Chapter 16

Whatever it was, it took over my mind

and from the corner of my eye I watched myself in the mirror,

detached, as if it were someone else smiling back at him, not me.

Someone else placing my hand over his, on my leg. Someone else

wrapping my fingers into his palm and someone else’s voice that

murmured, “Don’t call me Jesus. My name is Jace.”

“Jace.”

Someone else tightened my hand around

his. Later that evening, someone else asked him to come home with

me, keep me company, and grinned when he said yes.

* * * *

I remember his kisses that night,

eager and warm and impossibly sweet. I remember the way I pressed

him back against my mattress, his body heavy beneath mine, our

breath ragged in the darkness of my room. I remember fistfuls of

his hair, soft like cotton in my hands, and I remember him moaning

when I shifted my knee into his crotch, the hardness there turning

me on.

He sighed my name over and over again,