me. Thinking back on our meeting, I remembered what he said about my lips.

Getting up from my chair, I walked over to the small mirror in my room and examined my lips. I always thought they were too big for my face, and I sometimes felt insecure about them. Pressing the pads of my fingers to my bottom lip, which was slightly fuller, I wondered how it would feel to have Soren's lips pressed against mine. I bet he was a good kisser, as he seemed to look like a man with lots of experience.

The sound of something breaking came from our front porch, cutting off my line of thought. Mom was visiting her friend, so I threw my hoodie over my shirtless body and went down to check myself. I wasn't at all surprised to find a drunk Kai trying to pick up the pieces of the ceramic vase he'd just broken.

"Let me guess, you drank too much," I said while holding the door open for him to step in.

Not bothering to glance my way, Kai grunted and then dragged his drunk ass inside the house. As always, he made his way straight to my bedroom. Considering his state, I made a quick stop in the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of water before going after him.

He left my bedroom door open, so I walked in with the bottle in hand. "You need to drink some water—"

"Are you gay?"

My heart stopped, and my blood turned to ice as my stomach flipped. Swallowing back this awful feeling, I tried to pretend his question didn't take me by complete surprise and walked straight to my study desk.

"What on earth are you talking about?" A nervous laugh broke past my lips. With my back to him, I placed the bottle on the desk, my hand shaking.

"Don't lie to me." He sounded so angry.

Turning to face him, I tried to smile. "I don't know what you've heard, but—"

"I didn't hear anything. I saw it with my own eyes," he hissed. "I saw you flirting with that guy tonight."

Since the restaurant was empty when Soren arrived, I'd let my guard down and just went with it, not thinking even for a second that Kai might be there to witness it.

Realizing that I had no way of denying the truth, I didn't know what to do. This, right now, was worse than my nightmares.

"Why didn't you ever say anything?" he asked, his fists clenched close to his sides. "How long have you known? Why did you lie? We went on all those double dates. Fuck, Ash." His voice broke. "We slept together so many nights. You hugged me…"

The more he talked, the harder it was to listen, and I bit the inside of my cheek so I wouldn't cry in front of him. He was disgusted by me. I could see it so clearly in the way his lips curled with repulsion with each word he spat and even more vividly in his eyes, which didn't hold the same spark I loved so much. Now, his eyes were cold and unfamiliar.

"Do you love me?" he asked, and that was it.

No longer able to hold myself together, I broke, and tears began to roll down my flaming cheeks.

If I could have chosen not to be gay, I would have. If I could have chosen to love someone else, I would have. But those things were out of my reach. For years, I'd tried to conceal my emotions in the hope they'd vanish, but they'd only grown, and now, it was all out in the most horrible way I could have ever imagined.

Shaking my head, I tried to swallow back my tears. "I-I'm sorry." Sob. "I didn't mean to."

With two large steps, Kai closed the distance between us, grabbed my hoodie, and pulled me close. Shutting my eyes, I prepared myself to get punched when, instead, I was met with his lips.

For years, I'd dreamed of this moment. Hours went by with me imagining what it would be like to be kissed by him. I thought it would be warm like his smiles and consuming like his hugs. I knew it would be a passionate kiss, just like his character, and imagined it like a warm summer breeze that hits you after a long day, making you grateful for being alive.

But it wasn't.

This kiss wasn't warm like sunrays, but a blizzard, leaving you cold and alone. Kai wasn't wrapping me in his embrace as I hoped he would, but grabbing onto me until the places he touched hurt. All of me hurt. It was also messy. Not the sexy kind of messy, but the mess left after a storm. Mostly, it was a goodbye, and my heart broke, but I'd yearned for him for so long that even that was okay with me.

Slowly, Kai's hands dropped from around me before he stepped back. I opened my eyes just in time to catch him wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Disgust . That was what he looked at me with before he turned around and walked out of my room and probably my life.

Kai

I didn't know what I was doing, thinking, or feeling. My head and body were like a train that had gone off the rails and was speeding down a cliff.

Ash wasn't supposed to be gay because it changed everything between us. The way we hung, the way we looked at each other, the way we loved each other.

Fuck no.

I didn't love him that way because I wasn't gay.

So why did you kiss him?

I kissed him because of the alcohol.

Yeah, right.

Knowing that was a big fat lie scared the crap out of me. I kissed Ash because I couldn't bear seeing him so scared.

And because you were curious.

Screaming my heart out, I punched the steering wheel until I nearly broke the fucking horn. There was nothing for me to be curious about. I wasn't attracted to men.

End. Of. Story.

Me, being gay and in love with my best friend? Fucking disgusting. I had a girlfriend, and dozens more before her, to prove that I wasn't a homo. I loved women, their bodies, their smell, the way they felt when they rode my cock.

You also love the way his lips felt.

How could I ever look at Ash the same way?

Ashy . My safe island in this crazy world. My parents would end me if they ever knew about that. They'd be repulsed the same way I was disgusted. Not with Ash, never with Ash , but with myself.

I was repulsed with myself because thinking about him in any way other than platonic made no sense. I always wanted to be with him because he was my favorite person in the world, and not for any other reason.

Right?

As my head continued to mess with me, I couldn't take it anymore. I couldn't bear another second of being alone with my thoughts, and I needed them to quiet down. I needed them to be gone. I wanted to go to sleep and wake up tomorrow morning as if nothing had ever happened. But knowing it would be impossible, I drove straight back to the party. If I were lucky, my drunk ass would crash into some tree, and we'd call it a night. And if not? I'd drink myself to death.

But as I went back to the party and began drinking, I realized that, like before, booze didn't seem to do the trick. It wasn't strong enough to make the ache go away, not this time. Wandering around like a drunk idiot, I somehow ended up in a room with Nico and some other dudes I'd never met before. Sitting on the couch beside my cousin, I focused on the white lines cut neatly on the glass table.

"You sure about that?" I think Nico asked after I grabbed the dollar bill from him.

Not bothering to answer, I bent down, rolled the bill, and brought it to my nose. What was there to be sure about? It's just coke . I'd never done it before, but it was just for tonight. With that thought in mind, I did the line, then popped in some pills just in case this powder didn't do the job.

A tiny bit of guilt crossed my mind as I straightened up and rubbed my nostrils. Ash would be disappointed in me, but if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have done this in the first place.

Now, my guilt was replaced with anger. It was the same anger I felt before, only stronger. How dare he love me? Why would he do that to me, to us? Why ruin the good thing we had?

"Where are you going?" Nico asked when I stood up.

"This shit doesn't work," I hissed back, fucking annoyed that I'd wasted my time on this crap.

The second I was out of that room, I picked up my phone and called the second person that came to mind.

"Kai?" Zoe sounded sleepy. Since it was way too late for me to call, I wasn't too surprised.

"I'm coming over," I said, then hung up.

I think it was about ten minutes into the drive that I began feeling… different , excited, even thrilled. What was I even worrying about until now? Of course I wasn't gay. I had a fucking girlfriend. A smoking hot girl who I was going to fuck as soon as I saw her. And I sure as fuck did. At least, I think so. At some point, things became… mixed up. And the next thing I remembered was waking up the following day feeling the worst I ever had.