Never Hide

Chapter Fourteen

Ever since our first official date, my days spent with Raven had gone by in a beautiful blur.

We'd been spending more time together, going on dates, going back to each other's places, our hands either tucked into one another's palms or touching each other any place we could. I'd never experienced anything like this before, where the days seemed to bleed into one another, where the line between friendship and romance wasn't really there.

Last night, Raven had invited me to the opening of an art gallery. We'd sipped wine as we listened to the artist go on and on about what had inspired her to pursue her painting career, how she'd cried the first time she'd ever seen the sky as a child. And while I didn't exactly relate to being emotional over the clouds, as the artist spoke, it dawned on me that I related to her story, just in a very different way.

Raven was my sky. He was the first sky I'd ever seen, a sight that filled me with hope and happiness and fear, all at once. And while I didn't feel like weeping when I came to the realization, I did take a moment to look over at him before I pressed my lips to his own.

And then, I took him back to my apartment. On the way home, I'd tried my best to explain to him how what the artist had said had resonated with me, how it made perfect sense to want to wail after seeing something beautiful yet knowing that it'd be gone soon, how powerless it must've made the artist feel to realize that there was nothing she could've done to keep the clouds in the sky above.

But he just looked at me like I was crazy. He asked if maybe I'd had a few too many sips of wine and recommended that I take an Aspirin before bed and chase it down with a huge glass of water.

Hell, maybe I was going crazy. I knew better than to fall for Raven Williams. I knew better than to try to keep the clouds in the sky. Our days together were numbered, and no matter how much I liked him, he had never mentioned us being anything more than what we were. He seemed to be perfectly fine with our situation, the not-so-hidden romance, the undefined relationship that we kept to ourselves.

Tonight, he had invited me out with his friends. If this were a typical relationship, I would've assumed that meant that he wanted something more to develop between us. However, since I'd already met his friends, albeit briefly, maybe he didn't think that it was such a huge deal for me to meet them again.

I was turning the question over in my head when I heard someone's knuckles rapping on my front door.

I quickly moved to answer the door, pulling it open with a huge grin on my face. "Hey."

"Hey." Raven grinned back at me. "Are you feeling any better?"

"What do you mean?"

"Last night? With the wine?" He chuckled. "You remember last night, don't you? You kept going on about the sky and how much you wanted to pull the clouds down from the heavens?"

"Wait. Is that what I said?"

"Pretty much word for word." He chuckled again. "But it's okay. I think you were just having a moment, which is totally normal after an art show. It's good when an artist can make you feel something, even if that something is... incoherent."