And what kind of importance did that make me?
“This isn’t how I wanted this to go.” Dom tried to find the right words, tripping over a few of them. “Please, just try to hear me out.”
I nodded, waiting. But it never came. “How did you want this to go? It’s been about a month since you came back here to Barnett.”
I kept him here, away from his child, for a month.
Another pound of guilt fell onto my shoulders. It was a weight I hadn’t realized I was still carrying for the past few hours—the past few days even—when everything was finally going so well. So perfectly.
Goddess, I’d never known I was any good at hexing, but, damn, I was good at jinxing myself.
Dom gaped at me. “I don’t …”
Know?
We both should’ve known a lot more than we did about the other by now.
“I wanted this to go right this time.”
“Dom,” I whispered, looking down at my feet.
Still, I didn’t stop him as he took a step forward and took my hands in his. I sat down on the edge of the bed, not wanting to stand. Last summer was happening. Right now, right here.
All of it, all over again. Only this time, I was certain it was going to end a bit differently.
“Please, Ana. I’m not confused about what I want anymore, but I need time. Just a little time, and I’m going to figure this out. I promise.”
Time. I had asked him for it once.
But how much time had we already wasted?
“Can you give me that?” he asked, sincerity softening his voice. It was the same voice he used to use to murmur to me in bed late at night when I couldn’t fall asleep. “Can I hold you for one more night and talk in the morning about all this after I get my head on straight? Please?”
“Okay,” I whispered, and he wrapped his arms back around me. “But I need to ask you one more thing.”
He waited.
“You asked me once, you know, if, in an alternate universe, we would still end up right here, together in Barnett. But I think you already knew the answer, didn’t you?” I asked. “Because here we are again, doing the same thing over again, just like you wanted, aren’t we?”
“Not all I wanted.”
“No one gets everything they’ve ever wanted, Dom. The world doesn’t work that way.”
“Not even in your magical one? Because, please, put a spell on me, Ana! Bewitch me! Do anything to make this better and make me stay. I want you to be mine. I want to be yours,” Dom begged, grasping my hands in his tightly, as if he never wanted to let go.
I broke away from him, feeling my heart aching, as if I’d reached inside and torn it apart. “Don’t you wish I could do that? But I won’t!”
“Why not?”
“Because you can do that yourself. You could have always done that from the beginning. You could’ve stayed from me the moment you met me. You chose not to. That’s not magic. That’s not some curse. That’s you. This is all you.”
He kept reaching out.
I kept pushing away.
My face scrunched as I held strong. “Stop. Just stop it. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep fighting the same conversation—the same argument. I can’t keep fighting you, but most of all, I can’t keep fighting me. So, I can’t be yours, Dom, because you don’t mean it.”
“I do.”
