Carry Me Home by Lia Riley Read Free Book Online

know how.” I’ve been tired, tense, and stressed for so long, relaxed is a foreign word, a language I’ve forgotten how to speak.
    “Oh, Green.” She sounds almost tender. I try to jerk away but her featherlight grip holds me in place. “When’s the last time you’ve been touched, just because?”
    “No idea.” None. My mom hugs me on occasion, an awkward, darting side grab while she stares with sad eyes, wanting to ask how I am but scared of the answer.
    Sunny slides her hand from the top of my head, traces my jaw and circles my mouth. Her thumb brushes the seam of my lips. I’m seized by an inexplicable urge to bite her¸ then lick away the hurt. What the fuck is wrong with me?
    “When’s the last time you’ve been kissed?”
    The memory strikes me like a gut punch. Pippa’s heart-shaped face, her too-small mouth and too-big eyes. I tried to hold her tight and she recoiled. I kissed her then, so hard our teeth hit, and she pulled back. She always pulled away. Hated when I touched her body, her beautiful, perfect body. Afraid something would jiggle. She didn’t get that any slight imperfection was part of the good stuff, a little secret that only made her better. She wiped me from her mouth. “Don’t,” she whimpered. “You know I can’t.”
    “Then I can’t either.” I had grabbed my board and torn for the door. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m done.”
    “Tanner—”
    “I mean it for real this time. I can’t keep going if you won’t get help.”
    “I know.” She ground the heels of her palms into her sockets. “It’s not fair to you.”
    “This isn’t about me. I love you, Pippa.” And I did. I really did. Maybe not as a girlfriend, not anymore, but as someone I’d known for so long there wasn’t a clear boundary where she ended and I began.
    “I know you do.” She lowered her hands and gave me a tearful smile. “But maybe I need to figure out how to love me too.”
    The next day she was gone. A neighborhood tweaker sped through the stop sign, leaving her brain-dead.
    “Tanner?” Sunny’s voice yanks me to the present.
    “It’s been a while,” I mutter.
    “Talia?”
    “No.” I take a deep breath. “I never kissed Talia.”
    “What?”
    This time I move fast, faster than she can stop me. The far edge of the couch is safer territory. “You heard me.”
    “But you—”
    “I fucked her—there’s no other word for it.” I bury my face in my hands. “I fucked Talia but never kissed her.”
    “Tanner.”
    “I can’t…I can’t go back there. Please. Stop.”
    “What happened?” Sunny rises to her knees and braces my face with her hands.
    I want to scream. I want to punch a wall until I make it a window.
    “What happened that night?”
    “I slept with T.”
    “Yeah.” Her jaw tightens. “I know.”
    “We were wasted. Everything happened fast. One minute we were talking, and the next I had her shirt off. Her hands were in my pants. I didn’t know what was happening. No, wait. That’s a lie. I knew. I knew exactly.”
    “You wanted to feel close to someone after losing Pippa.”
    “I…Wait.” I shake my head. “No. You make it sound better than it was.”
    “I’m sure it was awful. Pippa was Talia’s sister. You were her boyfriend. That’s one hell of a ghost between you guys.”
    “I didn’t…I couldn’t. I…I didn’t…” Christ, I can’t believe I’m saying this.
    “Didn’t what?” Sunny keeps pushing.
    “I didn’t come.”
    “You pulled out?” She frowns.
    “I wore a condom but faked coming or whatever.”
    Her eyes widen a fraction. “Guys do that?”
    “I knew, the moment I was inside her, that it was wrong. I was angry at her, at me, at life. And she cried, Sunny. She cried and I…Fuck it, I cried too. And I didn’t come. I just stopped. And we lay there. And she cried until she fell asleep, and I didn’t even offer to hold her. I had nothing to give. Nothing.”
    “And you left.”
    “Finally, yeah. After the sun