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I stare at her, unblinking. There’s more in that simple statement than I can even begin to wrap my head around. “You want me to… break you? So that you can put yourself back together?”
“I know it probably doesn’t make sense.” She runs her hand through her wet hair, her fingers twisting it at the scalp as she struggles to make me understand. “I think I was always fragile, probably. So, it’s no surprise that I broke. And when I did, nobody was going to come clean up the pieces for me. Nobody was going to try and shape me back together, so I just did what I could. But I clearly did something wrong because I—” Her voice breaks, and this time she does turn away from me, hurrying to the other side of the boat like she can’t possibly get enough space between us.
“Because you what?” I press, following her. She opens the door into the kitchen, but I step behind her, pressing her into the edge of the counter. My lips find her ear, my hands coming around her to pin hers against the marble. “Because what?”
Her voice shakes when she answers me. “Because I’m fucked up.”
I blink, taking a moment to let her admission settle. That’s certainly not what I expected her to say. “What?” I laugh, wrenching her chin around so that her neck tilts back to face me. But Claire isn’t laughing. Tears stream quietly down her face, and my stomach plummets. “You’re not fucked up.” I tell her, finishing the thought I’d already had. But I can tell the words glance off of her. She doesn’t believe me.
She spins to face me, pushing off the counter as leverage. Her small body presses into mine, and the burgeoning erection from a moment before turns hard. “This is fucked up.” She gestures to the finite amount of space between our bodies, and I have half a mind to devour the rest of her words in a kiss. But I don’t. I watch her. “We are both fucked up, Remy. But this? Whatever the hell this is? This fucking and fighting and then repeating? It’s toxic.”
I never meant for it to be. She’s hard to resist, and the first time we fell into one another, it had been so chaotically passionate that I didn’t have a chance to think about stopping. But I know she’s right. We’re pushing each other, pulling so hard we’re just tugging one another through a mess. “But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that I like it. I like that you don’t love me. I like that you want to hurt me. I like that you make me want to hurt you.” Claire swipes at her cheeks angrily. “That’s not healthy, is it? Not normal?”
I don’t know how I’m supposed to know what normal is. Maybe I knew it once, ages ago, when I had Monica. But I was an entirely different man then. My parents certainly never gave me anything to model my opinions of healthy relationships upon. “That doesn’t make you fucked up,” I argue, instead of answering the question.
“It does.” She whispers. “I’m infected. He got under my skin and burrowed so deep I’ll never get him out.” Her body sobs, heaving with that idea, but her tears have stopped. “He ruined me, and now I just want someone else to ruin me better than he did.”
I stare at her as she looks up at me, her eyes cold, her body colder. Her lips are still faintly blue, and I’m just realizing she’s shaking. That, at least, is easily remedied. I wrap my arms around her even as she goes stiff, not wanting to accept my warmth, and hold her so tight that I think our heartbeats sync.
She’s wrong about so many things. She’s not fucked up, she’s not damaged or unworthy. She isn’t ruined or broken.
But she’s right about one thing.
No matter how tight I hold her against me, I can’t put her back together.
Chapter forty-eight
Claire
He quit trying to fight me and just held me for a long time before we separated. His silence was more soothing than his words, and I was willing to take it for as long as he was willing to give it to me. But when my body started to turn to lead, he must have realized. He swept me up without a word, laid me in the bed I’d crawled out of hours earlier, and left. I woke up to his hand in my hair, telling me we were home.
Home.
As if.
I don’t belong here. I should have left after that night on the roof when I felt myself trying to be someone I wasn’t. I may not know who I am, but I know who I am not. And I am not the kind of girl that a man like Remington Boudreaux catches feelings for.
That’s why, as soon as I make it back to the room I’ve been sleeping in, I start to gather everything that I brought with me.
Our walk back to the house after docking was silent, and the house is similarly quiet. It’s weird after yesterday, when the house was packed full of guests and mourners and so loud, I could barely think. I didn’t see Rhea or Dimitri, or even Elaine on the way back. Which means I’m either going to steal Remy’s car or ask him for it. But I know I won’t steal it, even if part of me wants to just to see what he’d do when he finds out.
I’m running again, but this time, I don’t want him to chase me. Because he can pull me back in too easily. He’s already done it, over and over. And that’s not helping either of us.
My heart hammers as I set my suitcase down next to me and stare at his door, my palms sweaty. I don’t want to face him. I don’t want him to see that I can’t handle this. And I definitely don’t want him to see that somehow, in a matter of weeks, he’s gotten ahold of me.
But I’m choosing the lesser of the evils, so I knock on the door anyway, fighting the impulse to turn and run before he can open it.
There’s a flicker of confusion on his face when he sees me, but then his eyes drop to my luggage and his jaw tightens. “You’re not leaving.”
My mouth falls open without my permission, his words like a shock to the system. “Excuse me?”
“You don’t have to leave, Claire.” He shakes his head. “You still have a few weeks left of summer. Stay.”
I shake my head, too, because I don’t want to even hear his words. “No. I don’t belong here.”
I don’t tell him I feel like I’ve belonged in his bed more than I feel like I’ve ever belonged anywhere. That certainly won’t help with the goodbye. “Rhea will be devastated if she comes home, and you’re gone.” He crosses his arms, like that’s final.
“Where is she?” I narrow my eyes on him. He’s been with me most of the day and night, so I’m not sure how he’d know his sister isn’t in the house somewhere.
