Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

“I wanted something good,” he admitted. “Beauty, maybe?
The night of the pool party, the house was quiet. It was just us,
but you didn’t know I was in the house, too. I watched you
dance.”
I remembered that night so vividly. For the two years after
that, I’d looked back on it, excited and terrified, but also with
this weird sense of being safe in that closet with him.
“You made the world look different,” he told me. “You
always had, and it struck me as odd, because I had hated to
watch my mother dance growing up. It was just some
elaborate lie that I couldn’t stomach, but you…” He trailed off,
searching for words. “It was pure, and it was a dream. I didn’t
want to change you. I just wanted to be a part of it all. Of
everything beautiful you were going to do.”
He sat there for a moment, and everything in my body
hurt. I didn’t realize every muscle had been tightened this
whole time. This was the first time he’d ever said things like
this. The first time he’d ever really talked to me.
“But I was still me, and I scared you that night, because
that’s what I do,” he admitted, sounding like he hated himself.
“Something amazing happened, though. You followed. You
wanted to feel that edge, too, as long as you were at my side,
and for a few incredible days, I felt…”
He didn’t finish the thought, but I knew what he wanted to
say. It had felt the same with me.
“When it was time to come clean, I couldn’t,” he said, his
voice growing thick. “I just wanted to stay there with you.
Behind the waterfall, in the shower, in the ballroom… Just
stay with you.”
He rose to his feet, and the walls felt too close, and my
clothes too tight, and I couldn’t get my lungs to open, because
there was too much to take in and not enough said so many
years ago. Why didn’t you say all of this years ago?
“Nothing was a lie,” he whispered.
And then he walked out, and my chest ached so badly, for
air or for him, I didn’t know, but I ran to the window, yanked it