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“I’ll stop your pain,” he says quietly. “Trust me.” And I hate that I almost do. I hate that I believe him more than I believe myself. His hand grips my arm, holding it carefully as if I was on the verge of breaking into small pieces, “If you go, I’ll go with you.”

My eyes meet his, and he smiles, sadly almost.

“Would you?”

“I’d do anything for you,” then, quieter, “I don’t want you like this.”

And that’s the problem. Because I don’t know how to exist in a way that doesn’t hurt anymore.

He pulls me in, not away from the edge, into him. And I don’t resist. The ocean disappears behind everything else, the wind, the salt, the weight of his arms, the unbearable closeness of him. And when he kisses me, it doesn’t feel like falling into the void anymore.

This feels as if something that was already happening and I just finally caught up to it. Us.

There’s a second where nothing fits properly, our lips colliding, his tongue brushing mine, our breath catching… Everything is messy. My breath stutters into him, swallowed halfway through the kiss like I forgot how lungs are supposed to work.

Should I even breathe? Or is it okay if I died in his arms?

His hand is on my jaw, holding me still so I don’t disappear out of instinct. I make a sound I don’t recognize and it gets lost between the wet kiss, and the sound of the waves crashing against the cliff.

The wind is still there somewhere, but I can’t feel it anymore. Only him. I only feel him.

His thumb shifts slightly against my cheek, trying to memorize the way I react without thinking. I lean into it, not pulling away to breathe. And when he breaks the kiss, our foreheads hover close enough that I can feel every inhale he’s trying to control.

“You’re shaking,” he says quietly.

His hand moves, guiding me somewhere else. And suddenly I’m falling backward with him, grass hits my shoulders first. He follows me down like gravity decided to give up. His hand catches the back of my head before it fully meets the ground, and then he’s over me.

He’s everywhere.

“Don’t move,” he murmurs.

His mouth is on mine again, slower this time, deeper. Like the urgency has nowhere left to go except through us. I lose track of where I am supposed to breathe. It comes in pieces. Inhale, break, inhale. As if my body forgot how to stay whole.

“You can feel so much more than what you’re used to running from,” he says against my lips. My breath catches. “Pain,” he murmurs, his thumb brushes my cheekbone before sliding his hand around my neck, squeezing it to the point where my eyes close from the sensation. “And this,” he continued, his mouth meeting mine again. “This is softness.”

His hand stays around my neck, steadying me when I don’t realize I’m shaking. “And this—” He breaks the kiss just enough for his forehead to rest against mine. “This is danger.”

My back presses harder against the ground, as he’s pushing us off closer to the edge, until my head falls back to the void. “Because you’re not in control when you’re with me like this,” he says quietly.

I can feel the blood pulsing in my ears, in my eyes as he squeezes my neck harder. His mouth finds my neck next, kissing, biting, licking it as I finally breathe again. “I’m going to show you all of it tonight. Do you trust me?”

I nod, stupidly, like I wasn’t on the verge of falling and crashing in the ocean. “I do,” I say, voice restrained by the position I'm in.

Because nothing about me is okay. And nothing about this makes sense.

101

Mireya

Play - Lover, You Should Come Over by Jeff Buckley

Fall with me

I can hear the song playing in his parked car, it’s faint but it mixes up with the sound of the waves and us, heavily breathing.

“Hey,” he murmurs softly.

There’s a voice in my head already screaming.