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She doesn’t need you.
Maybe she didn’t, and I was happy for that. I loved that she didn’t need me. I was grateful she didn’t.
My gut clenched when she turned off the Hummer, and I didn’t realize why until she faced me. She had conquered her demons, and now, she was about to leave again. Leave me.
Making myself be grateful for that too, I started to say, but Red unstrapped her seat belt and faced me full on. She put her hands together. “You see what I just did, right?”
I did see. How could I not? She was amazing. “Red—”
“You saw that, so you can see that I’m not weak,” she stated, her voice suddenly quivering, and my lips parted. She squeezed her hands into fists. “I did that, and I’m not weak, Ares.”
I didn’t get why she was saying this, and I put my hand on her. I touched her face this time. Stupid, I knew. “I know that.”
“Do you?” She was on the verge of crying again, her lashes fanning rapidly. Why could I not make this girl cry for a second? Just one goddamn second. She ran her sleeve under her eyes. “So you know what I’m capable of. I can handle this, Ares. I can be there for you and everything you’re going through.”
The words hit me so hard. Like I’d collided with a bullet train. She’d done this… for me?
Damn.
I’d made her think she was weak. That she had to prove something to me.
God, you’re such a fuckup.
I kept fucking up when it came to her. I was selfish when it came to her, and I knew that when I brought her close. I evaporated all that space I needed to keep and pressed my forehead to hers. “Fawn, baby, you’re not weak. If anything, you’re the strong one.”
She’d endured all I’d put her through, and I was the weak motherfucker. I just couldn’t let go of this girl.
She wouldn’t let me. Her arms looping around me, she fused herself to me, and my chest caved when she pressed her face into my chest. It felt good. So fucking good.
“Then why won’t you let me be there for you?” she said, the words shaky, and her fingers curling into my back. She was doing it so softly. Like she didn’t want to hurt me, and all of this was beginning already. She was holding on like she didn’t want to break me, and that destroyed me. She sniffed back sobs. “Please let me be there for you.”
I didn’t want her to see me sick. I didn’t want to need her.
You don’t deserve her.
She’d never know how much I didn’t, and that was me being weak again. I couldn’t hurt this girl any more than I already had. I couldn’t. I…
Fawn made me look at her. She eased both arms free, then pressed her hands to my face. She wouldn’t allow me to run from her when all I wanted to do was leave, smoke on my heels. I was good at that, and she was too.
Apparently, she wasn’t anymore. She really was the one with true strength. She fingered my hair. “Let me be there for you,” she said, and then it was her forehead touching mine. She pressed her hands hard to my face, her head shaking. “Please, let me be there for you.”
It was in that moment when it all broke. I shattered, and the next thing I knew, my arms were bracing around her head. I was rubbing my cheek into her hair. It was always so soft, and she was always so warm.
“I’m scared, Red,” I said, and it was the first time I said the words out loud. I was scared, but not of dying. Death didn’t scare me, but the wake of my absence would. I was scared of what that absence would do to my family and friends. That was where my terror lay, and it radiated down to my fucking core.
I also feared losing this, this amazing girl in my arms. She’d conquered a fear today, and she’d done it for me. Fucking me. She’d done that for her monster and was now here trying to support him, save him.
Red.
I think I’d known when I answered the door I wasn’t letting her go again. It wasn’t possible, and I didn’t care how selfish it was. I needed her.
And she was letting me.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Ares
I called my parents that night. I told them I’d come see them, but they ended up packing into the car and coming to see me. I told them briefly over the phone I wanted to talk to them about health concerns. I didn’t want them to wonder for the two hours it’d take them to get here, and I also didn’t want to blindside them either. That wasn’t fair to them. They’d both been calm on the phone, and my dad had asked a single question.
