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“Mase…”
“And I’m not saying that to, like, dump…guilt or regret on you, or anything like that. I just…I hate that I?—”
“It was my choice, Mason,” he interrupts softly, his gaze fierce, yet somehow gentle. “I played with fire, knowing I’d get burned. And then I kept playing, even when the flames were consuming me whole. At any point here, I could’ve walked away. But I didn’t.”
I chew the corner of my lip, my fingers flexing against his shoulder. The urge to pull him into my arms, hold him to me, washes over me strong and forceful. But I resist. That thing inside me…the part of me that wants to hang onto him and beg him not to go…
If ever it was imperative that I shut it out, it’s now. My abandonment issues are what caused this mess. It fucked everything up to the point I can’t trust myself—what I feel…
Jeremy’s suffered enough.
“And for as much torture as it was…” he goes on, “when I imagine the alternative—you pulling away from me after Izzy, rather than clinging to me like you did…”
I’m shaking my head, unable to imagine that being even remotely in the realm of reality.
“You not needing me… not wanting anything to do with me…” He shrugs. “I don’t know who or what we’d be now. If we wouldn’t just be…strangers. So for that, I guess, thank you.”
I smile sadly. “For torturing you?”
His lip twitches. “Yeah, I guess so. We’ve still got something to salvage here after all, right?”
A vice constricts my throat, and all I can do is nod to that.
He needs this.
We need this.
As much as it breaks my heart, I get it.
After a moment, when I find my voice again, I tell him honestly, “I don’t know what happened here. Between us. How we got to this point… I still don’t really even know how you could possibly have?—”
His mouth quirks sadly when my voice cuts off. “Fallen in love with you?”
Clenching my teeth, my eyes sear, the answer no doubt evident in their depths. No…no, I have no idea.
His gaze flits between mine, and he whispers, “I told you. You’re Mason Wyatt. Of course, I fell in love with you.”
He says it so simply—so effortlessly, despite the tears shining in his eyes, and the quiver in his lips. Like falling in love with me wasn’t just an accident, but an inevitability. Like my mere existence is all it took for him to fall.
And if I thought I was mind blown before…
Well, now…now I don’t know what to think other than I feel like my heart’s been ground up in a meat grinder.
“I’ve treated you like shit.”
He tilts his head with a soft sigh, his cheek brushing my knuckles where I still hold him. “Yeah…but to be fair, you didn’t know what was going on in my head. And…despite it all, I’m still in love with you. Pretty sure that says more about me than you.”
My swallow goes down with a hard, audible click.
His tongue pokes out, swiping over his lips, and the world around me sort of slants and shudders, right along with the feeling like I’m toppling over from within myself. On the outside, I stand tall. I’m still. Even my grip on his shoulders remains light—casual.
But on the inside, I’m fucking coming apart in ways I never have before.
And it’s taking everything in me not to do something unforgivably stupid.
Like beg.
Like kiss him.
