Into the Light by Mark Oshiro

Author:Mark Oshiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

* * *

I think it’s almost midnight.

I can’t sleep. Wide awake. I have been trying to avoid tossing and turning on the floor because I don’t want to irritate Carlos. So I stare up at the ceiling. Count the tiles. Try to push away the mounting dread.

Tonight was nice.

It isn’t going to last.

It’s the thought my mind keeps coming back to. Our connection, no matter how significant, will ultimately sever.

I am in over my head. I shouldn’t have initiated this, but it has a momentum of sorts. A mind of its own. One good thing leads to another, doesn’t it? And now, I’ve broken so many of the rules that Cesar taught me, and where has it led me?

Ricardo spoke to me before he went over to his room; gave me his support. Said that he was glad I was in the family’s lives. Said that they’d do everything in their power to reunite me with Elena.

When am I going to believe what people say? Because I don’t. Maybe it’s of my own making. No one should believe me. I lie to everyone.

Maybe at the end of the day, the person I really don’t trust is myself.

The mattress squeaks. Carlos rolls over.

His head is above me.

“Sorry,” I whisper. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” he says. “Couldn’t hear you at all.”

Pause.

“Sleep in the bed,” he says. “Please.”

I could argue. Disagree. Tell him a lie about why I don’t want to, how I’m more comfortable on the floor.

I sit up. Grab the edge of the mattress to leverage myself up. Quietly slip into the bed on the opposite side, then face away from him.

Look at the red alarm clock.

12:02.

“Happy birthday, Carlos,” I whisper.

Silence.

Mattress squeaks.

Then.

A hand. On my right arm. He loops it around to my chest, pulls me. Squeezes.

“Thank you,” he says, his voice deep, soft.

But his hug doesn’t end.

It isn’t a hug.

He holds me close. My body is on fire. Heart thumping. Blood rushing down there. Can’t breathe.

He doesn’t let go for the rest of the night. Just holds me like that.

I think I am imagining it, but it all feels real: the body heat. The sweat. The smell.

I fall asleep in someone’s arms for the first time in my life.

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