GUN IN MY HAND

CHAPTER 77: AT LEAST TWO HOURS

'So we're slaves to any semblance of touch

Lord we should quit but we love it too much'

"You two are incorrigible!" Spencer sighed, the stern look in his brown eyes making me look down at the gun he was putting back in my hand. "How many times do I have to tell you I'm not taking this gun?"

"It's not me this time."

What a supportive boyfriend! Blade threw his hands up, his typical unaffected smirk playing on his lips and not even wavering at my sideway glare before I focused on Spencer again.

"It's just in case..." Like a curse in the gloomy night, I didn't dare speak the words out loud.

But Spencer did, and although he tried to put them smoothly, the what-if still lingered heavily in the thick fog around. "In case I get caught, it's better if I don't have a gun.

"And I'm alone," he added, his gaze sliding to Blade as I was opening my lips to suggest the second most dangerous weapon here.

I knew we'd already talked about it before, and that it was better, if Billy was still at the newspaper, for Spencer to be alone; that way he could convince him more easily than if he was with a 'wanted murderer'. Besides, they would have never wanted to leave me waiting alone.

However, all of that was before, before I'd messed up once more.

"The plan is simple. I'm fine."

That's not what it looked like when Spencer glanced at the dirt road – or at least, at the few meters we would glimpse through the fog – and his nod leaned more toward a 'no', the black of his clothes only accentuating the dark circles under his eyes and the mess of his curls, just like the Cadillac's headlights were illuminating the shakes of his hand on the handle of the dark Chevy as he opened the car door.

I could feel these wavers until my chest, and as a numbness started to spread there too, I dreaded that his paralyzing fears were already invading him.

So I did the only thing I'd ever known when those happened. My hand reached for his, turning him to me and intertwining our fingers in our unique handshake until the simple movements were replacing the wavers and setting the rhythm of his breathing, and then, I pulled him into a hug, making sure no freezing shiver could get to him.

Though as he breathed out a shallow sigh in my hair, and his strong frame held me like he was about to crumble down, I was the one paralyzed with powerlessness and... regret.

I didn't regret my decision of yesterday. On the contrary, this hug was confirming it because, even if there was a lot of love from the warmth of his arms to the soothing shapes my hands were drawing on his back, there wasn't that irresistible attraction. I loved him as my best friend, and that was all.

For the past 24 hours, I could notice the difference acutely. But the truth was that it hadn't happened overnight.

Those butterflies of desire I'd always felt with his touch when we'd been dating, they had evaporated slowly over the past months, maybe burned down beside the fierce electricity of a shooting star being drawn to her evil genie, or maybe it was just the ephemerality of their nature.

Whatever it was, I'd turned a blind eye on them, on the billion times Blade's lips had crossed my mind, while Spencer's hadn't, and on the evident opposite rhythms of my heart between them, fooling them and myself to believe it was because of how different they were, and not how different my feelings for them were.