He leans in and kisses my temple. It should be tender. Instead it’s a punctuation, an ache. “I love you,” he says before I can stop him.
The word is wrong and right, and the sound of it is dangerous as a loaded gun.
“You don’t get to say that,” I whisper. “Not without consequences.”
He laughs, a short, humorless sound. “You think I don’t know that?”
“You kissed me under the moon,” I say. “You said that same thing there.”
He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, there’s steel in their blue.
“Then stop following me,” he says.
The words are a knife. I try to swallow them down, to breathe around them.
“You can’t make me leave,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He stands, sudden and taut. “Then don’t cry for me when your father looks at you and sees betrayal.”
“Then don’t be the
