ALL THE WORDS WE COULDN'T SAY

T W E N T Y F I V E

I could feel something was off when Sofia told me that Killian was back. There was nothing to warrant this feeling but I couldn't help it. Small streams of worry trickled at the back of my mind as I sat in my room, appetite still too low to even force down a depressing chicken wrap I'd bought two days ago.

It had been three days. No message. No call. No sign of him at The Barrel. I asked Sofia to ask Nathan about him and she relayed that he'd been in his accom since he came back.

Finally, I decided it was time to visit him. It felt awkward. It didn't feel ok to just show up at his place to ask how he was. That was something friends did and we weren't that at all.

I shook my head clear of those thoughts as I knocked on his door. Just when I was about to leave, thinking he'd gone out, the door slowly opened.

He looked like he hadn't slept since he'd left. His eyes were glued to the floor.

"Killian?" I couldn't mask the concern in my voice.

"Yes?" I didn't realise how much I had missed his voice. Weak and scratchy as it may have been.

"Umm. Are you okay?" I swallowed my pride, hoping this was just him cramming for some exam.

"I'm fine," he answered unconvincingly.

"You don't look it."

"Don't worry about me."

"What?"

He sighed. "It's nothing."

He moved to close the door but not before I pushed it back and barged myself into his room.

What usually was a tidy accom now looked like mine. Completely dishevelled with half-snorted lines of snow on his desk and nightside table.

"What the fuck happened in Marlow?" I asked instinctively.

His head still hung low. "Killian, look at me!"

I was met with the beautiful, blue eyes that I'd thought about ever since he'd left. They were bloodshot and filled with sorrow.

"You're right, Persy. I never should have approached you at that party. I should've stayed away. I guess I haven't changed at all since Marlow. I'm still the selfish boy I always was."

His words shot right through my chest. I've said the same things to him multiple times since that party. Even worse probably. But something about him saying it, saying it in a way that made my heart drop at the thought of never seeing him again. Moving on without him felt like something out of a different universe.

"Answer my question..." I demanded, "please."

Killian turned away. His hands, coloured with faded scars and bruises, slowly slid into the pockets of his tartan pyjama bottoms. My empty stomach churned with nervousness as my need to know what happened tripled by the second.

"I saw Chris there."

It was like both time and space suddenly froze. I'd been abused by that man for two years. It was something I realised I'll never recover from. I learned to accept the wretched loneliness that would forever hover over me with anyone that I'd meet. It was why I couldn't eat, why I couldn't sleep. So much had been stripped away like the flesh off my bones as I hopped from care home to care home until I turned 18. It was my hatred for Killian that fuelled me until now. Had it not been for him, I wouldn't have survived one night after being shunned from my mother's home. His betrayal kept me alive and now that he had seen that man, it felt as though I was standing naked in front of him. I was fully exposed to him and yet I didn't feel scared. My body, which always recoiled from any sort of physical touch, was somehow burning for his embrace. For the warm hands that pulled me into his house that night and sealed around me, under his blanket as I cried against his chest.

I understood from the marks on his hands that he didn't just see Chris. They must've spoken for him to realise who he was.

"There's nothing else for me to say. You should go, Persy."

I acted out of impulse, something I did a lot with Killian lately, without any regret as I pulled his arm to spin him around and kissed him so hard we both stumbled from the collision. His lips, chapped as they might've been, were like ecstasy against mine. I felt his shock and hesitation melt away as he drew me closer until we were flush together like jigsaw pieces. The warmth that I always felt when we were like this filled my stomach like a full, hot meal. My hands clutched the sides of his neck and I could feel the small stubble with my thumbs along his jawline. He was sculpted to perfection whether he was short or tall, broad or lean. It didn't matter because it was Killian and no matter how he was built, I'd always love him. I'd treasure the entire expanse of his being.